Next Level Church - Charlotte

Power for the Journey - Week 3

The Spirit's power isn't primarily emotional. It's transformational. In this message, Lead Pastor Clay Monkus walks through Galatians 5 and challenges the way we often measure God's presence — by how we feel in the moment. Real Spirit-power shows up somewhere less flashy but far more lasting: in the slow, stubborn growth of becoming a different kind of person. If you've ever chased the spiritual high only to crash back into the same old patterns, this message is for you. The fruit of the Spirit isn't manufactured through willpower or emotion. It grows as we learn to walk in step with the Spirit — and that quiet, steady transformation is more powerful, not less. Part of the series "Power for the Journey – Life in the Holy Spirit."

Power for the Journey - Week 2

Pentecost wasn't a one-time event. It was the beginning of a new way of being human. In this message, Pastor Christian Nichles walks through Acts 2 and the moment everything changed — when the Holy Spirit arrived like fire and wind and transformed frightened followers into bold witnesses. The same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead is alive and available to you right now. If you've ever felt like you know what you believe but just can't seem to live it out, this message is for you. The answer isn't more effort or willpower. Pentecost is the opening chapter of a story we're still living in — and the power for your journey has already been given. Part of the series "Power for the Journey – Life in the Holy Spirit."

More Than Sunday - Week 6

Every series eventually has to reckon with the hardest question faith faces: what do you do when you believe all the right things, and it still doesn't get better? In this final episode of More Than Sunday, Pastor Brad Medford brings the series home in the most pastoral and unflinching way possible. The text is Lamentations 3:21–24 — one of the rawer passages in all of Scripture — where a man crouched in the wreckage of his entire world makes a choice that has nothing to do with his circumstances improving. No rescue has arrived. No reason has been given. And yet he turns toward God and declares what is still, somehow, true. What it offers is something more durable: the conviction that suffering is real but not final, that the resurrection didn't eliminate hardship but it did strip it of its power to have the last word, and that those two realities can be held together without one canceling out the other. This is the pastoral week of the series — the one that speaks directly to the person who has been sitting in the back row, wondering if any of this holds up when life falls apart. It does. And this episode is the honest, careful, hopeful case for why. More Than Sunday has been a six-week series exploring what changes when the resurrection stops being a once-a-year event and starts reshaping every part of how we live — our work, our identity, our money, our rest, and even our pain.*

More Than Sunday - Week 5

Exhaustion has become so normal that most of us have stopped noticing it. We wear our busyness like a badge, push through the fatigue, and quietly assume that one day — when things settle down, when the project ends, when the kids are older — we'll finally rest. But the threshold keeps moving. And the pace never really lets up. In this episode of More Than Sunday, Teaching Pastor Christian Nichles opens Matthew 11:28–30 and refuses to treat that pattern as a scheduling problem. Jesus's invitation to the weary and overburdened isn't a tip for better work-life balance. It's a revelation of something we've gotten fundamentally wrong about rest — and about ourselves. The reason most of us can't stop isn't that we're bad at time management. It's that we don't fully trust what happens when we do. Somewhere underneath the productivity is a belief that our worth is measured by our output, that the world needs us to keep pushing, that rest is something you earn rather than something you receive. That's not an efficiency problem. That's a faith problem. This episode recasts the Sabbath not as a spiritual discipline for people with more margin than you, but as an act of resurrection-grounded defiance. A weekly declaration that you are not what you produce, that God is still working when you aren't, and that you were never meant to run this hard in the first place. More Than Sunday is a six-week series exploring what changes when the resurrection stops being a once-a-year event and starts reshaping every part of how we live.

More Than Sunday - Week 4

There are a lot of ways to measure what someone actually believes. But few are as reliable — or as uncomfortable — as money. The way we earn it, spend it, hold onto it, and give it away tells a story about our deepest convictions that our words rarely match. In this episode of More Than Sunday, Lead Pastor Clay Monkus opens Luke 19:1–10 and sits with one of the most quietly radical moments in the Gospels. Zacchaeus doesn't get a stewardship sermon. He doesn't get a pledge card. He gets Jesus showing up at his house — and the first thing that changes is what he does with his money. Salvation and generosity happen in the same breath, without anyone asking. That's the vision this message is after. Not a recalibrated budget. Not a guilt-fueled commitment to finally start tithing. A resurrection-grounded understanding of money where generosity isn't something you add to your spiritual to-do list — it's something that becomes natural when you actually believe a dead man walked out of a tomb and that nothing you're holding onto is ultimately yours anyway. If your relationship with money and your stated beliefs have never quite lined up, this episode is an honest and generous place to start. More Than Sunday is a six-week series exploring what changes when the resurrection stops being a once-a-year event and starts reshaping every part of how we live.