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How Being Jacob’s Mother Changed My Faith
I know I seem a little old to be giving a senior sermon, even a college senior sermon, but I am grateful to speak this morning on behalf of Jacob, who is finishing out his public school education this week at CJ Greene Education Center. I was pregnant with Jacob when Scott and I joined College Park, 22 years ago, and it is not an understatement to say that without my church family, and the remarkable staff here, that I would not have arrived at Jacob’s third decade of life as a person of faith. But that faith, thankfully, is not the same faith I started on the journey of…
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100 Ways to Kiss the Earth
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…
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The Holy Epistles of St. Penny the Prolific
by Michael and Ann Usey July 8, 2023 There are two versions of Penny Chambers, the Penny before her car accident, and the woman who emerged after it, like a butterfly from a cocoon, which is the one most of us knew and loved. The hinge moment of her life when she was 26 years old, on the night of February 12, 1971. She was driving her boyfriend’s convertible, not her trademark 1968 yellow Mustang. Darcie showed me photos of a long-haired glamorous redhead who was quite the looker and who was dating Doug Carpenter, a hockey player with the Greensboro Generals. (He went on to play in the NHL…
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Ben Kirkman’s Baptismal Statement
Ever since I was young, I remember that I always loved going to church. Church has been a positive experience and going to church on Sunday was a fun family ritual that we did every week. When people ask me what it means to be baptized, my answer would be to show everyone that I want to be closer to God, to the church, and to all the people I love around me. Throughout my life, I have had many people help me through the difficult times, whether that be a test that I didn’t understand, a voice of reasoning I needed to calm me down, or even someone to…
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Grant Kirkman’s Baptismal Statement
College Park Baptist Church has been a part of all my life. I’ve been happy to have all these people here to help me understand more about God such as Lin and the other youth leaders. I also learned some things from my past Sunday school teachers and really appreciated learning about God through my old music teacher, Christian. Learning about baptism means that you are being put in the hands of God who will care for you whenever you need it the most. Baptism also means spreading the word about God to both people you know and people you’ve never met. Being baptized doesn’t mean you will be perfect,…
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Iris Pickard’s Baptismal Statement
Hello I’m Iris Pickard. I have been going to College Park since before I was born! This community is like my second family and the people here are the best! My Sunday school leaders I’ve had throughout the years, Lauren Grubbs, Allison Blay, Walter Pickard, and Nancy Schloss have all influenced me in many ways. They have taught me to be kind and to always know how much God loves me. I wish I could give a shoutout to everyone at this church who has had the biggest influence on me but that would last all day. Ever since the start of 1st grade I have experienced anxiety. Second Grade…
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In Good Hands
by Michael Usey June 17, 2023 When pastors retire, it’s not always a pretty thing. Some have had such a hard fought go of it at difficult churches that their faith may be in tatters. Some retire from church-going all together; some retire from any and all discussions of theology and the life of faith. A few even retire from God, although I think that number is gratefully few. And I don’t judge anyone how they piece together their spiritual life after a life of service to the Christian church as a whole. Ministry is not for the faint of heart. It’s also an inherent hazard of being a Christian…
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You Are Here
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.…
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My Big, Gay Church
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…
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Decisions, Decisions, Decisions
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…
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Musical Slide Tackle
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…
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A Place Where I Can Be Batman
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…
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Seeing The Forest For The Trees
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…
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2023 Youth Sunday Sermons
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…
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Enemy Love
by Michael Usey Matthew 5.38-48, NRSVUE In Wendell Berry’s novel Jayber Crow, Jayber is a barber in Port William, Kentucky, who interacts with a variety of people as they come to his barbershop. He struggles to get along with Troy Chatham, an acquisitive agribusinessman whom Jayber thinks is destroying the land in their county. To make matters worse, Troy has married Mattie, the woman whom Jayber has secretly admired for several years. It’s the late 1960s, and divisions in America over civil rights and the Vietnam war have emerged in Port William. Troy is a fierce supporter of the U.S. government’s policies, including the war. One evening in the barbershop,…
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Not Who, But How
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…
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Six Words
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],…
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The Community Band of Zion
by Blair Ramsey Psalm 46, NRSVUE One summer, our youth group took a trip to Puerto Rico to take part in relief efforts after a couple seasons of devastating hurricanes for the country. Outside of our work days, we ate an egregious amount of rice and beans and spent plenty of time plotting the only kind of trouble a bunch of teenagers at a church camp-with other churches present, might. We traveled in fifteen-passenger vans, and without an aux cord, whatever was on the radio at the time became the playlist of the trip. If you’ve ever listened to a radio, you know that if you listen long enough you’ll…
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Unexpected Tears
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…
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Holy Hate
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…
