Sermons from Oak Church

05/05/2019 Matthew 28:16-20 Chris Breslin   “Discipleship is the process of becoming who Jesus would be if he were you.” -Dallas Willard   “The difference between the one who goes to rural China and the one who goes to suburban Durham is geography and that’s it.” -Matt Hoffman   “We expect a trumpet and triumphant entry, but as always, God […]

04/28/2019 Matthew 28:1-10 Chris Breslin   “Those who had thought they were alive now discover that what they took for life is death. Jesus’ resurrection creates a life freed from the death that grips our everyday lives.” -Stanley Hauerwas   “The best of all, is God is with us.” – John Wesley   “Be not so nervous, be not so […]

04/21/2019 Isaiah 11:1-10 Chris Breslin   “Resurrection means the worst thing is never the last thing.” -Frederick Buechner   Scripture: Psalm 139 Genesis 1 Genesis 15 Luke 1:26-55 Genesis 3 Genesis 11 Genesis 16, 21 Genesis 25 2 Samuel 11 1 Corinthians 15:12-19 Revelation 22:1-3 Philippians 2:10-11 2 Corinthians 5:17   Slides for April 21, 2019   Songs for Today’s […]

04/19/2019 Chris Breslin   “The symbol of the cross in the church points to the God who was crucified not between two candles on an altar, but between two thieves in the place of the skull, where the outcasts belong, outside the gates of the city. It does not invite thought, but a change of mind. It is a symbol […]

04/14/2019 Matthew 21:1-17 Matthew Rehnborg (Bumper music: God Be In My Head by Ryan Gustafson of the Dead Tongues featured on Hymns from the Gathering Church (2011))   “Scripture is like a river, broad and deep, shallow enough here for the lamb to go wading, but deep enough there for the elephant to swim.” -Gregory the Great   Scripture: Jeremiah 7:1-15 […]

04/07/2019 Matthew 25:31-46 Chris Breslin (Bumper music: God Be In My Head by Ryan Gustafson of the Dead Tongues featured on Hymns from the Gathering Church (2011))   “Proximity has taught me some basic and humbling truths, including this vital lesson: Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done. My work with the poor and the […]

03/31/2019 Matthew 25:10-13 Andre Franklin (Bumper music:God Be In My Head by Ryan Gustafson of the Dead Tongues featured on Hymns from the Gathering Church (2011))   Andre Franklin is the pastor and planter of Vinea Church. The Franklins (wife Terri and little girl Mia) are native Texans who moved to the East Durham community over a year ago. Andre […]

03/24/2019 Matthew 22:1-14 Chris Breslin (Bumper music: God Be In My Head by Ryan Gustafson of the Dead Tongues featured on Hymns from the Gathering Church (2011)) “The living of a [person’s] life, day by day, is the only preparation for the great moment. Day by day….The great moment is never something that is irrelevant to the life you are […]

03/17/2019 Matthew 20:1-16 Chris Breslin (Bumper music:God Be In My Head by Ryan Gustafson of the Dead Tongues featured on Hymns from the Gathering Church (2011))   “All my stories are about the action of grace on a character who is not very willing to support it, but most people think of these stories as hard, hopeless, and brutal.” -Flannery […]

03/10/2019 Matthew 18:15-35 Matthew Rehnborg (Bumper music: God Be In My Head by Ryan Gustafson of the Dead Tongues featured on Hymns from the Gathering Church (2011)) “God approaches our minds by receding from them. We can never fully know God if we think of God as an object of capture, to be fenced in by the enclosure of our […]

03/03/2019 Luke 9:28-36 Chris Breslin   “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” -Elvis Costello (maybe, or David Byrne, Frank Zappa, Brian Eno, Thelonius Monk…)   Christ plays in ten thousand places, Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his To the Father through the features of men’s faces. -Gerard Manley Hopkins from As Kingfishers Catch Fire   […]

02/24/2019 Psalm 37:1-11, 39-40 Chris Breslin   “The more deeply we grow into the psalms and the more often we pray them as our own, the more simple and rich will our prayer become.” -Dietrich Bonhoeffer   “… in our suffering and perils, we find ourselves united with the Mysterious Companion who looms up at our side, or indeed within […]

02/17/2019 Luke 6:17-26 Matthew Rehnborg   “The situation of the soul in contemplation is something like the situation of Adam and Eve in Paradise. Everything is yours, but on one infinitely important condition: that all is given. There is nothing that you can claim, nothing that you can demand, nothing that you can take. And as soon as you try […]

02/10/2019 Isaiah 6:1-11 Chris Breslin   “Holy ground is dangerous ground. The holy is never, never something of God that we can take as if we owned it and use it for our own purposes” -Eugene Peterson, The Jesus Way   “I became a detective of divinity, collecting evidence of God’s genius and admiring the tracks left for me to […]

02/03/2019 Luke 4:21-30 John Chandler   John Chandler is the Marketing and Communications Director for Help One Now, an NGO which empowers families in developing countries through high-capacity local leaders with proven solutions to end extreme poverty. John is the founding pastor of Ecclesia Networkchurch, Austin Mustard Seed, and hosted equipping resource, SermonSmith, a podcast about the c...

01/27/2019 Luke 4:14-21 Chris Breslin   “A Sabbath is a weekly Jubilee during which the powerful are humbled and brought low, and the poor and lowly are gifted space, love, and generosity.” -A.J. Swoboda   “Far too often, we have chosen blindness, even refusing the hands of friends who reached out and tried to lead us to the one who […]

01/20/2019 Isaiah 30:1-5, 12-22 Charlene Brown   Season Resources: Joy is for Epiphany, tooby Miroslav Volf (Christian Century) Living the Christian Year: Time to Inhabit the Story of Godby Bobby Gross   Scripture: Psalm 136:1 Isaiah 30 (The Message)   Songs for Today’s Worship Gathering: The Magnification by Walton I Woke Up This Morning (with My Mind on Jesus) by […]

01/13/2019 Luke 3:15-17, 21-22 Sarah Neff   “The Epiphany story that most tempts my memory is the story of Jesus’ baptism. There is John at the river Jordan, and there are all those unwashed people who have come for his baptism, and in the queue is Jesus, who is without sin, who shouldn’t be in that line with all those […]

01/06/2019 Matthew 2:1-12 Carolina Kammel & Ricardo Correa   A special collaborative Epiphany celebration with our friends from Centro de Alabanza Naciones Unidas. Stream the video of the worship gathering here.

12/23/2018 Luke 1:39-55 Mindy Erdmann (Bumper music:Because the Night is Longby Music from the Gathering Church (2010))   Mindy Erdmannworks for Intervarsity Christian Fellowship. Her love for the city began in 1994 when, as a student at the College of Wooster, she participated in the very first Cleveland Urban Plunge. She joined InterVarsity staff in 1998 in order to develop […]

12/16/2018 Luke 3:1-6 Carolina Kammel (Bumper music:Because the Night is Longby Music from the Gathering Church (2010))   Christmas Bells by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow A Carol for the Despairing (Christianity Today article)   Scripture Exodus 16 1 Samuel 23:14-16 Luke 4:1-14   This Sunday’s Songs (Oak Kids Christmas Pageant) Come Light Our Hearts by McCracken Hark the Herald Angels Sing...

Our conversation took place at Oak Church on December 13, 2018. Margot Starbuck facilitated the conversation in partnership with DurhamCares(directed by Reynolds Chapman). Lauren Daniel sang. Natasha Sistrunk Robinson (MA, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary) is a writer, international speaker, leadership consultant, mentoring coach, and the visionary founder of the nonprofit, Leadership LINKS, In...

12/02/2018 Luke 21:25-36 Chris Breslin (Bumper music:Because the Night is Long by Music from the Gathering Church (2010))   “Advent is not for the faint of heart.” – Fleming Rutledge   “[The writer] may well be forced to take ever more violent means to get his vision across to this hostile audience. When you can assume that your audience holds the […]

11/25/2018 John 18:33-38a Chris Breslin   “A king who dies on the cross must be the king of a rather strange kingdom.” -Dietrich Bonhoeffer   “The offering of gold, frankincense, and myrrh are completed by the caganer’s offering of [crap].” -Adam Hearlson, The Holy No: Worship as a Subversive Act   “As a preacher of the gospel for a great […]

11/18/2018 Micah 6:1-8 Stephanie Holmer   “Whatever I had read as a child about the saints had thrilled me. I could see the nobility of giving one’s life for the sick, the maimed, the leper. But there was another question in my mind. Why was so much done in remedying the evil instead of avoiding it in the first place? […]