Next Level Church - Charlotte

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.

Cutting Room Floor Episode 14 – Identity: Who You Are Beyond What You Do

What happens when everything you’ve built your life around… is gone? In this episode of the Cutting Room Floor Podcast, Clay and Christian have an honest conversation about identity and how easy it is to tie who we are to what we do, and what happens when that foundation starts to crack. From ministry and career success to parenting, failure, and starting over, this conversation gets real about the subtle ways we build our identity on roles, titles, and performance—and why that never fully holds up. Along the way, they talk about: * Why success can quietly become a trap for your identity * The difference between who you are and what you do * What to do when you feel like you’ve lost your purpose * How God defines you as a masterpiece—and what that actually means * Why discovering why you were created changes everything * The danger of believing you’re irreplaceable * And how identity impacts everything from work to family to faith You’ll also hear personal stories about: * Ministry highs and identity crashes * Parenting regrets and growth * What it looks like to rebuild your life from the inside out * And why being a “human being” matters more than being a “human doing” This episode is for anyone who’s ever asked: “Who am I… really?”

More than Sunday - Week 3

Most of us are living inside an identity we didn't fully choose. It got built over years — out of what we achieved, what we failed at, what people expected, and what we learned to perform to stay accepted. And somewhere along the way, it started feeling like just... who we are. In this episode of More Than Sunday, Lead Pastor Clay Monkus brings the resurrection into one of the most personal places it can go: your sense of self. Drawing from Ephesians 2:10 — written to people who had constructed their entire identity around a former life — Clay makes the case that a resurrection faith isn't just a new set of behaviors. It's a completely new foundation for who you are. Not built on performance. Not built on approval. Not built on how productive you've been or how well you've kept it together. Built on this: you are God's handiwork, created with intention, for good works that were prepared specifically for you before you ever showed up. This episode is for anyone who suspects they've been living someone else's definition of themselves for too long — and is ready to hear a different answer to the question of who they actually are. 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 2

For most people, faith and work exist in completely separate compartments. Church on Sunday, grind on Monday, and never much overlap between the two. It feels normal. It might even feel responsible. But according to Paul, it's not how any of this was supposed to work. In this episode of More Than Sunday, Teaching Pastor Christian Nichles opens up Colossians 3:23–24 — a passage written to ordinary workers with no great reason to care about their jobs — and reframes what it actually means to bring your whole self to work. Not as a strategy for workplace evangelism. Not as a performance. But as a genuine expression of faith in a risen Jesus who is Lord of all of life, including the 40-plus hours a week most of us spend earning a living. If the resurrection is true, it belongs in your workplace just as much as it belongs in a Sunday service. This episode is about what it looks like when you stop leaving it at the door. More Than Sunday is a six-week series exploring what changes when the resurrection stops being a Sunday category and starts reshaping every part of how we live.