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baptist church
baptist church
Preacher: Nathan Nettleton
At Open Icon Baptist Church, we value great preaching — preaching that engages deeply, humbly and honestly with Jesus, the Bible, and the pain and joy of living in the real world. And since going permanently online, we have been able to welcome great preachers from all over the world without having to wait for them to visit our shores. Click here to meet the inspirational preachers depicted in the gallery above, none of whom have preached for us!
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Pastor
Nathan Nettleton
Nathan Nettleton has served as pastor of this congregation since 1994. He was ordained as a Baptist pastor that same year and completed an honours degree in theology at Whitley College in 1995, followed by a Master of Theology in Liturgical Studies from the University of Divinity in 2001. In our church, he carries particular responsibilities for the preaching, teaching, and ordering of worship and prayer, and for pastoral care. He also writes liturgical resources for a global audience through LaughingBird.net, and serves as a board member of Open Baptists. Nathan is married to Margie, and they have an adult daughter, Acacia, and two dogs.
Sermons by Nathan Nettleton
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6 July, 2025
Preacher: Nathan Nettleton
Topic: Culture, Demons, Healing, Identity, Liberation, Oppresion, Salvation, Sin, Spiritual Warfare
We all get trapped in demonic and dehumanising social structures, but Jesus unmasks the truth so that we can be set free.
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29 June, 2025
Preacher: Nathan Nettleton
Topic: Discipleship, Faithfulness, Love, Salvation, Violence, War
When we fear for our own safety, we condone the violence that promises to protect us, and we use religion to justify it, but Jesus wants to free us to rise above the fear without resorting to hatred and violence.
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15 June, 2025
Preacher: Nathan Nettleton
Topic: Love, Relationships, Trinity
The Christian understanding of God as Trinity is not so much something you have to make sense of, but a call to recognise that God is by nature relational, and that we are invited into the triune relationship of love.
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8 June, 2025
Preacher: Nathan Nettleton
Topic: Church, Holy Spirit, Hospitality, Reconciliation, Relationships
The Church born when God poured out the Holy Spirit, is one in which barriers of ethnicity, language, sex, age, and social status are transcended and all are equal in Christ.
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1 June, 2025
Christ’s story – the crucifixion of the truly good and its resurrection and coming victory – is the whole story of God’s work in the world and the whole story of the Bible.
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29 May, 2025
Preacher: Nathan Nettleton
The ascension is the completion of the cosmic liturgy that frees us from our entanglement in sin, lifts us into the holy of holies, and sends us forth as the body of Christ for the world.
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25 May, 2025
Jesus wants to heal us from all that would diminish us, and he also wants us to cooperate with that by really wanting it and envisioning ourselves free.
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18 May, 2025
In our worship we drink in the vision of heaven and earth made one so that our yearning might be fuelled; strengthening us against despair and empowering us to strive for the renewal of the world.
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11 May, 2025
Resurrection keeps happening and keeps changing the world and overcoming the hostile deathly powers despite our inability to believe.
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4 May, 2025
Preacher: Nathan Nettleton
Topic: Forgiveness, Jesus, Liberation, Repentance, Resurrection
True forgiveness, which we encounter most fully in the risen Christ, does not gloss over the past but revisits it fully and carefully that we may be fully set free from it.
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27 April, 2025
The whole story of the universe, from creation to ultimate redemption, is held in God’s hands and revealed in the crucified and risen Christ, and all our stories are gathered safely into that larger story.
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19 April, 2025
The life-changing implications of the resurrection can be just as bewildering and impossible to get our heads around as the resurrection itself.
