North Decatur Presbyterian Church

7.25.21. Throughout June and July, as we return to in-person worship and begin new rhythms for life after quarantine, the NDPC community will focus on “re-booting” our basic operating system for the Christian life: worship and prayer and storytelling and hospitality and justice and appreciating beauty and forgiveness. Can you recall the last time that something beautiful took your breath away?  Where were you? What were you doing?  What about it evoked such a response?  This Sunday, Mary Anona Stoops will explore the practice of appreciating beauty.  Using a passage from the Wisdom of Solomon, a book found in the Old Testament Apocrypha, we will explore how beauty, particularly that of the natural world, is a portal to the Holy Presence that upholds all things.

7.11.21. NDPC is pleased to welcome our preacher for Sunday, July 11th, Ashley M. Wilcox. Ashley is a Quaker minister and the author of The Women’s Lectionary: Preaching the Women of the Bible Throughout the Year (forthcoming from Westminster John Knox Press). She is a graduate of Candler School of Theology and Willamette University College of Law. Ashley teaches preaching at Candler School of Theology and her online class, Preaching with Confidence. Her writing has been published in Friends Journal, Western Friend, Quaker anthologies, and on www.ashleymwilcox.com.

7.4.21. DPC is pleased to welcome our preacher for Sunday, July 4th, Zeena Regis. Zeena will be joining the NDPC staff this fall as one of our new Ministry Fellows. Zeena has worked in hospice and palliative care as a chaplain and grief counselor since 2012. Her training includes a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Political Science from Agnes Scott College and a Master of Divinity from Columbia Theological Seminary, where she was honored with the HJ Riddle Memorial Award for excellence in pastoral care. Most recently, Zeena was selected for The Collegeville Institute’s Emerging Writers Mentorship Program,  a 13-month program for writers who address matters of faith, religion, and belief in their work. She lives in Decatur, Georgia with her spouse, teenager, and two spoiled pups.

6.27.21. Throughout June and July, as we return to in-person worship and begin new rhythms for life after quarantine, the NDPC community will focus on “re-booting” our basic operating system for the Christian life: worship and prayer and storytelling and hospitality and justice and wonder and forgiveness. This Sunday, Erin Reed Cooper reminds us of the importance of storytelling. One of the most important things we do as a worshipping community is tell stories. We tell an ancient story that has been told for generations, and we weave it together with the story of our lives. We even tell stories of things that haven’t happened yet. What does all this storytelling do? Why do we do it? And what comes next? A good story keeps you wanting more.

6.20.21. Throughout June and July, as we return to in-person worship and begin new rhythms for life after quarantine, the NDPC community will focus on “re-booting” our basic operating system for the Christian life: worship and prayer and storytelling and hospitality and justice and wonder and forgiveness. This Sunday, we talk about the importance of prayer. Is there a stranger thing than prayer that we are asked to do as followers of Jesus? What is a prayer? What is it for? What does it do? Rev. Lewicki offers a few ideas (and a few confessions about his own prayer life) in this week’s message about the practice of prayer.

6.13.21. Re-boot: Sabbath, Rev. Lewicki, preaching. Throughout June and July, as we return to in-person worship and begin new rhythms for life after quarantine, the NDPC community will focus on "re-booting" our basic operating system for the Christian life: worship and prayer and storytelling and hospitality and justice and wonder and forgiveness. This Sunday, we talk about the importance of sabbath-keeping. In many ways, the last year and a half has felt like a kind of sabbath. It certainly was a break from the "usual." But maybe a confined, enforced sabbath is not really "sabbath" at all. We will revisit the biblical concept of sabbath-keeping and explore why this particular form of rest is not just a divine "suggestion," but a mandate for you and for the whole creation.

6.6.21. Throughout June and July, as we return to in-person worship and begin new rhythms for life after quarantine, the NDPC community will focus on “re-booting” our basic operating system for the Christian life: worship and prayer and storytelling and hospitality and justice and wonder and forgiveness. This Sunday, we talk about the importance of ritual, specifically, the ritual of worship. The ritual of worship is one of the most uniquely human, most impactful practices that we share. But what is ritual? What does it do for our bodies and spirits? Is it mindless groupthink? Why is the ritual of worship important for our awareness of God? Rev. David Lewicki preaching.

5.30.21. You know when your computer has been running for a long time and it starts getting slow and you get that little spinning wheel and it feels like you should just throw the whole darn thing in the garbage? That’s been me–my life–during quarantine. Sometimes the best thing is to shut it all down and re-boot. That’s kind of what we imagine doing together this summer in worship. We’re going to re-boot our basic “operating system” for the Christian life: worship and prayer and storytelling and hospitality and justice and wonder and forgiveness. Sometimes a re-boot feels like a brand new start. Even like new life. Rev. David Lewicki, preaching.

5.23.21. God’s presence is manifest in many ways throughout scripture. Pentecost celebrates the arrival of the Spirit of God into the church, but God-as-spirit has been on the scene since the very beginning. As we look into the creation story as told in the Psalms, we recognize how God is present as creator, redeemer and sustainer from the very beginning of the universe and in the destinies of all things, living and inanimate. On Pentecost Sunday (and in anticipation of Trinity Sunday on May 30th), we praise God for the expansiveness and diversity of divine love and consider how, like Augustine, it might be easier to “understand” the Trinity when it becomes part of our daily practice instead of a doctrine. Rev. Beth Waltemath, preaching.

5.9.21. Many of you have been extensively trained. Most of you had more than a decade of "formal" classroom education. You trained for your work so that you could learn the precise skills you need to do it well. You practiced a sport for hours under the supervision of a coach, or a musical instrument under the eyes of a teacher. Where did you go to learn to love? Who taught you? Did you get a graduate degree in love? Did you have a coach? Did you do an intensive program? The truth is, most of us never really learn how to love. We fumble and fail and sometimes succeed. What, if anything, can we learn about love from Jesus? Can he teach us anything useful? Rev. David Lewicki preaches on John 15.

5.2.21. “God is love.” It is one of the simplest, most impactful, most misunderstood, and most ignored teachings in Scripture. This Sunday, Rev. David Lewicki explores this fascinating passage from 1 John 4 and what it means for our lives to affirm the claim that God is love.

4.25.21. The Power to Lay It Down and the Power to Take It Up. Text: John 10:11-18  Rev. Beth Waltemath Preaching If Jesus is the good shepherd, what does it mean to be good sheep? The intelligence of a sheep may surprise us. This Sunday, we explore the ways we have distorted our relationship with power. Perhaps there are more ways to relate to power than exerting it or giving it up. Come to worship, willing to discern your own relationship to power in every age and every relationship. How have you overused and abused power? How have you ignored or abdicated power? When have you seen your power clearly and shared it generously? Jesus has the ability to lay his power down and to take it back up. Do you?

4.18.21. Scripture: John 20:19-29 | Rob Schoonover Preaching

Scripture: Acts 4:32-35 and Psalm 133:  Unity In The Resurrection | Kendra Peebles  Kendra will take a closer look at what unity looks like by naming a recent event that happened right here in Georgia. She will compare the unity found in the lectionary text to the unity embodied by our faith leaders. Unity requires more than believing in the resurrection, it requires our loyalty to Christ shown by our actions.

4.4.21. Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen indeed! We gather this Sunday to receive the best news of all: the tomb is empty and Christ is risen. In Mark’s gospel, however, the Risen One does not appear to the disciples. There is only a mysterious figure in the tomb, who tells the women that in order to see the risen Christ, they must go to Galilee. They must go back to the beginning, go back home. What should we make of this invitation to “go home” on Easter? What if home is not a place to which we want to go? Rev. David Lewicki, preaching.

3.28.21. Text: John 12:1-9 | Rev. Beth Waltemath preaching.

3.21.21. As we get closer to Holy Week and the story of Jesus’ death, the lectionary readings get messier. More specifically, bloodier. This week’s reading from Hebrews 5 talks about Jesus’ sacrifice. “Sacrifice” has become a bit of a dirty word–both theologically and culturally. What can we make of the profound, troubling image of Jesus as a blood sacrifice? Rev. Lewicki, preaching.

3.13.21. John 3:16 is perhaps the most well-known verse in the Christian scriptures. Over the years, the verse has shown up on the eye black of football players, random signs on I-75, and in the consciousness of nearly every church basketball player ever. This Sunday, Rob Schoonover invites you to consider the meaning of this verse from a different perspective. He promises that he won’t make you memorize the verse for candy.

3.7.21. The Rev. Shavon Starling-Louis invites us to imagine the faithful work of Building (and reBuilding) the church through the lens of Acts 2 and 12-step spirituality. She challenges us to live into new ways of being community - with humility, honesty with ourselves, and daily dependence on the grace of God.  

2.28.21. “Who do you say that I am?” Have you ever asked someone what they thought of you? Have you wondered what your eulogy might one day say? “Take up your cross” is Jesus’s invitation to live with integrity. It is an invitation we cannot fully entertain until we have entertained the reality of our own death and the impact of our life on this earth. “Who do you say that I am?’ Jesus asks the disciples, but we are to wonder the same thing about our own witness. Rev. Beth Waltemath considers the dance between identity and integrity in which Jesus leads his disciples beginning with Mark 8:31-9:1 and wonders at the end of this pandemic “Who would they say that we are?”