by Keith Menhinick Matthew 11. 25-29 (NIV, The Message) When is the last time you felt peace? When is the last time your mind, heart, and body were at rest? I’ll ask it in a slightly different way: Who are you when your soul is at rest? If you struggle to answer these questions, then I’ve got good news for you this Sunday morning. What if I told you there is a way to touch peace every day? The good news is that you can touch peace, and come back to that feeling of peace, and learn to live your life from a place of peace, with a soul that…

2023 Youth Sunday by Kara Toole I believe that there are two types of people in this world. Those of us who mind-map while we drive and intuitively always make the right turn and those who use gps and still manage to get lost going well anywhere. If you think you’re somewhere in the middle now is a great time to reevaluate, I’ll wait. And perhaps there are one maybe two exceptions to this rule, but for the most part I’ve always known this to be true. For instance, my family is the perfect example. My father and I have always had excellent directional sense… I’ll leave it at that.…

2023 Youth Sunday by Elijah Pickard It’s incredibly common for people that go to a liberal leaning church to have more conservative relatives, and I am not an exception. One of my more conservative relatives is my Nana, whom I love dearly, but with whom I disagree on more than a few polarizing issues. We come from very different worlds, as she attends a Southern baptist church in Gowensville, SC, and I attend a church that is very much not that. When it comes to College Park, my Nana tends to avoid the subject, but in the few times she has voiced her opinion, she has not left much to…

2023 Youth Sunday by Ben Kirkman My entire life, I have really hated making decisions.  As a small child, even a decision as simple as choosing what toy to play with in a room full of toys was overwhelming.   Making decisions can be quick or take a long time, but I know that decisions are important in life no matter what they are, and we will be faced with decisions every day. It could be as simple as deciding what flavor of ice cream I’d like to order as a treat, or as difficult as letting go of something or someone I really love. Today I’d like to talk…

2023 Youth Sunday by Sarah Harris One day in Sunday School, Lin told me that when she played soccer, at the start ofevery game, she had one strategy that never failed to ease her nerves. The first thing shealways did was a slide tackle. Although I have no idea what a slide tackle is, I think I getit. To me it sounds like it might have something to do with sliding and tackling. Shesuggested that my version of this “slide tackle” should be an a capella version of a songthat means a lot to me to start my sermon. I think everyone has heard enough so I will notbe doing…

2023 Youth Sunday by Isaac Cravey Before I was even born this church was ready to welcome me with open arms. Ready to watch me mature and grow, from the people my parents asked for advice to the people who would take care of me in the nursery and those who would be Sunday school teachers and youth sponsors.  My dad has a lifelong friend whom I call Uncle Matt. Their birthdays were directly after each other’s, so they would swap the same gifts each year as a joke. When my dad was in sixth grade, he stumbled across a “small” wooden statue about three and a half feet tall…

2023 Youth Sunday by Bella Coughlin Every year since I can remember, my family and I would go to our friends cabin for the fourth of July. This cabin is literally in the middle of nowhere in North Carolina. One year my mom locked her keys in the car and we couldn’t tell TripleA where to come because the property we were at physically didn’t have an address. The cabin is beautiful– handcrafted and old and well made, but we always slept outside in tents. We were outside 24 hours a day for about a week every year.  If you climb behind the cabin and scale up the mountain, through…

Bella Coughlin Sermon Title: Seeing the Forest For The Trees “I’ve always loved being outside and being in nature. From hiking with my mom to just sitting outside in the sun. From being a place where I can be with people and bond, to being a place for me to be alone and feel relaxed. I immediately feel better surrounded by nature.” (Read more) Isaac Cravey Sermon Title: A Place Where I Can Be Batman “Before I was even born this church was ready to welcome me with open arms. Ready to watch me mature and grow, from the people my parents asked for advice to the people who would…

by Lin Story-Bunce Luke 10.25-37, NRSVUE Jay was a teenage boy who grew up in the southern part of Mississippi. He grew up in a community that saw being gay as evil. As a child, he was taught that gay people were not only wrong, but were also people to fear. He heard it from pulpits, from other Christians, and from family members. It was all he knew, and so it was what he believed. When he moved to a college outside of his community, Jay was exposed to a new world that included people who were gay. He had gay classmates, gay teammates, and in one instance a gay…

by Michael Usey Luke 18.9-14, NRSVUE We’re in the middle of a fall series called True Fiction, in which we are looking at Jesus’ parables that are found only in Luke’s gospel.  (Part of the vibe for this series is a meme on each bulletin cover.) Speaking of true fiction, if you haven’t been keeping up, you should know that the national Southern Baptist Convention voted this last week to disfellowship College Park.  They did this, they said, because of our endorsement of “homosexual behavior.”  Wayne Jones, our deacon chair, said all week he didn’t know what that phrase meant, (I’m so sure: he was in an NC State fraternity],…

by Kari Baumann Luke 7.36-50, NRSVUE Atticus and I enjoy the videos of a woman on TikTok named Elyse Myers, who initially became famous for going on a very bad date that involved going to Taco Bell and ordering 100 hard shell tacos for two people. As you can imagine, it did not end well. We like the part of the story where the guy dumped all the tacos on the table and yelled, “Let’s Feast!” Elyse is a new mom, someone who is always up for an adventure, and who tells funny stories about herself. Over the past couple of years, her account has also become a place where…

by Michael Usey Luke 13:10-17, NRSVUE I decided to preach on Luke 14:25-33 this week as the opening salvo of our fall sermon series, True Fiction, in which we’ll look at Jesus’ unique parables in Luke (those that are recorded by Luke exclusively). Another feature of this series is that we’ll use memes for our bulletin covers.  A meme of course is a humorous image that is copied and often altered via the internet.  We’ll try to make them match that week’s text, but they may not.  So sue me. This is an interesting parable to consider as our government has forgiven $10,000 of student loan debt for people making…

by Michael Usey Philippians 4:10-14 If you are like me, you enjoy watching sports. While I’m not a huge basketball fan, women’s basketball is lovely to watch. Diana Taurasi and Sue Bird  shared a basketball court for what was likely the final time Friday when Taurasi’s Mercury hosted Bird’s Storm. Two of the greatest women’s basketball players to ever live — friends who’ve been linked for more than two decades — may never compete against each other again. They played together at UConn, which is James Blay’s favorite team. It was a historic night. This was the 46th time they played each other in the regular season, tying the WNBA…

by Michael Usey Romans 8:18-28 NIV How do we live with life’s loose ends? Do you know what I’m talking about? Relationships that have gotten messed up, and you don’t know how to make them right again. A failure that haunts you. You want some closure, but closure seems impossible. How do we live with loose ends? One of our long-time members, Mary Ann Stone, died in her sleep Sunday night.  Her grandson, Stephen, discovered her Monday morning.  Her adult daughter, who grew up here at College Park, left 20 years ago because of our acceptance of LGBTQ folk–she did not call to tell me of MA’s death; despite me…

by Michael Usey Luke 11:1-13, NRSV Most of the time we think we are self-sufficient. We figure we can handle anything that comes our way. If our lives are not exactly what we have hoped for, then all we need is a little self-improvement. We will get to the good life through yoga, pickleball, soul cycling, podcasts, reading, journaling, dairy-free cooking, or seeing Marvel movies like Thor: Love and Thunder.  All we need is to be more organized. If we are too busy, then we need to build in quality time with our loved ones. If we are overwrought and overweight, then we need a personal trainer that will help…

by Michael Usey Jeremiah 29. 1, 4-7, 10-14 An earworm–that’s what you call the song you get stuck in your head.  And it’s never one of my favorites, like a Rainbow Kitten Surprise riff or a Bach concerto.  All week long I couldn’t get Olivia Rodrigo’s song Brutal out of my head.  No, it’s always something heinous like “It’s a small world after all,” or YMCA. We also get little bad messages stuck in our heads too, like “You’ll never amount to anything” or “Look out for #1” or “I need a drink.” What if our offstage directions, the voice whispering inside my head, might be God?  Once upon a…