Ministrey Podcast W/ Trey Van Camp

To become the 4th soil, we need to become people with both courage and clarity in sharing the gospel. But most of us are too consumed by fear, shame, and confusion, and our attempts at becoming effective evangelists fall short. We fear losing friendships and facing rejection, we’re ashamed of the offensiveness of the way of Jesus, and we’re confused by what the gospel actually is. Timothy, Paul’s pastoral protégé, dealt with many of the same problems. In 2 Timothy 1, Paul gives an encouraging reminder to Timothy and to us: the power of the gospel comes from God who saves us from death and gives us new life. While it’s God who ultimately saves people, it’s our job to sow the seeds and trust in the power of the gospel.

We live in a pivotal moment of our culture. Societal upheaval, corruption, and fear create the potential for another major shift in our society, either toward ruin or renewal. And while the world around us gives in to panic and distraction, the call for the church remains the same: endure hardship. In 2 Timothy 4, this is the command Paul gives to Timothy and his church as they wrestle with the same issues we wrestle with today. Like soldiers, farmers, and athletes, the church’s job is to stay committed to our task, be aware of the season we’re in, and commit to finishing the race God has called us to. Here at Passion Creek, our aim is to become the 4th soil by enduring hardship through the practice of prayer.

We are living in the 4th quarter—a time of urgency and opportunity to consecrate our lives and become the fourth soil. Drawing from Mark 4, the call is to resist distractions, align ourselves with God’s Word, and bear lasting fruit. Today, we focus on the chokehold of deceitful desires and how self-control, powered by the Holy Spirit, frees us to live as God intended. Modern culture has shifted from a “should” society to a “could” society, glorifying self-indulgence while leaving us more broken and dissatisfied. Through the lens of scripture, we see the destructive power of unchecked desires—whether in Esau trading his birthright for stew, or Paul’s warning in 2 Timothy 3 about people becoming lovers of self and pleasure over God. Desire, though not inherently evil, becomes destructive when disordered or directed away from God. Paul’s exhortation to exercise self-control teaches us that spiritual maturity requires both mastery and mystery. While we actively train ourselves to resist sin (mastery), we rely on

We live in an urgent time. With the church in decline, deconstruction increasing, and people abandoning their faith in droves, followers of Jesus need to know how to navigate this cultural moment. And Jesus offers us an answer. In Mark 4, he tells a parable about a man who plants seeds in four different types of soil. Most of the seeds are fruitless, except in the 4th soil. Our goal at Passion Creek is to become this fourth soil. We want to be a church that hears God’s Word, receives it, and bears fruit. We do this by resisting the worries of this age, deceitfulness of wealth, and the desires for other things, and instead reorient ourselves around God Himself.

Every Christmas, we embark on the journey of Advent, reflecting on the hope, peace, joy, and love brought by Christ’s first coming and ultimately brought to the full at His second coming. But love—especially God’s love—can be the hardest to understand and accept. This teaching explores God’s profound love through the four Gospels, using a poem, a prophecy, a purpose statement, and a parable.

In this Advent message from Luke 2, we explore how chronic anxiety has gripped our society, robbing us of playfulness and joy. Drawing on insights from Luke’s account of the shepherds, Pastor Trey VanCamp reveals that joy is not just an emotion but a motor—a driving force that sustains us in the tension of the “already, not yet” of God’s Kingdom. By embracing joy as both a miracle and a muscle, we can navigate life’s challenges with hope and resilience. This teaching encourages us to “rejoice always,” grounding our joy in Christ and looking forward to His ultimate return.

Life is hard, you're not that important, your life is not about you, you're not in control, and you're going to die. These five harsh truths have historically prepared young men for the challenges of life, yet our culture seems to deny them at every turn. In Acts 28, we see Paul’s life embodying these truths—trials, tragedy, and the appearance of failure—but the Gospel remains unhindered. Join us as we unpack how God works through weakness, tragedy, and loss to bring resurrection power, and how Paul’s unwavering faith in Jesus can inspire us to find hope in the hardest seasons of life.

Our church gathers every Sunday at 9:15a & 11a at Queen Creek Junior High. 20435 South Old Ellsworth Road, Queen Creek, AZ https://passioncreek.church/sundays/ OVERVIEW: In Acts 20, Paul models what a church pastor should be by speaking directly to the elders in Ephesus. He tells them how he’s pastored, inviting them to follow his example in humility, service, vulnerability, and courage. He also warns them that, should they neglect their calling, the people they shepherd will be vulnerable to wolves. For us today, being a part of a church means submitting ourselves to the guiding and guarding of the spiritual authority placed over us. It also means we are on guard against Satan and his schemes as he threatens to sabotage the church with deceit and manipulation. By maintaining a posture of humility and by fixing our gaze on Jesus, we can become fruitful people who resist the schemes of the Enemy and bring the goodness of the gospel to the world around us.

In the second half of Acts 19, Paul starts a riot. After confronting the false idols and spiritual powers in Ephesus, some of the local businessmen revolt. While Paul escapes and the church in Ephesus grows, just a few years later Paul has to write to them reminding them to continue following the way of Jesus intentionally rather than being formed by the idols of Ephesus unintentionally. Today, our temptation is much the same. To avoid being formed and shaped by the idols of our city and culture, we must intentionally allow ourselves to be formed into the image of Jesus by examining the stories we hear, the habits we practice, and the relationships we surround ourselves with.

As a church planter, Paul was always on the lookout for “foxes” that can ruin the good soil of the Kingdom — things like cynicism, gossip, and bitterness. But when he meets the Thessalonians and the Bereans, he encounters something different. Rather than brushing him off or blindly accepting his message, the Bereans model healthy skepticism. They are students of God’s Word who orient their lives around His truth. Similarly, the church in Thessalonica is later commended by Paul because of their response to the gospel. Rather than simply believing the right things, they commit to living the right way. Today, we can learn from both the Bereans and the Thessalonians. Being students of God’s Word means we have the right theology and the right practice. By reorienting our daily lives in response to the gospel, we too can become a model healthy church free of evil “foxes.”

Most of us know what it’s like to receive a dream from God — we have a sense of purpose, direction, and perseverance to walk in the calling God has laid out for us. But at some point, we hit resistance. Rather than bring us through upward mobility, our God-given dreams bring us through disappointment, difficulty, disagreement, or detours. In these moments, it’s tempting to give up on the dream altogether. The apostle Paul experienced this well. He’d been given a glimpse of what it would look like to participate in bringing God’s Kingdom down from heaven to earth but quickly experienced every kind of setback. But rather than give up on God’s calling over his life, Paul was obedient. By looking at Paul’s story from Acts 9-16, we learn that God-given dreams come with setbacks. But these are always for our guiding and purging. God’s “no’s” guide us to a better “yes” and purge our souls from sinful passions and desires.

As good, true, and beautiful as the gospel is, there has always been resistance to it. In Acts 15, we see the natural human inclination to fight against the reality that God forgives us simply because of our faith in Jesus — some Jewish leaders began forcing extra rules on new Christians. Peter, Paul, and the rest of the apostles give a wise response to these new Christians: they tell them to guide their hope back toward Christ alone, but also to guard their lives by following a way of life. The church today faces a similar issue. We’re either tempted to try and earn something that’s already been freely given, or we’re tempted to accept what’s been freely given without reorienting our lives in response. To follow Jesus is both to receive a free gift and to reorient our lives in response. We choose to put our trust in the person of Jesus and allow his free gift of grace to transform us as we submit more of our lives and desires to him.

Acts 14 tells a story of Paul and Barnabas living out Kingdom principles while experiencing a tough situation. After miraculously healing a disabled man, they’re hailed as gods before eventually being run out of the city and nearly killed. But even in the midst of these strange circumstances, Paul and Barnabas never abandon the Kingdom way of living. Rather than accepting the peoples’ worship, fighting back against their persecutors, or quitting their mission, they exercise self-control, endure hardship, and do the work of evangelists. Today, our call is the same. Despite persecution, hardship, and the world around us vying for our devotion, we can seek the Kingdom by dying to ourselves, enduring hardships, and working as evangelists announcing the good news of the Kingdom.

All of us have different feelings and attitudes when it comes to giving money to a local church. For some of us, it’s a regular and assumed part of our discipleship. For others, it’s a financial goal. And for others, it’s an exploitative way for churches to get more money. Regardless of how we feel about tithing, it’s difficult to be a generous person who lives out the way of Jesus without a regular rhythm of supporting the Body of Christ. In 2 Corinthians, we see a picture of what it looks like to become a community that generously tithes their money for the sake of the Kingdom. The grace of God allows them to give above and beyond what might seem possible. At Passion Creek Church, we find it helpful to think of the tithe as a starting point, not a stopping point. To practice tithing is to practice letting go of control, putting our trust in God, and participating in the Kingdom work that God has called us to. Luke 19:1-10; 20:20-25; 21:1-4 2 Corinthians 8:1-4; 9:6-11

In Luke 16, Jesus tells a perplexing parable. It’s a story of a dishonest manager who uses his master’s wealth to serve those around him. While Jesus’ doesn’t praise the manager’s dishonesty, he credits his ingenuity. This manager saw himself as a steward, not an owner, of his master’s possessions. When we examine our own perceptions regarding our money, most of us view ourselves as owners — we are the sole owners of our money, wealth, and material possessions. But the way of Jesus is the way of stewardship. By seeing ourselves as stewards of all of the things God has blessed us with rather than owners, we’re free to live generously. At the tail end of this parable, Jesus makes a startling claim: if you trust God with fiscal matters, He will entrust you with spiritual matters. Our goal is to become a church of stewards who generously give what our Master has given us to expand the Kingdom and bring others into communion with Jesus.

Like all our beliefs, the attitudes and dispositions we have toward money are largely shaped by our past – our family of origin, our cultural background, and our church experiences. In Luke’s gospel, we see at least 4 different ways of viewing money. Like the Rich Fool in Luke 12, some of us believe that the good life is found when we hoard the most for ourselves. Others of us live more like the Rich Young Ruler in Luke 18; we falsely assume that God will always bless us financially as a reward for our faithfulness. Or we doubt God’s generosity towards us altogether and live more like the Older Brother in Luke 15. But in Luke 21, we see a picture of someone who really trusts in the God of abundance and not in the uncertainty of wealth. A widow, giving all that she has, is commended by Jesus as a picture of what true generosity looks like. We too can reshape how we view money and the way we give by reorienting our minds around the truths of scripture, reshaping our habits to reflect generosity, and participati

Fewer sins are as deep-rooted and hard to detect as greed. Not many of us would admit to being greedy or materialistic, but greed, by default, lives inside each one of us. Jesus makes this clear in Luke 11 when he confronts the Pharisees who hid their greed from others and projected generosity instead. While they appeared holy and generous on the outside, Jesus calls out their inner attachment to money. A few chapters later, Jesus makes his criticism of greed even more clear: to ignore the greed that lives inside all of us makes it impossible to truly love God and others. To Jesus, greed is a poison. And yet, Jesus offers us a solution. The only antidote to the invisible poison of greed is the visible practice of generosity. Our goal is to become disciples, not donors, who practice generosity as a way to keep our greed away from our souls. We redirect our worship towards God by holding our money and wealth so loosely that we give freely, because we trust in the God of abundance. Luke 11:33-42; 16:13-14

As our church looks ahead to the rest of the year, we want to pause and remind ourselves of the vision we started the year with: to make friends and love other people. However, most of us have realized by now how difficult this really is. Jesus holds us to a high standard by commanding us to love our enemies in Luke 6, and so does James when he tells us to confront our bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in James 3. But the gospel gives us hope. By doing the holy work of faith, dying to ourselves, and practicing agape love, we can maintain the friends we’ve made this year and truly love both our friends and our enemies.

When most of us think of prayer, we think of talking to God. While this definition of prayer isn’t wrong, it can sometimes feel formulaic. We begin to assume that if we ask God for the right things in the right way, we’ll get what we ask for. But in Acts 12 we see God’s people contend with God in desperate prayer that doesn’t fit a formula. As Herod begins to intensely persecute the new church, Jesus’ disciples learn that following Jesus is unpredictable. But they also learn that in prayer, their true hope is in being drawn closer into the presence of the Father. For us today, though God might not answer all of our prayers, we can rely on God’s presence, God’s ability, and God’s goodness. Prayer looks more like turning ourselves towards God’s love than attempting to earn God’s love. Acts 12 CSB

As one of Jesus’ disciples, Peter knew what it meant to reorient his life around the love, lifestyle, and leadership of his Rabbi. He led like Jesus, and he lived like Jesus, but Peter still had to learn how to love like Jesus. In Acts 10, Peter is confronted with his next marathon: overcoming his prejudice. As a Jew, Peter believed that the gospel was only good news for his own people. But when God reveals the global scale of the gospel by showing him that Gentiles are just as loved by God as Jews are, Peter must confront his prejudice. Like Peter, all of us have biases. We classify, exclude, and judge people based on ethnicity, social status, or political tribe. But to follow Jesus means we must love everyone the way Jesus did, even when we disagree with them. Just like Peter, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, we too can participate in the marathon of overcoming our biases and extending the gospel to all people.