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. 1d ago

    Faces of Our Faith: Eutychus | Acts 20:1-12 | 8.16.26

    It’s the first day of the week, the lamps are burning, and Paul is talking past midnight because he’s leaving in the morning. Up in the window, a young man named Eutychus loses his fight against sleep — and falls three stories to his death. Drawing on Paul Tillich’s theology of miracle, this sermon asks us to reconsider what we mean by “miraculous,” and suggests that sometimes it isn’t a spoon-bending spectacle but simply the world working the way it was always supposed to: bread that’s enough, a call that comes, a life that’s caught. A reflection on ordinary grace, Appalachian goodbyes, and staying at the table until dawn.

  2. Aug 11

    Faces of Our Faith: The Penitent Thief | Luke 23:32-43 | 8.9.26

    On the hill outside Jerusalem, one man dying next to Jesus joins the mockery. Another does something no one else does that day — he tells the truth, and then asks for the smallest thing anyone asks for in all of Scripture: "Jesus, remember me." 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.

  3. Aug 3

    Faces of Our Faith: Judas Iscariot | Mark 14:1-2, 10-50 | 8.2.26

    Betrayal is one of the deepest wounds we carry — and one of the hardest to understand, whether we’re the ones left asking “how could you?” or the ones who left someone else asking it of us. This week in our Faces of Our Faith series, Pastor Chad turns to Judas Iscariot, the disciple whose name has become shorthand for treachery. But what if Judas wasn’t a villain who stopped believing in Jesus — what if he believed too much, in the wrong kind of power? Drawing on Walter Wink’s distinction between “power over” and “power with,” this sermon reimagines Judas not as a mole planted from the start, but as a disciple who ran out of patience waiting for Jesus to seize power the way the world expects power to be seized — and who tried to force his hand. Along the way: a detour through The Empire Strikes Back, a hard look at how we all sometimes use Jesus to get what we want, and a word of grace for anyone who’s ever named Jesus “Lord” while quietly bargaining for something else. Because the story doesn’t end with Jesus writing anyone off — not Judas, not Peter, not the twelve who scattered. It ends with a God who pours himself out instead of cashing anyone in. Mark 14:1-2, 10-50

  4. Jul 28

    Faces of Our Faith: Anna | Luke 2:21-38 | 7.26.26

    Faces of Our Faith: Anna the Prophet Luke 2:36-38 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.

  5. Jul 21

    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.

  6. 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.

  7. 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?

  8. 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

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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
    42
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 The Lake Forest Sermoncast
  • Show Website
    The Lake Forest Sermoncast