GARDEN CHURCH Podcast

During a power outage Pastor Darren did an impromptu sermon all around the Hebrew word Selah. We constantly need holy pauses to reflect and contemplate how God is working in us, where is God taking us, and who is God forming us to be? Listen as we refocus Garden Church through this Selah.

Pastor Darren begins our series Practicing the Way of Jesus as we look to the first principle of discipleship, to be with Jesus. Currently, we are constantly pulled in multiple directions every day, work, family, friends, the gym, and Netflix. When can we have time to be with Jesus? In order to live the life that Jesus calls us into, we also need to adopt the lifestyle of Jesus. This means a radical reshaping of how we spend our time, primarily how we spend time with God.

Discipleship to Jesus is more than just attending a Sunday service. True Discipleship is marked by accepting the call to be with Jesus, to be like Jesus, and to do what Jesus did. Pastor John Mark Comer of Bridgetown Church in Portland, Oregon helps us end our "Garden Church" series as we transition into a year-long series entitled "Practicing the Way of Jesus."

Our current age is plagued by the lie that "material things will make you happy, and the more you have will only make you even happier." This idea is completely foreign to Jesus and should be alien to his followers. Pastor Darren walks us through the value of Simplicity as a way of life that should be prevailing in our church, a life marked my simple living so that we may live abundantly generous lives that reign in Heaven on Earth.

What is God's primary way of moving forward the Kingdom? Generosity. God is a generous God that models giving wholeheartedly. Pastor Darren continues our value series, Garden Church, with the introduction of our fifth value - A life committed to extravagant generosity. Join us as we walk through this value together in order to bring God's generous love in our every day lives.

We as Garden Church want to live a life moved by compassion. Pastor Bill helps us wrestle with the difficulty of living a compassionate lifestyle in our modern age. Where the world, culture, friends, and even family are so inward focused, how can we possibly begin to take a step for those who are "others" to us? Listen and learn how we can invite those who are "other" to us, into the present Trinitarian reality that we are all invited into.

In Romans 12:1-2, Paul urges the church to offer their lives as living sacrifices to God, which is pleasing to God. However, in order to live a life pleasing to God, it needs to be filled with God and dedicated to God. This can only happen when the Holy Spirit invades our lives, our everyday and normal lives. Our guest, Alan Scott, guides us in our third value "being empowered by the Holy Spirit," and shows us how God can break out of the holy and extraordinary and break into the plain and mundane.

In Romans 12:1-2, Paul urges the church to offer their lives as living sacrifices to God, which is pleasing to God. However, in order to live a life pleasing to God, it needs to be filled with God and dedicated to God. This can only happen when the Holy Spirit invades our lives, our everyday and normal lives. Our guest, Alan Scott, guides us in our third value "being empowered by the Holy Spirit," and shows us how God can break out of the holy and extraordinary and break into the plain and mundane.

As we continue in our Value Series, Garden Church, Pastor Darren walks us through our second value - A Life Rooted in the Scriptures. The Bible has been ignored, abused, misread, and misused by people outside and within the Church. We want to create a culture that values the Scriptures and properly handles them, while also having our lives firmly rooted in its teachings.

With the launch of house churches, Pastor Darren led us into the start of a new sermon series, Garden Church: Essentials for Kingdom Life. This series' intention is to go over our values as a church, and how these values are what we believe every Christian should embody at Garden Church. The first value is, a life shared with loving family. The church is a family founded on the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus that thrives together. Followers of Jesus are not meant to live in isolation, for life, reprove, and growth cannot happen in solidarity.