Midtown Presbyterian Church

What if the very thing we work hardest to hide is actually the doorway to our deepest healing? This week, Clint takes us into one of the most honest and uncomfortable stories in Scripture: the moment Peter, one of Jesus' closest friends, publicly and repeatedly denies even knowing him. Drawing from Matthew 26, we walk through what the Bible calls the anatomy of failure, tracing how pride and fear...

In this third week of our sermon series exploring the character of Peter, Arienna Lacey poses an extremely important question: What does it really mean to know Jesus? Not just know about him, but truly recognize him for who he is? In Matthew 16:13-23, we find Peter standing at a crossroads that every believer eventually faces. When Jesus asks his disciples who people say he is, the answers from th...

What happens when the storm raging around us feels more real and more powerful than the God we say we trust? That tension is at the heart of one of the most gripping moments in the life of the apostle Peter, found in Matthew 14. This week, Gayle Parker invites us into the boat in the dead of night, battered by wind and waves, where the disciples encounter Jesus walking toward them on the water. Wh...

What does an ordinary life look like when it becomes truly extraordinary? In this first week of a new sermon series on Peter, that question sits at the heart of our exploration of Luke 5, where we meet a weathered fisherman named Peter. His encounter would reshape not just his life, but the course of history. This week Clint invites us into a story that challenges the cultural pressure to build sm...

Keeping The Pace of God | A New Story for Work and Rest - Revelation 21:1-6 - Clint Leavitt by Midtown Presbyterian Church

What if one of God's most countercultural commands turned out to be one of his greatest gifts? As our teaching series on work and rest nears its close, we explore the fourth commandment, the Sabbath, through the lens of Deuteronomy 5:12-15, where Moses calls the people of Israel to observe a day of rest rooted not just in creation, but in redemption. Tom traces the story of a people who had been e...

What if the frustrations of our work are not signs that we have failed, but rather signs that we are living in a world that was made for something better? That is the question at the heart of this week's message, which draws us into one of the most foundational passages in all of Scripture, Genesis 3. Here we encounter the moment when human work shifted from a sacred partnership with God into some...

What if the Sabbath is less about what we stop doing and more about who we turn toward as we pause? That question sits at the heart of this week's message, which draws from the fourth commandment in Exodus 20 and the call to holy convocation in Leviticus 23. Both passages make the same declaration: the seventh day is not merely a break in the weekly rhythm but a day unto the Lord. There is a world...

What if the cultural ideals we celebrate most (self-reliance, following our hearts, doing it our way) are actually leading us away from the life we were made for? This week's message takes us on a fascinating journey from John Milton's Paradise Lost to the opening pages of Genesis, uncovering how a centuries-old shift in Western thinking has quietly reshaped the way we understand work, identity, a...

What if the most radical thing we could do in our modern world is simply stop? We live in a culture that measures our worth by our productivity and celebrates busyness as a badge of honor, but the ancient practice of Sabbath stands as a quiet, yet powerful act of resistance. In our second week of Keeping The Pace of God, we find in the opening pages of Genesis, how God himself modeled something pr...

Keeping The Pace of God | The Design/Dignity of Work - Genesis 1:26-2:3, 15 - Clint Leavitt by Midtown Presbyterian Church

What if the restlessness we feel deep in our souls is not a problem to be solved but a signpost pointing us toward something greater? We spend our final Sunday exploring Psalm 23 by focusing on its final verse and considering one of the most universal human experiences: homesickness. Drawing on everything from 20th-century psychiatry to German philosophy to C.S. Lewis, we discover that our longing...

What if the hardest stretches of our lives are not detours from the journey but the very heart of it? This week, the ancient pilgrimage of the Camino de Santiago invites us to reimagine our walk with God not as a series of quick victories but as a long obedience in the same direction. Psalm 23 serves as our guide, and this week we land on one of its most quietly radical claims: that goodness and m...

What does it actually take to stand firm when life gets hard? Not just to survive difficulty, but to move through it with genuine strength, purpose, and joy? We continue our adventure into one of the most beloved passages in all of Scripture, Psalm 23, and in verse 5 we encounter an unexpected shift from the image of a shepherd leading sheep to the image of a generous host welcoming a guest to a l...

What does it actually mean to trust a shepherd we cannot see, through valleys we never asked to enter? Psalm 23 is one of the most memorized passages in all of scripture, yet there is a deep honesty in admitting that we do not always believe it. This week, our dear friend Jackie Parks guides us into the heart of that tension, exploring what it looks like to walk through what our indigenous brother...

What happens when the path our Good Shepherd leads us on takes us straight into darkness? Psalm 23 verse 4 leads us into one of the most honest realities of the Christian life: the valley is real, it is dark, and it is part of the journey. This week, Midtown friend, Bob Simmons takes us deep into that valley alongside some of the most familiar figures in scripture. We walk with Abraham as he faces...

This 4th week of our Shepherded series, Clint draws from the ancient wisdom of Homer's Odyssey, where we're reminded that even Odysseus, known for his cunning and brilliance, recognized he couldn't trust his own instincts when facing the sirens' call. He had himself tied to the mast because he knew his judgment would fail him. How much more do we need guidance in our own lives? The sermon walks us...

Shepherded | He Restores My Soul - Psalm 23 - Mike Shirey by Midtown Presbyterian Church

Shepherded | He Makes Me Lie Down In Green Pastures - Psalm 23:2 - Clint Leavitt by Midtown Presbyterian Church

Shepherded | The Lord is my Shepherd - Psalm 23; John 10:11-18 - Clint Leavitt by Midtown Presbyterian Church

This week is the last message in the Live in Love sermon series, and to complete the series we look to Matthew 18:21-35, where Jesus tells the parable of the unforgiving servant, challenging us to reconsider what we think we know about forgiveness. Clint opens the message with a haunting reminder from Charleston in 2015, where grieving families spoke words of forgiveness that stunned the world. Th...

It is week 6 of our Live In Love sermon series, as Luke Parker asks us how much we love Mercy. This morning, Luke 7:31-50 confronts us with an uncomfortable truth: we are all masters at rigging the game of righteousness in our favor. Through the vivid story of a woman known as a sinner anointing Jesus at a Pharisee's dinner party, we discover that our scorekeeping mentality prevents us from experi...

Our Western culture likes to throw the word "Love" around constantly, but when conflict arises, our definitions quickly crumble. Week five of Live in Love dives into Paul's thoughts about love in Romans 12:9-21, challenging us to move beyond love as a fleeting feeling and embrace it as a consistent, costly action. Drawing from psychiatrist M. Scott Peck's insight that love is the will to extend on...

Live In Love | Love Your Enemy-Pray for Those Who Persecute You - Matthew 5.38-48 by Midtown Presbyterian Church

This week's teaching takes us deep into one of the more misunderstood aspects of Christian living: how we handle anger in a world full of conflict. Drawing from Ephesians 4:25-29, we're confronted with Paul's paradoxical command to 'be angry, but do not sin.' The message challenges our cultural assumptions about anger, revealing that emotions themselves are often God-given responses to injustice a...