Sermons

Sunday Services

Weekly services are now live-streamed on our YouTube channel every Sunday morning at 10:30 a.m. All are welcome! A selection of services appear below.

March 20, 2022: Dr. Anna Piela & Rev. Dr. Michael Woolf, Senior Minister. The audio begins at 13:00. The sermon begins at 36:20.

March 13, 2022: Rev. Robert Thompson, Minister Emeritus. The sermon begins at 37:25.

Recent Sermons

March 6, 2022, Rev. Dr. Michael Woolf, Senior Minister.  In this sermon, Rev. Woolf talks about delaying work on reparations because it was dangerous. The actual words he uttered were, “I need 5 years of equity in my house first.” He has a confession about his own moment of “anagnorisis” and encourages everyone to feel a sense of call. It’s raw, personal, and vulnerable. Who knows? Maybe it makes you feel called.

February 13, 2022, Rev. Dr. Michael Woolf, Senior Minister.  In this sermon, Rev. Dr. Michael Woolf preaches about the wound at the center of Lake Street Church of Evanston and calls for Lake Street Church to restore Second Baptist to ownership and practice reparations as a way of healing wounds seriously, not lightly as the prophets condemn.

February 6, 2022, Jillian Westerfield, Associate Minister.  In this sermon, Associate Minister Jillian Westerfield takes to task accessibility and the arguments in Tish Harrison Warren’s “Why Churches Should Drop Their Online Worship Services.”

September 26, 2021, Rev. Dr. Michael Woolf, Senior Minister.  In the wake of images of border patrol agents on horseback hunting down Haitian refugees, this sermon is about the borders in our hearts that cause us to divide people into those like us, and those not, those who are worthy, and those who are not. The real crisis is a crisis of compassion.

A selection of 2021 Sunday services can be found here.

Video links to sermons from Zoom services occurring during the early months of the pandemic are available here.

Audio recordings of sermons through early March 2020 are available here.

The text of sermons through early March 2020 are available here.

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“When we are co-learners in a world drenched in the holy, then we become able to approach the vision of the beloved community laid out in our ancient texts.”

— Rev. Michael Woolf, January 13, 2019

“That’s my invitation to you as we begin something new together – to be open, to be real, to be honest, to be here. Because if you can’t be open here, where can you? If you can’t be real here, where can you? If we can’t have the tough conversations and become equipped to bring Love into the world, where can we? Our task is to make a place where we can hear that still small voice, that beating heart at the center of reality that is so easily drowned out by our busy, busy lives.”

— Rev. Michael Woolf, January 13, 2019