Learn more about us

St. MarkReformed Church

Committed to robust, liturgical, covenant renewal worship, celebrating the sacraments each week, psalm singing, and the solas of the Reformation.

Join us for Covenant Renewal Worship

Sundays at 11:00 am

Brentwood First Presbyterian Church
1301 Franklin Rd.
Brentwood, TN 37027

We also normally have Sunday School at 10:00 AM. See our calendar for an up-to-date schedule.

You can also call for more info at (615) 438-3109

Please note if you need to send something to us, our mailing address is different from our meeting address. For mailing purposes only, please use the following:

General Correspondence and financial donations may be sent to:
PO Box 1543
Franklin, TN 37065

Upcoming Events

  • Sun
    Oct 19

    10:00 AM

    Sunday School

    1301 Franklin Rd. Brentwood, TN 37027

  • Sun
    Oct 19

    11:00 AM

    Covenant Renewal Worship

    1301 Franklin Rd. Brentwood, TN 37027

  • Sun
    Oct 19

    12:30 PM

    Fellowship Meal

    1301 Franklin Rd. Brentwood, TN 37027

  • Fri
    Oct 24

    5:30 PM

    Hymn Sing at Pittmans’

  • Sun
    Nov 2

    12:30 PM

    Fellowship Meal

    1301 Franklin Rd. Brentwood, TN 37027

  • Sun
    Nov 2

    3:30 PM

    All Saints’-Reformation Party at the Thackers’

  • Tue
    Nov 4

    6:30 PM

    Ladies’ Night

  • Wed
    Nov 5

    6:30 PM

    Vespers Service

    1301 Franklin Rd. Brentwood, TN 37027

A picture is worth a thousand words

Take a look at the life of St. Mark through a few of our smiling faces and latest events

Latest Sermon

Rev. Burke Shade, October 12, 2025

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The Latest News at St. Mark

October 19th, 2025

Newsletter — October 19, 2025

When we think about time and holidays, we are bound to think about calendars. Why? Because calendars write history, helping us to remember the great events. Days, festivals, holidays, the order of meals, rest and vacations, together with religiously observed rituals and symbols, are sources of history.

Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy notes that modern society is “completely sensational, totally forgetful, and wonderfully devoid of memory.” He said that seventy-five years ago! He hit the iPhone video MO directly on the head!

That’s why he liked calendars! They shape time by commemorating cataclysmic events that open and close epochs; and the societal creativity to mark those epochs give form to time. They give time rhythm, and that’s important for the church. ERH notes that “liturgical rhythm is expressed in terms of Sunday and weekday, Christmas and Easter, Pentecost and Advent.”

The church’s calendar defies natural time. Nature has 365 days, but the church’s 365 days express the true infinity of all time from beginning of the world to its end. The reasoning mind sees time as consisting of units, days, or years. But for Christian faith, “one year’s course inducts into the whole linear expanse of all time. So much so, that from Christmas to Easter, a whole lifetime of thirty years is remembered, and from Pentecost to Advent, the whole experience of mankind through the Old Testament and our whole era is remembered.”

For ERH it’s clear that our understanding of time is deeply rooted by Christian convictions concerning Jesus, his death and resurrection, and eschatology. So the Christian faith “gives unity to humanity’s times by giving humanity a common future…humanity lives a unified time and history only because of Jesus.”

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October 12th, 2025

Newsletter — October 12, 2025

By now you are sick of all the Halloween unDecorations, since they celebrate death and grossness and witchcraft and demons, albeit sometimes in a funny way, as in all the Minions in my neighbor’s front yard. You can’t help but chuckle—they are cute and they overcome the tragedy of death comically. But the sadness with all the skeletons is that it is a parody of the resurrection, albeit without bodies and flesh. Leave it to Satan to promise resurrection without skin and flesh and warmth and beauty! No thanks; I’ll take the true resurrection in Christ!

Which brings us back to some of Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy’s observations. He notes that in observing a national holiday, say the War of Independence, it “celebrates more than survival: Through the holiday the tragic events, the death involved in the events commemorated, are incorporated into communal life, as we look ‘with condescension’ on our conflicts because we have triumphed over them. Holidays are the mortar of society; the fruit of a holiday’s observance is the rebirth of the community.” Why? Because as we view the painful events of the past, we “see the connection of death with birth, of darkness with light, of heaven with earth.”

He further notes that “the fellowship of a normal group…is the answer to our hunger for rhythm. Without holidays, humans are deprived of the necessary rhythm of time, and suffer psychologically.”

So we, first, ought to be at regular weekly worship; that gives us the Lord’s Day rhythm, from which the rest of the week flows. Secondly, let us remember to invite our family, friends, and neighbors not only to church holiday observances, but also to our homes for coffee, drinks, and sweets, just to fellowship around the holidays. What a privilege to exhibit peace and trust in Jesus to our neighbors so joyfully!

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October 5th, 2025

Newsletter — October 5, 2025

The Hallowed Eve decorations are all up, so it would be good to think about the “holidays.” Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy (ERH), a German-American Christian thinker who ended up in the Harvard Divinity school since he talked a lot about God, has some great observations about the “holidays” worthy of consideration.

ERH argued that holidays are “time-bettering days” — days that improve time by furthering communities, helping to form a group with something “common.” He said, “On a holiday, we share one time and one space although we are divided by self-interest, by age, by wealth, by occupation, by climate, by language, by race, by history; we carry on as though we were one and the same man, regardless of birth, unafraid of death…unperturbed by fear.” He noted that “even the apparent idleness of a Puritan town was productive because it was a matter of being idle together. Puritans labored “for being idle together. The gathering of the idle was primary.”

He further notes that “on holidays, a community triumphs over tragedy…” The power of a holiday consists in the ascendancy over tragedy. Holidays “…place us at the center of existence where death becomes the gate to life.” He means that …“holidays commemorate the great moments, often the great crises, of a community’s history.” (quotes from Peter J. Leithart, I Respond, Though I Shall Be Changed)

Of course, that’s exactly the Christian Church Year of holidays — remembering and celebrating, by being together as a community, the life we have in Christ, having been saved by the great tragedy of Christ on the Cross.

So during this season of holidays, take time to be “idle” with the body of Christ, relaxing and celebrating and being together in the Sunshine of Christ’s love!

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