Drawing on Isaiah 56's promise to the excluded, Jesus' words on eunuchs in Matthew 19, and even a detour through Dolly Parton's gift for writing "stories from below," Pastor Chad asks who we still leave outside the assembly today — and what it might mean to go on our way not just relieved, but rejoicing.

Drawing on the shopping cart theory and the hard history of how American Presbyterians read this same letter to opposite conclusions during the Civil War, this sermon asks what separates works of faith from works of law — and why the church can’t outsource moral courage to “spirituality alone.” 

With reflections on the doctrine of the spirituality of the church, the 1983 PCUSA reunion, and words from New Testament scholar Eric Barreto and writer Rachel Held Evans, this is a sermon about public accountability, communal trust, and the unfinished ending every one of us is still writing.

Drawing on the work of Dr. Melva Sampson and the Equal Justice Initiative's Community Remembrance Project, this sermon asks a different question than the one we're used to. Not "are we bad people?" but "what kind of world crucifies people and calls it justice?" — and what it means that Jesus answers the dying man's request not with "someday," but with "today."

This sermon is part of our summer series, Faces of Our Faith, in which we are exploring the ordinary and imperfect people caught up in God's story.

Mark 14:1-2, 10-50

Three verses. A whole life. In this week's installment of our summer series "Faces of Our Faith," we meet Anna — an eighty-four-year-old widow from a scattered, displaced tribe, who spends decades at the Temple in prayer and fasting. Luke calls her a prophet, but never records a single word she said. And yet, when the moment comes, she speaks to everyone who will listen — about the child, about redemption, about hope.

Drawing on the scholarship of Barbara E. Reid and bell hooks' idea of "talking back," this sermon traces how grief and displacement can be transformed — not into bitterness, not into silence, but into testimony. Because sometimes the deepest wisdom, the richest beauty, doesn't come from abundance — it comes from those who had next to nothing and refused to let that be the end of the story.

Don't let the world talk you into believing your grief has the final word.

This week, we revisit the prophet who ran from God’s mercy (not God’s wrath), and we ask the question the book never quite lets us off the hook for: what do we do when grace lands on people we’ve already decided don’t deserve it?

Drawing on a little league umpire story, Hurricane Katrina-era rhetoric, and Jonah’s furious sulk under a dying bush, this sermon digs into what happens when our appetite for justice collides with God’s stubborn insistence on mercy — for Nineveh, for our enemies, and for us.

Written in the shadow of brutal persecution under Antiochus IV, the book of Daniel uses satire as resistance: a fickle king, an absurdly oversized golden statue, and a royal court obsessed with titles and trumpets. But underneath the comedy is a dead-serious question that hasn’t gone away — what happens when wealth, power, and nationalism start dressing themselves up as faith?

We’ll look at why scripture so often pairs humor with a call to reject idolatry, and why holding onto joy — even defiant, laughing joy — might be one of the most faithful things we can do in an anxious age.

Before Esther ever enters the story, another woman has already shown us what courage costs. In week 5 of our Faces of Our Faith summer series, we turn to Esther chapter 1 and the queen we often forget — Vashti, who refuses a king's drunken command and loses her crown for it.

We trace the reversal that follows — Esther's rise, Haman's fall, and a people delivered without God's name ever appearing on the page — then sit with the poet Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, the 19th-century abolitionist and suffragist who found in Vashti's refusal a model of resistance long before it was fashionable to read scripture this way.

This week's question: what does it look like, in our ordinary lives here in East Tennessee, to refuse the oldest trick in every empire's playbook?

The book of Judges is Israel's tragedy — a downward spiral of violence and idolatry as the people forget who they're called to be. But tucked into chapter 4 is a flicker of light: Deborah, prophet and judge, sitting under her palm tree, dispensing wisdom to a people who trust her.

This week in our 'Faces of Our Faith' series, Pastor Chad explores what it means that Deborah is called "woman of Lappidoth" — a phrase some ancient interpreters read not as a husband's name but as a description: a woman of torches, a woman of fire. We follow her into the story of Barak's reluctance, the 900 iron chariots that looked unstoppable, and the wadi — a dry riverbed that wakes up all at once when the rains finally come.

It's a sermon about reading the ground beneath your feet: about wisdom that sees what others miss, courage that says "I will go with you" even on an uncertain road, and a God who keeps finding instruments of liberation in the people the story never expected to include.

Scripture: Judges 4:1-9

What happens when the law doesn’t account for you — and you speak to those in power and say so?

In this week’s message from Lake Forest Presbyterian Church’s summer series Faces of Our Faith, we explore the remarkable story of the daughters of Zelophehad — five sisters who stood before Moses and the entire congregation and demanded what the law had failed to give them. Their courage didn’t just win them an inheritance. It changed the law itself.

Woven alongside their story is the early life of Susan B. Anthony, whose Christian father refused to let the world make his daughter smaller — and whose faith that there is “that of God in everyone” set a young girl on a path that would reshape American democracy.

From a schoolroom in the 1830s to a tent of meeting in the wilderness, this sermon traces a single, stubborn thread: that the law is made for people, not people for the law — and that God has always made room for those the world tried to leave out.

You do not need permission to ask. You only need to be brave enough to walk up to the tent.

This week, we continue our summer sermon series, Faces of our Faith, by diving into the opening chapter of Exodus. While Pharaoh—the most powerful man in the ancient world—is left nameless in the text, history immortalizes two brave Hebrew midwives: Shiphrah and Puah. Ordered by the empire to participate in systemic violence, these ordinary women chose a different path.

Pastor Chad connects their ancient act of creative, nonviolent civil disobedience to our own backyard here in Tennessee—from the training grounds of the Highlander Folk School to the disciplined Knoxville lunch counter sit-ins of 1960.
Through their story, we are challenged to examine our own everyday lives: Will our hands, our voices, and our silence be used to participate in harm, or to resist it?

Pop in your headphones (and maybe queue up the Prince of Egypt soundtrack) to discover how a deep reverence for God can completely reorganize our loyalties today.

Scripture Focus: Exodus 1:8-21
The Hebrew Concept of Yirat Elohim: Why "fearing God" actually means shifting your ultimate allegiance away from worldly empires.

The Myth of Spontaneous Change: How Rosa Parks and local Knoxville civil rights activists relied on deep, intentional, and practiced spiritual discipline rather than mere reactivity.

The Modern Challenge: Recognizing the subtle ways we are invited to participate in division and scapegoating in our neighborhoods, schools, and online spaces.

On Trinity Sunday, Pastor Chad reflects on the ancient doctrine of perichoresis — the divine dance in which Father, Son, and Spirit make room for one another in mutual, self-giving love — and asks what it would look like for that same love to spill out of our sanctuaries and into our neighborhoods.

Along the way, he revisits the Great Commission with fresh eyes: the center of gravity in Matthew 28 isn't "go" or "baptize" or even "teach" — it's a single Greek verb, mathēteusate. To disciple. Not to convert or conquer, but to walk with. To share the dust. To enter relationships the way Jesus entered ours.

And for anyone carrying doubts? You're in good company. The very first disciples were standing on that mountain worshipping and doubting — and Jesus met them there anyway, saying: "I myself will be with you every day, until the end of the present age."

On this Pentecost Sunday, Pastor Chad explores the chaos and wonder of Acts 2 - wind, fire, a hundred and twenty voices, and a crowd of strangers hearing God's love called out in their own language. The Spirit's first act wasn't to create uniformity. It was to create comprehension.

Drawing on the image of a truly great gift-giver, this sermon invites us to consider where we are being called to translate — to do the slow, costly, unglamorous work of moving toward people we don't yet understand. Because the same Spirit who met each of us in our own tongue, in our own particularity, is the Spirit who sends us out toward the crowd - toward confusion, difference, and the neighbor we haven't bothered to know yet.

The Church was born in the chaos of comprehension. We’re still being born that way today.

This week, Pastor Rick McIntee invites us to acknowledge that there are many different ways to be smart, and many different things we can believe. But knowledge doesn't become trust until we put it to work in the world. 

Inspired by Christ's prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, let's remember that even when things look like they're at their worst, we serve a God who refuses to give up on us, and who can turn our worst days into our most beautiful.

In this Mother’s Day sermon from Acts 17, we explore Paul’s famous speech on Mars Hill — not primarily as a model for debate or apologetics, but as a masterclass in listening. Before Paul ever said a word to Athens, he wandered its streets, read its altars, and sat with its poets long enough to find the place where their longing and his gospel were reaching toward each other.

Along the way, we meet the ancient Epicureans and Stoics — and discover that their questions feel surprisingly modern. We’re also invited to ask ourselves: when is the last time we read someone else’s poets? Not to dismantle what they believe, but to understand what longing it was trying to answer?

In a divided, chronically-online world, Paul’s curious, generous engagement with Athens offers us more than a communication strategy — it offers us something closer to love.

He's been called "doubting Thomas" for two thousand years. But what if we've had him wrong?

In this sermon from the second Sunday of Easter, we'll take a fresh look at one of the most misunderstood figures in the New Testament — and discover that Thomas wasn't a cautionary tale. He was a witness. A follower willing to walk toward death when everyone else backed away. A man who sat with honest, unresolved faith for a full week and kept showing up anyway. And the one who, in the end, delivers the most theologically complete statement in all of John's Gospel.

If your faith has felt more like a long Friday than a bright Sunday morning lately — if you've been sitting with questions you can't resolve, waiting on something you haven't seen yet — this one's for you.

God can handle your questions. God is not threatened by your doubt. And the story isn't over yet.

In the conclusion of our Lenten series “Tell Me Something Good”, we arrive at the moment the whole season has been building toward: an earthquake at dawn, an empty tomb, and a commission to go before the fear subsides. 

Drawing on Matthew 28:1-10, this message asks what it really means to live as resurrection people — not by waiting until the trembling stops, but by running anyway, carrying grief and hope in the same two hands.

Because the risen Jesus doesn’t say wait here. He says I’m already ahead of you. Meet me in Galilee.
Thanks be to God.

In this sermon, we ask the uncomfortable question the crowd never thought to ask: What kind of Lord needs a borrowed donkey? And more urgently — when we shout "Hosanna, save us," what kind of salvation are we actually asking for? If we're honest, we want a messiah who wins the way empires win. Jesus refuses. This Holy Week, he invites us to put down our branches, stop casting him in our own image, and follow him somewhere much harder — and much more alive — than victory.

When the disciples try to manage the crowd by turning children away, Jesus responds with a surprising command: “Let the little children come to me.” What might children reveal about the Kingdom of God? And what might we need to unlearn—about status, scarcity, and importance—to receive the kingdom as Jesus describes it?

Drawing on the witness of Fred Rogers and the prophetic insight of James Baldwin, this sermon explores how Jesus reorients our moral center away from power and toward vulnerability. In the Kingdom of God, the measure of a community is not how it serves the powerful—but how faithfully it cares for those most at risk.

As we gather at the Communion table, we are reminded that the logic of scarcity does not define God’s kingdom. At Christ’s table there is enough grace, enough mercy, and enough room for all.

On this Second Sunday in Lent, we turn to two powerful gospel texts — Gospel of Luke 7:36–50 and Gospel of Matthew25:35–40 — where Jesus asks two piercing questions: “Do you see this woman?” and “Did you see me?” In both stories, love begins with seeing.

Through the story of the so-called “sinful woman” who anoints Jesus’ feet and the parable of the sheep and the goats, we’re invited to examine the ways discomfort, shame, pride, and self-righteousness can cloud our vision. What keeps us from recognizing the belovedness of others — and of ourselves?

Because the Good News is always Love — a love that grows where humility makes room.

Listen in, and consider:
When discomfort rises — or when your inner critic grows loud — what would humility look like?

High on the mountain, Peter, James, and John catch a glimpse of Jesus in glory: radiant, affirmed, and named as God’s beloved Son. But the story doesn’t end there. The mountaintop moment isn’t meant to be preserved or protected—it’s meant to prepare Jesus (and us) for the journey down the mountain and toward Jerusalem.

As we turn toward Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent, this sermon reflects on transfiguration, belovedness, and transformation. Drawing on scripture, poetry, and lived experience, we explore why God’s word of delight over Jesus comes before the suffering—and what it means to enter the wilderness not trying to earn God’s love, but already secure in it.

Lent, after all, is not a season of self-punishment, but a season of truth-telling and trust. We do not go as people striving to become worthy. We go as people who already are—beloved, claimed, and accompanied by God, even in the valley.

Through a distinctly Appalachian lens (complete with a much-needed "y'all" translation), we dive into what it means to be a "counter-testimony" to the powers of the world. Jesus wasn't calling for moral heroics or flashy displays of piety; he was describing a community that preserves what is good from decay and exposes truth in the darkness simply by being present.

In this episode, we discuss:

• The Power of "Y'all": Why the plural context of Jesus' teaching matters for our life together.

• Salt as Preservation: How faith works from the inside out to slow the "rot" of injustice and cruelty.

• Light vs. Empire: The subversive nature of Jesus claiming the title of "Light" for the marginalized rather than the powerful.

• Identity over Effort: Why being salt and light is a descriptive reality of who you are in Christ, not a prescriptive list of chores.

Join us as we learn what it looks like to stay salty, stay tender, and stay faithful in a world that needs a little more flavor and a lot more light.

In this sermon on the Beatitudes, we step into one of the oldest human questions and discover just how radically Jesus answers it. Drawing on philosophy, Scripture, and real-life stories, this message explores how Jesus’ vision of the good life turns conventional wisdom upside down. Instead of celebrating the strong, successful, and self-sufficient, Jesus blesses the poor in spirit, the grieving, and the meek—those who already know the world is not as it should be.

Set against the backdrop of biblical “courtroom testimony,” this sermon names both the neat stories we tell about virtue and success and the painful realities that refuse to fit those stories. It speaks honestly to exhaustion, grief, injustice, and quiet faithfulness—and offers the Beatitudes as a counter-story of hope in a tilted world.

If you’re tired, overwhelmed, grieving, or wondering whether faith has anything real to say anymore, this message is for you. It’s an invitation to see God’s kingdom already pressing into broken places, and to live the slow, stubborn, courageous life Jesus calls blessed.

Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are the meek. The kingdom of heaven is drawing near.

As Andrew and Peter begin to follow Jesus, they don’t arrive with clear answers or confident belief—only curiosity and a willingness to stay. This sermon explores how our expectations shape what we see, why Jesus offers belonging before belief, and how faith often begins not with certainty but with abiding. Drawing on humor, honest questions, and the witness of John the Baptist, we’re invited to rediscover the church’s calling: not to be the destination, but the signpost that points beyond itself to Christ. 

For anyone feeling uncertain, overwhelmed, or searching for what comes next, this message offers gentle good news: Jesus keeps saying, “Come and see.”

In this sermon on Jesus’ baptism in Matthew 3:13–17, we stand again at the muddy banks of the Jordan, where Jesus steps quietly into line with everyone else. Before the miracles, before the teaching, before the cross, Jesus is named Beloved—soaking wet, anonymous, and vulnerable.

Drawing on personal story, Rowan Williams’ theology of baptism, and the church’s practice of ordination and shared vocation, this sermon explores baptism as a holy paradox: God’s unshakable claim of love and God’s call into deep solidarity with a hurting world. Here, belovedness is not earned, calling is never solitary, and leadership is not about distance or privilege, but about standing faithfully in the mud with others.

Whether you are remembering your baptism, discerning a call, or simply longing to hear a word of grace that does not depend on achievement, this sermon invites you to listen again for the voice that names what is already true:

You are beloved—and you are not sent alone.

Drawing on scripture, theology, and the Epiphany tradition of Star Words, this sermon explores how outsiders were the first to recognize Christ, how fear and power resist good news, and how God’s revelation often arrives from unexpected places. We reflect on what it means to follow the light we’re given, to make space between fear and response, and to return home “by another way”—changed, hopeful, and committed to justice, peace, and good news for all.

This message invites listeners to remain open to God’s truth wherever it may be found, to trust the Spirit’s leading, and to walk a path shaped not by fear, but by love.

This message invites us to notice how God shows up not in moments of readiness or control, but in exhaustion, disruption, and ordinary life—in the journeys we didn’t plan to take. Exploring themes of love, vulnerability, and holy risk, the sermon connects the birth of Christ to the table of communion, where God once again places God’s very self into our hands.

A word of good news for the weary, the cautious, and anyone longing to believe that love is stronger than fear—and stronger than death.

We'll hear John the Baptist’s bold call to “prepare the way” and explore repentance not as shame, but as a holy reorientation—turning toward the God who brings new life out of what looks cut down or worn out. Drawing from Matthew 3, the legacy of Elijah, and the imagery of shoots rising from the stump of Jesse (Isaiah 11), this message invites us to recognize how God still arrives in surprising ways.

If you’re longing for fresh hope, brave truth-telling, and a vision of God who both prunes and cultivates, this episode is for you. Join us as we listen for the Spirit’s call to turn, to trust, and to grow.

Reflecting on a scene from A Boy Called Christmas, the advent essays of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and the honest realities of our messy, overfull lives, we’re reminded that Advent isn’t passive waiting. It’s an invitation to reorient our hearts, rekindle our hope, and learn again how to see God’s nearness—even in fog, cold, and confusion.

If you’re entering the season a bit sideways—tired, hurried, or unsure—this message offers encouragement for the journey: small practices that keep us watchful, the promise that God meets us in unexpected places, and the assurance that the Kingdom is closer than we think.

Come walk in the light of the Lord, and discover that you may be nearer to home than you realize.

This sermon explores the origins of Christ the King Sunday as a deliberate act of resistance against rising authoritarianism, nationalism, and political idolatry in the early 20th century. Through the lens of Luke’s crucifixion narrative (Luke 23:32-43), we revisit the kind of king Jesus actually is—not a warrior or a Caesar, but one who reigns through mercy, humility, and self-giving love.

In a world still tempted by strongmen and seduced by ideologies wrapped in religious language, this message calls us back to the scandalous center of Christian faith: a crucified king who prays forgiveness for his executioners and places the marginalized at the heart of his kingdom.

With clarity and honesty, we’re invited to examine our own loyalties, confront the labels we place on one another, and rediscover mercy as the defining mark of Christ’s rule. As we stand at the threshold between the church year and Advent, this sermon reminds us that God’s power arrives not on a throne, but in a manger—and that following Christ means choosing the way of peace even when it seems foolish or risky.

Come listen, reflect, and reorient your hope toward the One who reconciles all things and calls us to seek first his kingdom.

Through the story of Kenneth and Phyllis Laurent and Frank Lloyd Wright’s remarkable accessible home design, we explore what becomes possible when we center those whose needs are greatest. The Kingdom of God, Isaiah reminds us, grows precisely where we refuse to ignore suffering—and instead allow compassion, lament, and truth-telling to shape our lives.

Drawing on Walter Brueggemann’s prophetic framework—to tell the truth, to grieve honestly, and to hope defiantly—this message calls the church to live now toward the world God is bringing to birth. It challenges us to consider what we may need to leave behind, what relationships we must deepen, and how listening to the stories of those most impacted by injustice can expand our imagination for shalom.

If you’re longing for clarity, courage, or a renewed sense of purpose, this sermon offers grounding and hope: an invitation to join God’s work of new creation with compassion, creativity, and openhearted faith.

Come listen, reflect, and lean together into the beautiful world God is making.

In Luke 20:27–38, the Sadducees try to make resurrection sound absurd, but Jesus turns their logic upside down — reminding us that resurrection isn’t just about life after death, but about life transformed here and now.

Join us as we reflect on what it means to be children of the resurrection — people who live with courage, generosity, and hope, even in a world defined by fear and scarcity. What might it look like to live as if God really is “not the God of the dead, but of the living”?

Through this story, we explore what it means to participate in God’s healing work — to face what’s been broken in our lives, our communities, and our world, and to take small, faithful steps toward making things right again.

Because sometimes, salvation doesn’t start with something new.
Sometimes, salvation begins with repair.

Along the way, we’ll talk about tricksters and transformation, Bugs Bunny and blessings, and the kind of faith that isn’t about having all the answers, but about refusing to let go of God — even when we don’t understand.

So take a deep breath, and join us as we listen for God’s Word from Genesis 32 — and discover together the grace that meets us in the wrestling.

Our scripture reading comes from the Gospel of Luke, chapter 18, verses 9 through 14 — a parable about two people who go to the temple to pray: a Pharisee and a tax collector. It’s a story that gets to the heart of what true humility looks like… and what happens when faith turns into comparison.

In this sermon, Pastor Chad Wright-Pittman reflects on what Jesus’ words might mean for the church today — and how the quiet poison of contempt can corrode both our spiritual life and our relationships. Drawing on the insights of psychologist John Gottman, this reflection reminds us that contempt is not just the opposite of kindness; it’s the erasure of another person’s worth. And yet, the gospel tells us something astonishing: that in God’s eyes, no one is nothing.

So wherever you’re listening from today, take a deep breath, settle in, and open your heart to what the Spirit might be saying to the church.