Garden City Church

This week, Pastor Shaq Hager explores Daniel 2 and the restless night of King Nebuchadnezzar—a ruler with power, but no peace. As Babylon’s systems of wisdom fail under pressure, Daniel emerges with a Spirit-formed response grounded in humility, not fear. Pastor Shaq invites us to confront the illusions of human control, embrace the wisdom that comes only from God, and renew our allegiance to the...

In Daniel 1 God delivers His people into Nebuchadnezzar's hands, leading to their seventy year exile in Babylon. It's a strange place for God to deliver His people, especially since God's sovereign work is always aimed towards the redemption of His people. Why then would God lead His people into exile in a godless, idolatrous, corrupt, and evil nation? It's there that Daniel and three of his close...

This week, Benjamin Chua discusses what it means to live as exiles in a foreign empire. The Israelites found themselves defeated and taken captive into Babylon, where the prophet, Jeremiah, instructed them to plant their lives and seek the well-being of their neighbors. But, these neighbors have been enemies to Israel. They worship false and foreign gods and practice all kinds of idolatry. Why wou...

This week we returned to our Prophets of the Kingdom series. It's time for our church to begin nominating people from within the church to take on the role of elder and join Garden City's spiritual leadership team. Pastor Dennis walked through a quick biblical theology of eldership starting in Exodus and ending in 1 Peter, and affirmed the inclusion and empowering of women to be elders. We then wa...

Easter isn’t just about what happened to Jesus—it’s about what’s possible for us. This Easter, Pastor Dennis explores how resurrection invites us to remember who we are, rise to new life, and live like God’s Kingdom is breaking in right now. The empty tomb means death doesn’t get the final word—and neither do fear, shame, or injustice. We’re called to be resurrection people who partner with God in...

It's Palm Sunday and Jesus arrives in Jerusalem. The people are ready to inaugurate Him as Israel's conquering King, one who will overthrow Rome's oppressive rule, liberating them from their godless occupier. But, as Pastor Shaq Hager prophetically communicates, Jesus arrives in Jerusalem, sees the city, and weeps. He knows that the thing the people believe will bring them peace — political power,...

In the fifth week of our Lent series, Carrie Buckner talks about justice as a natural outgrowth of fasting, repentance, confession, and renewal. This week, we talked about the biblical call to justice and righteousness, emphasizing restorative justice, which involves uplifting the oppressed and vulnerable. Justice can be practiced on individual, community, and societal levels, encouraging empathy,...

This week, Dennis Allan walks through the story of Jesus meeting a Samaritan woman at a well and how this woman's interaction with Jesus leads to her renewal. In and through Jesus her longings, desires, will, actions, and thoughts are made new. This story is the kind of story available to every person who professes faith in Jesus, yet so many Christians accept Jesus as their Savior and then never...

Confession is more than words - it’s about the posture of our hearts. In this sermon, Julia Allan walks through a story in Luke where a woman with a troubled past pours out her love at Jesus’ feet. Through her actions, we see that true confession brings freedom, not condemnation, and that forgiveness leads to extravagant love. This message invites us to move past shame and embrace the ongoing grac...

This week, Dennis Allan explores the transformative power of repentance through the lens of the Parable of the Prodigal Son. Repentance can often feel risky - what if we fail again? What if we're met with rejection? But Jesus teaches us that true repentance isn't about fear or shame, but about returning over and over to a Father whose grace is more outrageous than our sin and who's already waiting...

This week, Pastor Shaq Hager begins our Lent series by talking through Isaiah 58 and the kind of fast that God desires. Many of us have been taught to engage the spiritual practice of fasting for the purpose of hearing God's voice or seeking an answer to prayer. Yet, the kind of fast God desires for His people is a fast that draws them deeper into His own heart and His own way of living and being...

This week, Dennis Allan demonstrates how, from Genesis to the early church, Scripture reveals that God designed women as co-equal partners in His mission, and Jesus’ ministry—far from restricting them—empowered and affirmed their leadership, calling us to do the same today. But what do we do with Paul’s so-called “problem passages”? In this episode, we examine the biblical case for women in leader...

In this episode, we dive into the biblical and practical theology of elders, tracing their origins from ancient Near Eastern culture through the Old and New Testaments. The sermon highlights how God infused the culturally inherited role of elder with divine purpose, shaping it into a Spirit-empowered, justice-seeking, and servant-hearted role. We explore how the early church redeemed the role of e...

When life feels unstable and everything around us is shaking, where do we find the courage to stand firm? Drawing from Hebrews 12, this sermon explores the contrast between Mt. Sinai and Mt. Zion, reminding us that our hope is in God’s unshakable kingdom. This week, Carrie Buckner shares the true story of a plane crash and it's survivors and, through that story, we'll see how faith and resilience...

This week, Julia Allan walks through Hebrews 12:1-11 and discusses how we build perseverance. In fact, if we become people who consistently choose the path of least resistance, then we'll never become people who know how to endure hardship, struggle, frustration, or obstacles. We'll be people who, when things start to get tough and when it gets hard to keep believing, walk away from Jesus. But, th...

This week, Pastor Shaq Hager talks through Hebrews 10:19-25, focusing on how difficult it can be for us to take hold of the new things Jesus wants to do in the world and in our lives because we keep trying to hold on to old ways of following Jesus. But, these old ways of following Jesus were less about Jesus and more about maintaining safety, security, and stability. In our world today, many peopl...

The people who first read Hebrews were women and men who likely comprised a house church in ancient Rome. Years prior, the entire Christian community had been expelled from Rome. Now, they live in the city subject to ridicule, threats, imprisonment, and poverty. Every day they're faced with the question, "Do you want Jesus and His Kingdom or a comfortable life in the empire?" We're asked a similar...

Jesus is our great high priest who sits at God's right hand, who understands our weaknesses and frailties, who bears the scars of His own crucifixion in His body, and because of all this we can approach God's throne in prayer with confidence that we will be met with grace and mercy and receive the help we need. That's the promise of Hebrews 4:14-16. Pastor Dennis Allan walks through how the origin...

This week, Pastor Shaq Hager guides us through Hebrews 3. There, the author of Hebrews reminds their audience to hold fast to their faith in Jesus, even in moments of uncertainty and doubt. Doubting Jesus isn't sinful. It's not a sign that our faith is weak. Thomas doubted and Jesus didn't scold him. Instead, Jesus showed Thomas His wounds, providing to Thomas the evidence he needed. For many of u...

This week, Pastor Dennis Allan kicks-off our new series, Hold Fast. It's the new year and so many things are shifting and changing around us. A new president will soon be inaugurated, there are wars raging across the world, and in our own personal lives many of us are welcoming new babies, changing jobs, dealing with health issues, and walking through difficult seasons with parents, siblings, gran...

This Christmas Eve, Julia talks with the kids about the way God arrives into our world as a baby, born to simple parents in the middle of nowhere. And, not only that, but the first people God told about this baby were a bunch of nobody shepherds. But in His arrival, God made clear that He sees us, knows us, and loves us. That He will come for us and rescue us. Pastor Dennis, then, talks about the...

This week, Pastor Shaq discusses the Advent theme of love. Mary's Magnifcat is a call to every person who has been overlooked, margianlized, exploited, oppressed, or cast aside that the Messiah is coming. He will scatter the proud, bring down rulers from their thrones, lift up the humble, fill the hungry, send away the rich, and extend mercy to all who seek it. In Jesus' arrival, God's children wi...

This week, Carrie Buckner continues our Advent series. The crowds are coming to John at the Jordan asking to be baptized. He warns the crowds to bear fruit in keeping with repentance, and when asked what they must do John replies by instructing them to do the work of justice. He tells them to set right things that have been made wrong. In essence, he foreshadows in Jesus' arrival the Year of Jubil...

This week, Nick Ventresca, pastor of The Barn Community Church in Doylestown, PA visited to talk through the hope we can find and revel in through the Advent season. We talked through one of Jeremiah's prophecies to God's people - that one day hope would break-in to their world and deliver them from oppression. It's a prophecy that reminds us hope is hard won and fought for. It comes to us and for...

We don't lament enough. When people hurt us, when we experience distress, when we feel insecure or vulnerable, when we've been hurt, wounded, or discarded, when we experience abandonment, when we feel like we're surrounded by evil and see or experience oppression or exploitation, we're invited to turn to God and trust Him to do what only He can and should do. But, lament is not a practice we frequ...