Mercy Community Church

06/03/2026

Well, we don’t have a lot of Sunday photos this week! We miss our former intern turned community member, Caroline Kothari (), who has developed into a wonderful chronicler of our worship. So we’ll just have to make do with a grainy preaching video (see yesterday’s post—the message is high quality, at least!) and just a few other photos from worship Sunday. (Pastor Chad did do pretty well capturing some photos from Saturday’s MercyFest; we’re proud of him!)

Even though a picture may be worth a thousand words, we still had a wonderful, worshipping time this past Sunday—you’ll just have to take our word for it! Pastor Sid led us in our call to worship and also at the table, celebrating the Eucharist with our community. Our singing and prayer was joyful and from the heart.

And our time in the word was deeply moving as we looked at the story of two women—Mary and Elizabeth—coming together to encourage and support one another as an archetype for the church.

Then members of our own community, led by Terri, Camille, Cooper, and Pastor Brittany—prepared a hearty meal of pulled pork, potato salad, and baked beans, all homemade and made with overflowing love.

That’s what Mercy looks like, y’all!

06/02/2026

Did she really say that?
Yes, she did.

Mary’s Magnificat turns the world upside-down.

But we’re so used to a Christianity that props up the status quo that we find ourselves questioning whether God’s will for human well-being can really be that revolutionary.

The answer is, “Oh, yes, it can.”

Pastor Chad said it this way Sunday morning:

“Somehow we find the most strange, obscure scriptures and [say], ‘Well, this is what’s important.’

“But the abundance of calls for justice and liberation and righteousness and, I don’t know, ‘love your neighbor as yourself’? [We ignore]. That’s why Jesus said that sums the whole thing up.

“Because all of justice is in that commandment.
All of righteousness, all of liberation, is in that commandment.
The R-E-S-P-E-C-T that you need, that everyone needs, is in that commandment. There’s no racism in that commandment.
Ain’t no sexism in that commandment.
There ain’t no ‘Big I and Little You’ in that commandment.
Just love your neighbor as yourself.
It’s all through scripture.”

At Mercy, we find an image of what church for one another can be in Mary’s visit to Elizabeth.

It’s in their call-and-response,
their telling the truth to one another,
their lifting one another up.
It’s in their prophesying.

They show us how we can be a community coming together in the midst of a world falling apart, pointing one another toward God’s unwavering will for justice, liberation, and wholeness.

Yes, Mary meant every word.

After all, where do you think Jesus got it from?

06/01/2026

Say it any way you want, but MercyFest is a good time, y’all! When our community and partners can get together, providing much needed resources like showers, clothes, foot care, herbal medicine, and a good meal, it really is a festival of abundance and community.

Thank you Rev. Allen Jones and the for the burgers, dogs, squash, and deserts (and our own Baum family for the baked beans and potato salad)! Thank you for herbal consults and attentive care. Thank you .footclinic for caring for our precious feet! Thank you Dennis and the Rev. Maurice Lattimore and for reviving our souls while we wash our bodies!

This is how we do it, y’all! This is how we change the world.

Come join us! Every last Saturday of every month at our friends Edgewood Church on Memorial Drive in Atlanta.

05/28/2026

Sunday was Pentecost.

After we read the scripture from Acts 2, Herman told the story of the time he went to a pentecostal revival and woke up on the floor.

It was, he said, ‘quite an experience.’

That’s one of the things about figuring God out in this world—about figuring ourselves out in this world.

Human experience matters.

What happened to me?
What have I seen?
What have I felt?
How do I tell my story?

Back in the day, folks used to say:
‘You can’t tell it like I can—because you don’t know like I know what God has done for me.’

A lot of churches have times set aside for testifying. Mercy is a community where testimony happens all the time.

We have stories to tell and experiences to express.

Pastor Holly followed up and said, ‘We can all gather in one place with our own unique experiences of the Holy Spirit and our faithfulness. And we can gather together to share that with one another and to reveal to one another or to be completely different and to challenge one another, and yet there is space for all to have our unique experiences.’

There’s space enough for all of us to bring all of our experiences to the table.

In Acts 2, when the crowds gathered from all around the world to see what this Pentecost thing was all about, they didn’t necessarily know each others language. But they were able to hear one another.

At Pentecost, there’s the gift of speaking, yes. But there is also the gift of listening.

God is bigger than any one of our experiences. But we can learn something about God’s love and God’s grace and what God is doing in this world by listening to one another.

Come, Holy Spirit, help us to tell our stories of your love.

And help us to listen to one another anew.

05/26/2026

Pentecost Sunday at Mercy was a Spirit-filled, Spirit-empowered time, y’all!

Ordination is something that the church has done in many ways down through the ages.

This Sunday, we ordained Sid Imes, our beloved brother and co-worker, as a minister of word and sacrament and as a servant of the poor—or as we usually just say it, a pastor.

To ordain someone is to authorize them for a particular kind of leadership within the community and for the world. We can do this because the person we ordain recognizes that God has called them to this kind of leadership, and we as a community recognize the signs of that call in their life and work.

It’s like how the Gospel of John uses the word ‘glory’: there is a mutual seeing and knowing that allows humans and communities to recognize the ways God’s grace is at work among us. As we come to see it, we can name it clearly and celebrate it joyfully.

The abundant gifts of our members is just one more way that the Holy Spirit is wonderfully at work in this little community on the corner of Ponce.

05/24/2026

We have a new link for Sid’s ordination. Please view here:

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

05/21/2026

Jesus is a sanctuary where all of us are welcome and all of us find liberation. As followers of Jesus, the communities we form should be sanctuaries, too. All y’all are welcome here!

Original song by Chad Hyatt.

05/20/2026

We had a joyful Sunday—full of the abundant life God gives: hearty meals, sweet songs, lively conversations, and vibrant art!

Come on out, y’all, and join the joy this Sunday!

05/19/2026

Join us this Sunday, May 24, as we celebrate the ordination of Sid Imes as a pastor in our community! Sid has been a member and trusted leader in our community since his days in Candler School of Theology at Emory University. He has worked and served with us as an intern, an artist in residence, and a recent member of our staff. What a way to welcome Pentecost!

Worship with us in person at 1410 Ponce de Leon Ave NE, Atlanta, Georgia 30307 or online vis our YouTube channel. Worship starts at 8.30 a.m., Sunday, May 24.

05/18/2026

On Sunday, Pastor Chad said: ‘God brings us to the fullness of life always. We can see God in any situation—see who God really is. And Jesus is our glasses to help us see more clearly… That’s giving glory to God. So when we really talk about giving glory to God, we’d better be pointing to who God really is—showing people who God is by the way we live.’

Jesus prays that God will glorify him so that he may glorify God.

‘Glory’ language in the bible is seeing someone—really seeing and knowing them—for who they truly are.

Jesus talks about his relationship with God as mutual seeing and knowing—calling their relationship the glory they shared ‘before ever the world was.’

He understands all that he says and does as giving God glory. His words and his works empower the world to truly see and know the heart of God.

Jesus is the heart of God put on a body—the ‘word made flesh.’

Irenaeus said, ‘The glory of God is the human being fully alive.’

That’s the heart of God Jesus shows us and invites us to know.