Advertise on podcast: The Garden Church // Sunday Teachings

Teacher: Josh Wilson Text: 1 John 2:3–10 How do you know your faith is real? In this sermon from 1 John 2, Pastor Josh suggests that the answer doesn't lie in how hard you believe or how many good deeds you stack up. Like the weather vane on Faneuil Hall, love doesn't steer God's life toward us — it shows which way the wind is already blowing. Real faith is about our direction, and it always moves outward toward the people around us.

Teacher: Mandi Paszek Text: 1 John 1:8–2:2 We all default to justifying, minimizing, or ignoring what's wrong in us, but in the Gospels, Jesus meets sinners with welcome instead of condemnation. In this sermon from 1 John 1:8–2:2, Mandi argues that naming our sin isn't about shame; it's about finally seeing reality clearly. When we stop hiding—from God and from people we trust—something breaks loose, and grace comes in. Confession is our way back to freedom.

Teacher: Josh Wilson Text: 1 John 1:1–7 How do we know our faith is the real thing? John's answer in 1 John 1 cuts against our instinct to reduce faith to one piece—being moral, knowing Scripture, feeling good, working for justice. Instead, John says the life he's passing on is one he has actually heard, seen, and touched: God has come close, and real faith is less a flawless standard than a direction. Turn toward the light, and the rest grows downstream.

Teacher: Josh Wilson Text: 1 Peter 2:9–12 and 3:15–16 In the final sermon of the Be My Witness series, Pastor Josh asks a question that's easy to dodge: when people look at our lives, what do they actually see? Peter's answer to what brings people into the Kingdom isn't a sharper argument or a slicker pitch—it's a good life. The Greek word for "good" here, kalos, also means beautiful: a life so good that people stop and wonder what they're missing.

Teacher: Josh Wilson Text: 2 Corinthians 5:14–21 We tend to treat faith like a favorite ice cream flavor—true for me, maybe not for you—but Paul calls us ambassadors, people entrusted with news too good to keep to ourselves. In this sermon from 2 Corinthians 5, Josh names a claim a lot of us quietly resist: the good news of Jesus was never meant to be kept private. In fact, when we keep the news to ourselves, we often withhold something good from someone else.

Teacher: Josh Wilson Text: Acts 8:26–39  In this sermon from Acts 8, Pastor Josh makes a counterintuitive case: witness begins not with talking, but with listening. Long before we ever show up, God is already at work in the people around us. Through Philip's encounter with an Ethiopian traveler on a desert road, Josh traces three moves that put us in step with the Spirit: listen, ask, and risk. All you need is the courage to take the next small step and watch God do what only God can do.

Teacher: Josh Wilson Text: Luke 19:1–10 In this sermon from Luke 19, Pastor Josh argues that what keeps us from sharing good news usually isn't the awkwardness of faith — it's the respectful distance we keep from almost everyone. Zacchaeus is up a tree because nobody in town wants him close, and Jesus invites himself over for dinner anyway, before Zacchaeus has changed a single thing. It turns out hospitality doesn't require string lights or a clean apartment — just the willingness to get close enough to be curious. Belonging comes first; belief and behavior follow.

Teacher: Mandi Paszek Text: Acts 1:8; John 4 We begin the Be My Witness series with love. In this sermon, Mandi asks why being a witness so often feels like being a used-car salesman, and answers with the Samaritan woman, who simply couldn't stop talking about the God who met her face to face. What if witness was simply the overflow of being loved?

Teacher: Damaris Taylor Text: Psalm 103 Damaris Taylor closes our psalms series with a reciting of the reasons to praise — not a mood we manufacture, but a response to what God has already done, and indeed continues to do: forgives, heals, redeems, crowns, and satisfies. Even an anxious heart can finally rest here, because the steadfast love of the Lord isn't going anywhere.

Teacher: Josh Wilson Text: Psalm 146:5-10 In this sermon from Psalm 146, Pastor Josh traces the difference between the princes who can't save us — politicians, portfolios, five-year plans — and the God who is both powerful enough to help and close enough to care. Worship doesn't ask us to pretend our problems aren't real; it moves them out of the center of the frame so that God can become the biggest, most true thing in view.

Teacher: Maggie Austen Text: Psalm 10:1-2, 12-17 In this sermon from Psalm 10, Maggie Austen names two lies most of us believe about anger — that it isn't safe, or that it isn't even real — and pushes back on both. Drawing on her own story of disability and a psalmist who never cleans up before God, she argues anger might be the one emotion we can't fake: it's a witness, not a warning. The invitation is to bring our rage to a God who takes it in hand.

Teacher: Josh Wilson Text: Psalm 126:1-6 In this sermon from Psalm 126, Pastor Josh asks how joy can survive when life feels dry and our prayers go unanswered. The psalm is a song of joy sung by a people who weren't winning—proof that joy and grief can live in the same breath. Pastor Josh teaches that when we draw from the "well of memory" (what God has done) and the "well of hope" (what God will do), we can find joy even in the valley. This is our act of resistance against despair.

Teacher: Mandi Paszek  Text: Psalm 42:1-11  In this sermon from Psalm 42, Mandi makes the case that lament—bringing our real grief honestly to God—isn't the opposite of faith but a doorway into it. She shares how grief needs three things: room to breathe, a companion, and room to coexist with hope. We don't have to rush past our pain to reach God; He meets us in it, like a father running toward a child. The invitation isn't to grieve less, but to grieve well—and discover that God is already near.

Teacher: Josh Wilson Text: Psalm 86:1-7 Psalm 86 reads as one of the most personal prayers in Scripture, yet it's almost entirely borrowed. It's a patchwork of older psalms and the words of Torah stitched together during Israel's exile. In this sermon, Pastor Josh asserts that ancient, handed-down tools of faith like this are exactly what our souls need. We don't have to keep manufacturing our spirituality from scratch; instead we can turn to handed-down words and practices — like Scripture, the Psalms, or the Lord's Prayer — to lead us back to God.

Teacher: Josh Wilson Text: Psalm 122:1-4 In this sermon from Psalm 122, Pastor Josh makes a quiet but unsettling claim: faith is deeply personal, but it was never meant to be private. We've been trained to treat the real thing as whatever happens inside us—just me and God—and to leave community, ritual, and shared worship as optional extras. But the people of this psalm sing in the plural; they journey toward God together, and that is exactly how we get formed too. You cannot become who God is calling you to be on your own.