Pilgrim Baptist Church

09/09/2026

Every believer prays. Every believer opens a Bible. Every believer sings on Sunday morning. Grace gets used all week long.

But has it made anything new of you?

Most men treat grace like a tool. They reach for it in a crisis and set it down once the trouble passes. A vessel doesn't work that way.

Jeremiah stood in a potter's house and watched a vessel spoil in the maker's hand. The potter didn't throw it away. "So he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it" (Jeremiah 18:4).

A tool gets picked up and put down at a man's convenience. A vessel gets remade, and remaking takes time on the wheel.

The Holy Spirit isn't looking for men who dip into religion when it suits them. He wants clay willing to sit still long enough to be shaped in the closet, in the home, at work, in the pew, until it no longer looks like the lump it was.

Paul told Timothy plainly: "If a man therefore purge himself... he shall be a vessel unto honour, sanctified, and meet for the master's use" (2 Timothy 2:21).

That takes purging, and a willingness to be useful on the Master's terms, not your own.

Sit still long enough to find out what He'll make of you.

Pastor Fortunato
Founding Pastor & Preacher of the Word.
Pilgrim Baptist Church — Cookeville, Tennessee

https://pilgrimbaptist.church/
https://www.sermonaudio.com/solo/pilgrimbaptist/

A biblical look at grace, sanctification, and being remade by God. From Pastor Fortunato, Pilgrim Baptist Church, Cookeville TN.

09/08/2026

His own brothers gave him the pitch. Go public. Show yourself. Let the world see what you can do. It sounded like encouragement. It was his brothers packaging their doubt as advice.

John tells us plainly why they pushed him toward the spotlight — "For neither did his brethren believe in him" (John 7:5). They weren't rooting for him. They were testing him, and calling it family concern.

Jesus didn't need their approval to know who He was.

Here's what gets me every time I sit with this text: the world's favorite offer to God's people was never a bottle or a needle. It's a platform. And nobody warns you about chasing one, because we've decided to call that ambition instead of what it is.

Jesus called it what it was. He refused the dose.

If you're waiting on this world to notice you before you'll be faithful, you've already traded places with His brothers. You don't need an audience. You need a Father who sees in secret — and that has always been enough.

Your time is alway ready. Don't spend it performing for people who were never going to believe you anyway.

Want the full sermon this post came from? Hear "Your Time Is Alway Ready" preached in full.

Pastor Fortunato
Founding Pastor & Preacher of the Word.
Pilgrim Baptist Church — Cookeville, Tennessee

https://pilgrimbaptist.church/
https://www.sermonaudio.com/solo/pilgrimbaptist/

Discover how Jesus refused the world's offer of fame and recognition in John 7 — a biblical call to Christian living over selfish ambition.

09/07/2026

In 2022, a church in Chicago's Old Town neighborhood spent five weeks preaching a series called "The Gospel According to Dolly." Not five minutes borrowing an illustration. Five full Sundays, each one built around a different Dolly Parton song, until the illustration became the message.

I understand the instinct. Attendance is down, the culture's moved on, and somebody on staff thinks a familiar name in the sermon title will get people back in the pews. But if the Bible needs Dolly Parton to stay relevant, you've already decided the Bible isn't enough on its own. That decision gets made quietly, long before anyone puts it in a sermon title.

Paul told Timothy that all Scripture is profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness, "that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works." He didn't leave room in that verse for a celebrity or a movie or a cultural moment to finish furnishing what Scripture left unfinished.

An illustration is a window. It's supposed to let more light onto the text, not replace the text as the light source. The moment a preacher needs the culture to open the door before the Bible can walk through it, he has quietly told his congregation which one he actually trusts.

Pastors, your people don't need you to be interesting. They need you to be faithful. Preach the book. It was sufficient before Dolly Parton was born, and it's still sufficient now that she's gone.

"All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness." — 2 Timothy 3:16

Pastor Fortunato
Founding Pastor & Preacher of the Word.
Pilgrim Baptist Church — Cookeville, Tennessee

https://pilgrimbaptist.church/
https://www.sermonaudio.com/solo/pilgrimbaptist/

A Chicago church built a 5-week sermon series on Dolly Parton songs. A biblical look at why preachers don't need celebrity to be relevant.

09/06/2026

09/06/2026



09/06/2026

09/04/2026

Look at what Jesus does not say to the twelve after the crowd walks off. He doesn't remind them of all he's done for them. He doesn't guilt them into staying. He just asks a question. "Will ye also go away?"

Sit with that a minute. The crowd is gone. The fair-weather followers have scattered. It would be the easiest thing in the world for Jesus to turn to the twelve and start applying pressure. Instead he gives them the same freedom he gave everybody else. He's willing to let them go too, if that's what they want.

That ought to convict us. A lot of what passes for ministry these days is guilt trips and manufactured urgency dressed up as conviction. Jesus never did business that way, and neither should we.

Peter's answer is what makes this beautiful. He doesn't say, "I'm too committed to quit, Lord." He asks a question back. "Lord, to whom shall we go?" He'd already run the numbers on every other option and come up empty. That's not loyalty born of pressure. That's a man who's looked around and realized there's nowhere else worth going.

If your faith only holds up because somebody's pushing you to stay, it isn't faith yet. It's compliance. Real faith looks at the alternatives, counts the cost, and stays anyway. It wasn't cornered into staying. It was convinced.

Convinced, Not Cornered

This post only covers one exchange between Jesus and Peter. The full sermon walks through what it means to be chosen, and why His faithfulness never depended on ours.

Pastor Fortunato
Founding Pastor & Preacher of the Word.
Pilgrim Baptist Church — Cookeville, Tennessee

https://pilgrimbaptist.church/
https://www.sermonaudio.com/solo/pilgrimbaptist/

A biblical look at John 6:67-68 — why real faith in Jesus Christ is conviction, not compliance, and what Peter's answer reveals.

09/03/2026

09/03/2026

The world has spent this week deciding what to do with Dolly Parton's soul. Half of them have preached her straight into glory because she was kind, generous, and never said a cross word about anybody. The other half have already signed her death certificate for hell because of Pl***oy covers and a movie about a wh******se. Both crowds are doing something the Bible never gives us the authority to do.

But listen to her own words about the day she says she found God. An old abandoned church. Broken windows. Filthy pictures on the wall. A busted piano. And in the middle of all that, she says peace fell over her, and she felt like she'd found God.

Here's what troubles me. She never once said she saw herself as a sinner standing before a holy God. Christ crucified never came up. Repentance never came up. She felt a presence, and she called it salvation. That's not conversion. That's an experience she never tested against Scripture.

And before we shake our heads at Dolly, we better look in the mirror. How many church members today build their whole assurance on a feeling they had one time at an altar, and never once let the Word examine whether that feeling was ever repentance at all? A feeling is not faith. Faith rests on the finished work of Christ, not on a memory of peace in a broken-down building.

Test yourself. Not her. You.

"Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves." — 2 Corinthians 13:5

Pastor Fortunato
Founding Pastor & Preacher of the Word.
Pilgrim Baptist Church — Cookeville, Tennessee

https://pilgrimbaptist.church/
https://www.sermonaudio.com/solo/pilgrimbaptist/

Was Dolly Parton truly born again? A biblical look at her testimony reveals experience without repentance—and a warning for every believer.

09/02/2026

Judas didn't leave the group in John 6. Everybody else did. He stayed. He kept eating the bread, kept following the crowd, kept his seat at the table. But his heart had already gone. He was just waiting for the right moment to prove it.

That ought to sober us. We picture apostasy as a dramatic exit. A slammed door. A day you could mark on the calendar. But that's not usually how it goes. A man doesn't wake up one morning and decide he's done with the Lord. He just stops praying like he used to. He stops opening the book. He keeps showing up on Sunday because that's what's expected of him, but the hunger is gone. He's following Jesus for the fish sandwiches, not for the flesh and blood.

That's what happened in John 6. The crowd loved Jesus when He was feeding them and confirming what they already wanted. The minute His words got personal — "except it were given unto him of my Father" — they walked. Not because the Father withheld anything from them. He didn't. The gift was offered to all. They walked because truth cost them something they weren't willing to pay.

You will not backslide by accident. You will backslide by neglect, small neglect, repeated, until one day you look up and you've drifted farther than you ever meant to go. Guard the small disciplines. They're the only thing standing between you and the fade.

This post came from one line in the middle of John 6:65 — "except it were given unto him of my Father." The whole sermon is worth your time, not just the crumb.

Pastor Fortunato
Founding Pastor & Preacher of the Word.
Pilgrim Baptist Church — Cookeville, Tennessee

https://pilgrimbaptist.church/
https://www.sermonaudio.com/solo/pilgrimbaptist/

A biblical look at spiritual backsliding from John 6 — how small neglect, not sudden apostasy, leads Christians away from Christ.