This Is Your Sacred Place
Season 1 begins with the story of Sacred Place — how and why we decided to plant a new church in Rancho Cucamonga. Matthew weaves in his own story as a gay Christian to share why the fight for inclusion in the church is so important.
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Season 1 Episodes
Creating an intentionally inclusive community from scratch is a daunting task. Though we have a long history supporting us, creating Sacred Place was uncharted territory for all of us. Our first year together was a time of healing, excitement, and finding new friends.
Welcome to Sacred Place
An introduction to Sacred Place and to this podcast — the story of why Matthew felt called to plant an intentionally inclusive church in Rancho Cucamonga, and what he hopes listeners will find in these episodes.
Build With Friends
The first rule of planting a church: you cannot do it alone. Matthew shares the story of the early friendships and partnerships that made Sacred Place possible.
Build With the Marginalized
Sacred Place was born out of a conviction that the church must be a home for those who have been pushed to the margins. Matthew explores what it means to build community with and for those society too often leaves behind.
Build With Passion
You can have a great mission statement and a beautiful space, but without passion the whole thing falls flat. Matthew talks about the fire that keeps a community alive and growing.
Justice Made Real
Justice is not just an idea — it has to be made tangible in the life of a community. How does Sacred Place practice what it preaches when it comes to equity, inclusion, and standing up for the vulnerable?
Build With the Blessed
The Beatitudes are not just a nice sermon — they are a blueprint for community. Matthew reflects on what it looks like to build a church around those whom Jesus called blessed.
Build With Your Story
Every person who walks through the door of Sacred Place brings a story — and those stories are the building blocks of community. Matthew talks about the power of vulnerability and narrative in church life.
Build With Joy
Church is supposed to be joyful. Matthew reflects on the role of celebration, laughter, and delight in building a community that people actually want to be part of.
Guide Us with Hope
Hope is not optimism — it is a theological conviction that the arc of the universe bends toward justice. Matthew explores how hope shapes the DNA of Sacred Place.
Make Paths for Peace
Shalom — wholeness, peace, the flourishing of all creation. Matthew reflects on what it means for a church to be a peace-making community in a fractured world.
Fill Us with Joy
The first year of Sacred Place was full of unexpected joy — in worship, in community, in the small ordinary moments that turned out to be holy. Matthew looks back and gives thanks.
Love Yourself First
You cannot give what you do not have. Matthew talks about self-care, self-love, and the hard work of learning to receive the grace you preach to others — especially as a gay Christian who spent years believing he was not enough.
Love Will Bring Us Together
In a divided world, Matthew reflects on love as the force that can bridge difference, heal wounds, and hold a community together across lines of background, theology, and experience.
The Table
The communion table is the central symbol of Sacred Place — an open table where all are welcome, no exceptions. Matthew explores what radical table fellowship means and why it matters so much.
Show Yourself
Matthew shares more of his own story — the journey of coming out as gay, navigating faith and identity, and finally learning to show up fully as himself in both church and life.
Reframing Lent
Lent is not about self-punishment — it is about honest attention and intentional return. Matthew offers a progressive, life-giving approach to the season of preparation.
Born Anew
What does it mean to be born again — not as a single dramatic moment of conversion, but as an ongoing process of renewal, transformation, and growth?
Embracing Death
Holy Week brings us face to face with mortality. Matthew reflects on death — personal, communal, and spiritual — and what the church has to say to a world that would rather not talk about it.
Shadows: A Sacred Place Good Friday
A special Good Friday liturgy from Sacred Place — a service of shadows, lament, and holy darkness. Recorded live with the Sacred Place community.
Overcoming
The Season 1 finale. As the world began to shut down in the early days of the pandemic, Matthew reflects on what it means to overcome — not by denying struggle, but by facing it with community, faith, and love.
Caught up with Season 1?
Season 2: Create Sacred Places