If one is a Christian for long enough, they will likely have the experience of seeing friends or family members make the decision to leave the Protestant church to begin attending or joining the Roman Catholic church. It is also not unusual for a Protestant Christian to think deeply about the Roman Catholic church and ... Read More The post Reading Recommendations for Protestants Considering a Move to Rome appeared first on Evergreen Presbyterian Church ..read more

Four years ago today, I was installed as the Senior Pastor of Evergreen. If you were here at Evergreen in 2020, I don’t have to tell you how much has changed since I first came. However, from where I stand staring out each Sunday morning, I can tell you that many of the faces at ... Read More The post Four Years Ago Today appeared first on Evergreen Presbyterian Church ..read more

[At our congregational meeting on December 3rd, 2023 I presented to the Evergreen congregation the session’s plans to begin holding two identical worship services each morning beginning in January of 2024. This is a big change for any church, and so the following article is a distillation of what was said in that congregational meeting in relation to the move to two services.] The Evergreen session met on November 1st and had an extensive discussion and time of prayer. One of the great needs and passions that has been growing in the hearts of the session members has been a desire for each of u ..read more

There is an old joke (not very funny) that the thing that destroys churches is not theological controversy or scandal, but the age old question of what color the carpet ought to be. Every pastor knows that aesthetics and decoration can be a very fraught subject, and so we tend to fear it. However, I want to speak directly about these issues. In particular, I want to prepare you as a congregation here at Evergreen for a few aesthetic changes that you will begin to notice over the coming months. Before I do that, however, please bear with me as I lay out a few important principles that will help ..read more

In my sermon on Sunday, July 2nd, I made an unplanned comment that I’d like to clarify. In the context of the sermon I was discussing the “Secular Jesus Follower” movement. The people who participate in this movement appreciate some version of Jesus’ teaching but do not believe that he was who he claimed to be. This movement is inspired by things such as Jesus’ perceived pacifism, his carefree attitude, and by a type of “salvation” that has nothing to do with his death for sins. I then commented that this sounds like much of what passes for religion in the mainline American protestant denomina ..read more

To the Editors of ByFaith, As the official magazine of the denomination of the Presbyterian Church in America, of which I am a teaching elder, I am concerned with the discernment you used in printing the recent article from David Cassidy titled “Prayer and Work in the Face of Violence” in which he called gun violence “the leading cause of death among children in this nation” (source: https://byfaithonline.com/prayer-and-work-in-the-face-of-violence/). This is incorrect information and is misleading. Gun violence is absolutely not the leading cause of death of children in the United States, and ..read more

Pastor Adam Parker My heart is very heavy. I’m referring, of course, to the shooting that took place at The Covenant School in Nashville, TN yesterday (March 27th). A 28 year old former student entered the school and fatally wounded three 9 year-olds, a custodian, a substitute, and the headmistress of the school before responding offers killed the attacker. The church to which the school is connected is a PCA congregation. The current Senior pastor for the congregation was in a presbytery meeting at the time of the shooting with some friends of mine. Little did he know at the time that his own ..read more

Pastor Parker “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, redeeming the time, for the days are evil.” Ephesians 5:15-16 A few weeks ago I wrote about the need for us to be thoughtful about our devotional habits in the new year – how will we be systematically reading Scripture and hearing from the Lord? As this new year has come upon us, I’ve tried to think carefully about the preciousness of time, as well. I’m about to turn 40, and I don’t know how many more years I have left, but I do feel the limits of that time more than when I felt invincible in my 20s. I see that the tim ..read more

Pastor Adam Parker When people are experiencing grief, we often may struggle with what to say, or how to treat them. Should we say something? Should we say nothing? How do we think about our own role as a brother or sister in Christ, especially to a fellow church member who is experiencing grief? To begin with, Paul says that we should “bear one another’s burdens” in Galatians 6. We should let that be the verse that dominates our thoughts as we engage with hurting people. The points is not for us to make the pain go away, the point is to spread the pain around – bear some of it with them so t ..read more

Pastor Parker As we enter 2022, I am sure that we all need God’s word, and we need encouragement to immerse ourselves in it. We need our thoughts to be saturated in it, we need our hearts to be filled up with its message, and we need our prayers to be fueled by its truths. I want to give you all some ideas and resources that I have found helpful in the past, and some resources that I will personally be using in 2022. Bible Reading You all may already have a favored Bible reading plan. I follow the M’Cheyne Bible Reading plan. The Gospel Coalition has a great article from Don Ca ..read more