Lamar Alexander "The Education of a Senator" next Wednesday

Woodmont and Parnassus Books are pleased to present an evening with Lamar Alexander to celebrate his new book, The Education of a Senator, in conversation with Clay Stauffer. This free event will take place at Woodmont on Wednesday, May 27, at 6:30 PM in the sanctuary, with doors opening at 5:30 PM. Books will be pre-signed and Senator Alexander will have a signing line directly following the conversation on stage where you can get your book personalized.

The book is a behind-the-scenes story of the last sixty years of American politics, told with purpose and humor by a political legend who worked with ten presidents, made deals with both Obama and Trump, and believes that serving in public office is the best way to help the largest number of people and to keep our Republic from falling apart.

Signed copies of The Education of a Senator will be on sale at the event.

If you are planning to attend, click the button below!

Intro to Woodmont May 31

If you’re new to Woodmont, then we want to see you at our next Intro to Woodmont luncheon this Sunday, May 31, at noon in the boardroom! This is a chance to meet with Clay and some of our leaders to learn more about Woodmont and if God is calling you to make this your church home. Lunch is served and you are warmly invited! Childcare is available with an RSVP to tammy@woodmontcc.org

Vespers Service May 31

Do you have 45 minutes to lower your stress and draw closer to the One who promised "rest unto your soul?" Our Chancel Choir will share their annual service of meditation, scriptures, and music on Sunday, May 31, at 5 PM in the sanctuary. Choir members will express their personal thoughts on each anthem before it is sung. They will perform works by Richard Proulx, Maurice Duruflé, Johann Michael Haydn, Charles Edward Ives, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tom Fettke. 

Next Wednesday evening, May 27, we will welcome Senator Lamar Alexander to Woodmont. Lamar is one of the longest-serving public servants in our state who has worked with ten different presidents. He served as Governor, President of the University of Tennessee, Education Secretary under Bush 41, and then went on to serve three terms as a U.S. Senator. He is releasing his new memoir, The Education of a Senator: from JFK to Trump. It should be a fascinating conversation that covers a multitude of topics, including the current state of American politics. I hope you will join us in the sanctuary or chapel. 

Back in December, one of Lamar’s former colleagues, Nebraska senator Ben Sasse, shocked everybody when he announced his diagnosis of stage IV pancreatic cancer and was given just three months to live. Sasse would later leave the senate to become president of the University of Florida where he was committed to reforming higher education. Thanks to a trial treatment at MD Anderson in Houston, Sasse has been given some additional months to live. He is facing his death in the most courageous of ways, giving interviews, going on podcasts, writing articles, and sharing from his heart. His faith is central to his life.

In a recent Op Ed in The Wall Street Journal, Sasse identified three significant challenges that are now plaguing our culture. First, we are lonely. The share of Americans who say they have no close friends has quadrupled since 1990. This is the sad and the logical result of being addicted to screens and social media. Many people feel like nobody cares and they don’t know whom they would call in a time of crisis. Second, we don’t trust our institutions. This includes government, church, higher education, health providers, and even family. This did not happen overnight, but we have reached a tipping point where this has become a massive problem. Third and perhaps worse, we don’t trust each other. Sasse says that only one in three Americans say that they can trust most people. We are skeptical. We are guarded. We don’t know who has our best interest at heart and who doesn’t. People have friends online across the globe but we don’t know our neighbors. Each of these challenges that Sasse lays out has been growing since the middle of the nineteenth century. Technology and artificial intelligence seem to be magnifying these challenges.

Sasse is inspiring many people by the way he is courageously facing his death. Does he wish he had more time? Of course he does. He would love nothing more than to walk his daughters down the aisle and be there to watch his son finish high school. Yet he is not going silently into the night. He is sharing honestly from the heart: “The challenge is how to live with virtue and technology when technology tends to erode virtue and place and human texture. Our response must be to cultivate habits, community, and revivification of place. The biggest divide isn’t going to be race, class, or income. It will be between people who master the tools of technology and those who outsource their habits to these tools and algorithms.” In other words, AI can replace many things but not emotional intelligence and human connection. 

I would recommend listening to any of the interviews or podcasts that Sasse is currently doing. He is simply saying the things that we all need to hear, and he is not holding back. Why would he? He knows that his days are numbered. He says, “Character, whether of an individual or of a nation, is molded by habits and time. This republic requires men and women to do long form deliberation, serious thinking, honest humility, and daily striving. What good is it to gain the whole world if we forfeit the souls that we are supposed to form?” Jesus asked the same question. Yet, that is exactly what seems to be happening in many corners of American life. Many parents need to step it up and stop relegating their responsibilities to an iPad or YouTube channel. So many of the problems we now face come directly back to the breakdown of the family. Values must be taught and modeled. Thank you, Ben Sasse, for telling us the truth. Please keep it up. Many of us are listening closely to your wisdom and insight! 

Groundbreaking ceremony

Sunday, May 17

Groundbreaking video

This past Sunday, we officially broke ground on the old Campbell West property after the former parsonage house was taken down earlier in the week.

2026 Leadership Slate

The nominations are in for our 2026 Chair-Elect, Board, Elders, & Deacons! Our annual congregational meeting to vote on the budget and leadership slate is Sunday, June 14, at 10:45 AM. Installation of our newly-elected leaders is Sunday, June 28, as part of our 11:00 AM service.

This Sunday, May 24

9:30 & 11:00: Rev. Farrell Mason • “Life is a Roller Coaster” • Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, 11 & Proverbs 3:5-6

9:40: Rev. Jay Hutchens • “Enter the Eremos. Discover the Quiet Place” • Ecclesiastes 8:16-17 & Matthew 4:1-11

Our schedule this Sunday is:

• 8:30 AM – Continental breakfast in the gym
• 9:30 AM – Informal worship in the sanctuary
• 9:40 AM – The Bridge service in the chapel
• 11:00 AM – Traditional service in the sanctuary

No youth programming this Sunday due to Memorial Day weekend

Summer parking info

As we begin construction on our new Family Life Center, we understand that we will have reduced parking through the summer. It would be helpful for families, as much as they are able, to come to church in one vehicle.  We have also arranged for Woodmont members to park at Calvary Methodist in the row of spots lining Hillsboro Pike. Please do not park in spots other than these - they have been reserved for Calvary Methodist worshippers. 

Woodmont members may also park in the Boy Scout lot diagonally across the street from the church. We will have a Metro Nashville uniformed police officer assisting with traffic and with our members who are crossing Woodmont Blvd. Woodmont leadership is currently working on other options for parking as we move toward Homecoming Sunday in August. We will let you know as these are arranged. 

Thank you for your patience as we move through this exciting time of building!

Make your pledge online!

Thank you to everyone who has made a pledge to our spring stewardship campaign! If you haven't already, you can click the button below to make your pledge quickly and conveniently online so that we can plan for another amazing year of ministry together.

Summer Gospel Sing-Along & Potluck Supper begins June 3

One of our favorite summer traditions is back! On Wednesdays in June & July, we will have a gospel sing-along at 5:15 PM in Room 105, followed by a potluck supper in Drowota Hall at 6:00 PM. Bring food suitable for potluck sharing!

Woodmont Kids

Learning about honey bees with Mike Brent & Bill Heyne on Sunday, May 3

“Hope” is the thing with feathers That perches in the Soul – and sings the tune without words – and never stops — at all." — Emily Dickinson

Could the red cardinal perched in the Cedar outside my window actually be the Angel Gabriel sent with a message for me? 

My dear departed friend Tallu believed seeing a cardinal was always a promising sign. 

During a strenuous, worrisome season in my life, I started seeing these brilliantly colored red birds popping up everywhere I went. A redbird couple started frequenting my moss chapel bird feeder just outside my kitchen door. I keep it stocked with their favorite sunflower seeds. Many afternoons a redbird sentry would be waiting for me at the gatepost to our house. And then there is the redbird wonder who frequents the Cedar across from my writing desk window. What a gift his beautiful splash of red is, brightening the grey-blue sky of winter. Then I hear his whistling performance on the eve of spring. 

Unlike other birds who migrate to warmer places when the days become gloomy and the temperatures drop dismally in middle Tennessee, the Northern Cardinal braves the winter bite with the rest of us. They have a reputation among ornithologists as birds of endurance. I loved that they were named after the bishops of Rome, clothed in their ornate scarlet robes and red Italian skull caps called zucchettos. 

Today, redbird sightings lift my spirit. Just when I reach a low point, a red bird shows up. God will do just about anything to keep hope in our breasts. 

Miraculously, the more I look for cardinals, the more I see them. The same is true when I pursue beauty and look for signs of hope. The Universe responds in kind. 

Like the bold cardinal, you and I must embrace the life before us with steadfastness. The redbird whistles in winter, spring, summer, and fall. Can we say the same about ourselves? We have to be so careful that in a dark situation or season, we don’t downcast our eyes and miss God sending red flares to keep us carrying on. 

At a recent funeral, a red cardinal made an angel-landing on the tombstone next to me as I gave the benediction. He stole the show, whistling his lovely hymn. That moment was somehow holier and hope-bearing. The family was convinced it was a sign from heaven. I have heard it said, “When a cardinal appears, an angel is near.” That day it felt especially true. Many of my parishioners have reported the appearance of cardinals after losing a loved one. Maybe the redbird lives on the border of two worlds, heaven and earth. For me, the Red Cardinal is a reminder that God is always reaching out to us. 

On a blustery February afternoon on the way to pick up the kids from school, I did a double-take from my window, spotting a cluster of trees in a small yard populated with red cardinals. There must have been twenty of them perched in five different trees. On closer look, I discovered they were artificial, each hand-tied to individual leafless branches. I pulled into the driveway and the owner of the house came out to greet me. “May I help you?” she said, her white standard poodle standing at attention beside her. I said, “I noticed your red cardinal display. They are so joyful.” She smiled. “I started putting them in the trees in a dark season in my life. I needed a little extra encouragement. And now the neighborhood depends on them.” As I turned to get back in the car. She called after me. “Sometimes, you know, it’s just plain hard to be human. We need these “redbird” nudges to rise for the new day.” 

On March April 1, 2026, three astronauts made a historic mission to the moon. From 250,000 miles in space, the Artemis II team was shocked by the unfathomable, overwhelming black void of outer space. Hope came by looking out the spaceship window at Mother Earth, an unbelievable oasis of shining light and colorful life. God will never leave us in complete darkness, not on earth, in space, or in the chapel of our hearts. 

Stay alert because in God’s world, the most ordinary moments can quickly turn holy. We live in a divine forcefield of signs and wonders. We are flesh and spirit “treasure hunters.” Every day a little bit of heaven can surprise us.

G.E.M.S. May 26

The next G.E.M.S. luncheon is Tuesday, May 26, at 11:30 AM in Room 200 and will feature Walter R. Green, Jr., author of In the Shadow of My Enemy – Civil War Life in Occupied Franklin, Tennessee.

Green is a sixth-generation resident of Williamson County, which has fueled his passion for researching, writing, and publishing this non-fiction book, the first one on the subject. The book tells how Franklin, Tennessee, residents, whites and blacks, loyal and secessionist, were affected by the Civil War, the 3½-year Federal occupation, and the horrific Battle of Franklin. Federal Fort Granger overlooked the town for most of that time. 

RSVP by calling the church office at (615) 297-8563 or email jan@woodmontcc.org

Journey to the Heart new summer series

Journey to the Heart Women's Bible Study is starting a new summer study in the book of James using the guide James: Walking in Wisdom (A Flourish Bible Study). This study addresses trials and temptations, the relationship between faith and good works, and choosing the wisdom of God over the wisdom of the world.

Journey to the Heart meets every Thursday from 10:30 AM to noon in the boardroom. Contact Char Hummel charhummel@icloud.com

Part-time Custodian wanted

Woodmont is looking for a dependable, Part-time Custodian to add to our staff!

• 4 to 5 afternoons/evenings per week
• 4 to 5 hours per shift
• 18+ years old

If you know of someone who would fit in and wants to work, have them contact our Property Manager, Sam Marsh, at 615-336-5379 (cell) or smarsh@woodmontcc.org

Thank you!

Only 12 days left to register for VBS!

VBS is June 23-26 and registration closes at the end of next week! Click the button below to save your spot.

Deer Run Middle School Camp

May 8-9

Church calendar

For a full list of everything happening at Woodmont, click the button below to view our church calendar.