GARDEN CHURCH Podcast

While community, practice, and teaching may all help with transformation, they are not the primary source of transformation. The final step of transformation changes when our environment is changed and replaced with the Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit that comes in and uses our community, our practices, and teachings to transform and strengthen our will. Listen as Pastor Darren helps us understand, fully, how we can change into Christ-likeness.

The Way of Jesus, or the Way of the Cross, is not a way to be taken lightly. As Bonhoeffer said, "When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die." How do we live a life marked by carrying our cross, self-denial, and death? Pastor Bill Dogeterom helps us walk through this paradigm and what it means for us in the midst of our everyday ordinary lives.

Discipleship needs to be done in community. Especially, during our current age where communities can be found through social media, blogs, and websites. Authentic community that builds, sustains, exposes, challenges, and forms us into Christlikeness is found in the church. Listen as our guest speaker, Megan Fate Marshman helps continue our Practicing the Way of Jesus series, and helps us understand the role of community in our relationship to each other and God.

Doing something is different than wanting to do something. I order to live a life in the way of Jesus, we have to reshape the way we do life. This includes the way that we incorporate practices of Jesus. These practices take many shapes and forms but ultimately are rooted in the person of Jesus. Listen, as Pastor Darren walks us deeper into Intentional Spiritual Formation, as we discuss the importance of, practices.

We as humans are constantly being formed by the world around us. If we are not careful, we will be shaped to look more like the culture of the world, while thinking we are moving more towards Christ-likeness. Listen as Pastor Darren helps us set up a paradigm that will help us live lives of intentional spiritual formation. This will be our foundation to practice the way of Jesus, by being with Jesus, becoming like Jesus, and doing what Jesus did.

With the start of each new year, there comes an overarching sense of reflection of the past year, and the hopeful planning of the year to come. Pastor Bill walks us through his reflection of becoming more like Jesus, and why because God is always there in the midst of victories and failures we are called to tune our hearts to him and his voice. Listen as we start this new year off with a new sense of our place in the relationship between Creator and creation.

Christmas has become so familiar to us. However, when we take a closer look at the Christmas story, we realize that Jesus' birth is anything but familiar. Join us as Pastor Darren helps reintroduce us to the Christmas story, as the radical arrival of the Messiah, Jesus.

"I have to get to this meeting. I have to make sure I can post this. I have to make sure I have time for my family, friends, and myself." Our culture is constantly moving us into a space that is marked by hurry, and it is stretching us thin and wearing us out. In order to thrive in the midst of the 21st century, we need to adopt the lifestyle and pace of our God and Rabbi, Jesus. Listen as Pastor Darren walks us through practical steps in living an unhurried life.

John Rinehart joins us in his second message at Garden Church on the practicals of generosity. In order to live a life that is rooted in the generous God of the Bible, we need to make drastic shifts in our day to day. We do not want to be people marked by how much we earn, but by how much we give. Join us in learning practical ways to implement a generous lifestyle.

Because YAHWEH is so generous and loving, his people should be just as generous and loving. God has been so good since the beginning of creation, the redemption of His people, and the continual outpouring of His Spirit. Once we truly understand this about God, we can then live out a radically different life marked by generosity. Listen as our guest speaker, John Rinehart, walks us through the 'Theology of Generosity'.