The Lake Forest Sermoncast

Chad Wright-Pittman
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  • Christianity

At Lake Forest Presbyterian Church, we believe the gospel still surprises us. Through scripture, story, and reflection, each sermon invites listeners to think deeply, laugh freely, and discover grace in unexpected places. Join us weekly as we explore the rhythms of worship and wonder — finding hope in the parables, mercy in the margins, and God’s quiet reforming work in our everyday lives.A podcast for anyone seeking a faith that is both thoughtful and alive.

  1. 2d ago

    Faces of Our Faith: Jonah | Jonah 3:10-4:11 | 7.19.26

    We think we know Jonah — the guy who got swallowed by a fish. But the real story starts after he gets spit back out.  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.

  2. Jul 14

    Faces of Our Faith: Shadrach, Meshach, & Abednego | Daniel 3:1-28 | 7.12.26

    What do you do when the empire tells you to bow or burn? This week we revisit three names most of us haven’t thought about since Vacation Bible School — Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego — and we rediscover just how sharp, subversive, and funny their story really is. 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.

  3. Jul 7

    Faces of Our Faith: Vashti | Esther 1-2:17 | 7.5.26

    Faces of Our Faith: Vashti — The Queen Who Said No 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?

  4. Jul 2

    Faces of Our Faith: Deborah | Judges 4:1-7 | 6.28.26

    Faces of Our Faith: Deborah — A Woman of Fire 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

  5. Jul 2

    Faces of Our Faith: Daughters of Zelophehad | Numbers 27:1-11 | 6.21.26

    “Give Us a Possession” | Faces of Our Faith 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.

  6. Jun 15

    Faces of our Faith: Shiphrah & Puah | Exodus 1:8-2:3 | 6.14.26

    What happens when the commands of the world collide with the commands of the God of life? 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.

  7. Jun 9

    Faces of Our Faith: Adam & Eve | Genesis 2:4-7, 15-23 | 6.7.26

    We think we know this story. But do we? Before there was Adam and Eve, there was ha-adam and ha-adamah — the human and the humus, the groundling and the ground. In this opening sermon of our summer series Faces of Our Faith, Pastor Chad revisits one of Scripture’s most familiar stories and finds it stranger, richer, and more surprising than our childhood impressions let on. What does it mean that God got on both knees in the dirt to make us? Why did God bring the animals first — and what does that strange, almost comic parade tell us about what God was actually looking for? And what is tsela — really — and why does it matter that the human wasn’t split into a copy, but into a counterpart? This isn’t a story about romance or moral failure. It’s a story about what humanity actually is: a community of difference, animated by the same breath, made from the same dirt, and wonderfully — necessarily — not the same. Because the cure for loneliness was never sameness. It was each other. *Faces of Our Faith is a 16-week summer worship series from A Sanctified Art exploring misunderstood and lesser known characters from scripture.

  8. Jun 2

    Relationship, Discipleship, & Trinity | Matthew 28:16-20 | 5.31.26

    What if the Trinity isn't the spare tire of Christian faith — tucked in the trunk, mostly forgotten — but the very chassis that holds everything together? 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."

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About

At Lake Forest Presbyterian Church, we believe the gospel still surprises us. Through scripture, story, and reflection, each sermon invites listeners to think deeply, laugh freely, and discover grace in unexpected places. Join us weekly as we explore the rhythms of worship and wonder — finding hope in the parables, mercy in the margins, and God’s quiet reforming work in our everyday lives.A podcast for anyone seeking a faith that is both thoughtful and alive.

Information

  • Creator
    Chad Wright-Pittman
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    38
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 The Lake Forest Sermoncast
  • Show Website
    The Lake Forest Sermoncast