Oakhurst Baptist Church

We were pleased to welcome to our pulpit Rev. Erica N. Williams on Sunday, November 28. Listen as she calls us to “Cry Out!” and “stand up” this Advent season.

In our scripture text, Pilate plays a political blame game with Jesus’ life and models for us ways we can deflect responsibility for our own actions. But Jesus questions Pilate’s ego-protective reasoning techniques, and by extension our own.

Oakhurst member, ordained minister, and 2006 Candler School of Theology graduate Rev. Cindy M Brown is our preacher for the day.

Listen as Pastor Melanie Vaughn-West reflects on the abundant gifts of our community and what we share together as we all consider how we might continue to give to this place that offers love to so many. Also hear a message from Joe Canzoneri about how God IS love.

On Sunday, November 7, we honored all those we have loved and lost, taking and opportunity to name their names aloud in worship. We also honored specifically the Oakhurst Baptist Church Saints we have lost since last All Saints Sunday: Sue Woolf and Margaret Blevins. Listen as Pastor Melanie Vaughn-West reflects on these two Oakhurst saints.

Listen as Brandeis Tullos explores Mark 12:28-34, and invites us to see more deeply and compassionately into Jesus’s invitation in a way that invites us to include ourselves and maybe even start there.

We are living in times where feelings of loss, isolation, and loneliness have reached extreme levels. And instead of uniting us, the pervasiveness of those feelings seems to only push individuals further into feeling alone. As we examine our own circumstances alongside those in the book of Ruth, Pastor Lauren Colwell asks: “What is the call to us as individuals and as communities?” Instead of islands of isolation, how can we strive for more crowded tables?

Listen as Pastor Melanie Vaughn-West reflects on what it might mean to be a servant in a kin-dom where there are no lords and there is no hierarchy and where losing in the eyes of others just might mean liberation in the eyes of our own souls. Melanie’s sermon is followed by a song by Lee Bains and a prayer by Leslie Withers.

On Pride Sunday 2021, we welcomed back Oakhurst-ordained Rev. Benjamin Curry, who reflects on Mark 10:17-31. Ben shares: “Pride is about getting down to earth and being true to who you have always been. No shame. You cannot truly understand pride unless you truly understand shame…and release it.”

“There is something in every one of you that waits, listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself and if you cannot hear it, you will never find whatever it is for which you are searching.…” – Howard ThurmanListen as Melanie Vaughn-West shares her search for the genuine in her own heart and invites… Read more »

“I learn by going where I have to go.” (Theodore Roethke) Karen Bryant Shipp shared experiences, both planned and unexpected, from her recent sabbatical/pilgrimage to the Cedars of Peace in Nerinx, KY.