First Presbyterian Church Hickory, NC

This Sunday we continue our look at Holy Shifts, this week focusing on the theme of Black & White to Color.  Our very colorful scripture passage is John 8:2-11.

What are some ways your life needs to shift in a new direction? This week we're exploring Jesus' parable of the unforgiving servant, as found in Matthew chapter 18. As we discovered last week with the parable of the workers in the vineyard, Jesus' teachings often have a sting to them. The whole point of that "sting" is to make us uncomfortable, to provoke a holy shift. Thi...

What are some ways your life needs to shift in a new direction? We’ll spend the first six weeks of this new season exploring holy shifts. Each week we’ll look at some of the ways we usually live, and then consider a shift, a new way of thinking and being and doing. We’ll begin this week with "Holy Shifts: From Fairness to Generosity," based on Matthew 20:1-16.

We will look at Matthew 16:21-28, where Jesus rebukes Peter and describes a hard road.  Are we called to the same path? 

This Sunday we finish our tour of water-themed Bible stories with one of the greatest fish stories of all time, the story of Jonah. Most of us have known this story since we were small, but we probably didn't know the context behind the story, or the deep secret of life hidden within it. We'll explore both of those on Sunday!

Acts 8:26-39

I hope as we journey through the month of August together, you'll pay more attention to water. Reflect on the ways water cleans and refreshes us, as in baptism. Meditate on the ways water is both gentle, flowing around obstacles, and yet mighty, bringing down whole mountains. How is faith like that? Think about the ways rain falls on all creation, indifferent to boundaries and borders and who...

Come to the Water is our theme for August. The story of faith is in some ways the story of water: God's spirit hovering over the watery chaos at creation; the water of the Red Sea parted to lead the people to freedom; the good shepherd leading us beside the still waters; Jesus baptized in water and turning water into wine and walking on water; Jesus as the living water; Jesus calling us to go...

Matthew 13:31-33; 44-52 As summer slides on, we will wrap up our sermon series this week, Signs of the Kingdom: Hidden Treasures.  Have you ever found a treasure?  Maybe lost something you loved only to find it years later?  There’s a story about a Canadian woman who lost her wedding ring…and 13 years later her husband found it—on a carrot! Sometimes things stay hidden, they aren’t gone, they are...

Matthew 13:24-30 Our Sign of the Kingdom for this week is all-too-familiar: a garden full of weeds. See Matthew 13:24-30. You might think a perfectly-manicured garden would be a better sign of the kingdom, but Jesus points us to a chaotic mess of a field, where the weeds and the wheat are all tangled together. And he cautions us not to be too quick to start pulling up the weeds. What can we learn...

Matthew 13:1-9 Where do you see signs of the kingdom? Where do you see the Spirit at work, in and through and around you? That's what we're exploring during the month of July. Last week we talked about a couple of signs: the lightness of being that comes from laying down our burdens and worries and trusting in God's grace, and the light that we can shine for others so they can find...

Matthew 11:25-30 This Sunday we start a new series: Signs of the Kingdom. We'll be reading through some of Jesus' teachings in the gospel according to Matthew. In these teachings he gives us signs of the kingdom, hints of what it looks like when the Spirit is at work in us and through us. I think the freedom we just talked about is one of those signs of the Spirit. This week we'll t...

Romans 13:8-14  There are days we all likely pray for that, but in the meantime… well that might be what Paul offers us today, 2000 years later. 

Matthew 10:34-39

This Sunday we will continue our series on Divine Myths, reflecting on claims about God that may not be entirely true. As I said in my sermon last week (quote attributed to Mark Twain): "It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so." For the month of June, we're exploring what we know for sure about God… that may not be so....

This week we're beginning a new sermon series I've called "Divine Myths." We will explore some things we often say about God that may not true, or at least aren't the whole story. One of those divine myths is the idea that God is absolutely fixed and settled and unmoving. As one of our hymns puts it: "There is no shadow of turning with thee. Thou changest not; thy com...

We are concluding our sermon series, Unsettled Questions, and this Sunday our question is, Which Spirit? The Spirit of God is not the only game in town, and we are sometimes tempted to give way to other spirits, other ways of being in the world. So how do we know which spirit is THE Spirit? That's the question we'll explore together.

This Sunday we will celebrate Ascension Sunday. It's fair to say that Presbyterians aren't sure what to make of this day, or the odd story we find in Acts 2, where Jesus seemingly floats away into heaven. We know we can't quite take this story literally. Heaven is not "up there." Is it just a story from a pre-scientific age that we can dismiss? I think the story raises a q...

We continue our theme from the book of Acts, Unsettled Questions. Acts is a book full of stories about the early church as it grows and takes shape. It turns out, many of the questions that came up then are still being asked over 2000 years later. This week, we look at Acts 17:22-31 asking specifically, “What do we worship?”.

This Sunday we will begin a new sermon series called Unsettled Questions. Using the book of Acts to guide us, we'll look at four questions that the early church wrestled with, questions we still wrestle with today. Who's In and Who’s Out? (Acts 8:26-38)

Our text for the day is one of the most beloved texts in all scripture: Psalm 23. Psalm 23 invites us to trust in God's provision even in the midst of scarcity and threats. It invites us to see the world as gracious, and to live free from fear.

This Sunday is Homecoming Sunday, the day we celebrate FPC's history and heritage. Back in the 1920s and 1930s, the following invitation was included in the bulletin. To all who mourn and need comfort...to all who are weary and need rest...to all who are friendless and want friendship...to all who are homeless and want sheltering love...to all who pray…and to all who do not, but should...to a...

“Tell people there's an invisible man in the sky who created the universe, and the vast majority will believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure.” ― George Carlin George Carlin is not exactly a patron saint of religion, but he makes an interesting point here about doubt. We welcome healthy skepticism, critical thinking, and a desire for first-hand confirmati...

Never forget that Easter is not a moment, not a day. It's a way of life, something that we live into. Whenever we live with wild hope, whenever we nurture wonder and love and life, we live into Easter. In the words of Wendell Berry: Every day do something that won’t compute. Love the Lord. Love the world. Work for nothing. Take all that you have and be poor. Love someone who does not deserve...

This Sunday, we begin Holy Week with Palm Sunday. And while we celebrate Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, Holy Week takes us through a whole symphony of emotions.