St. Paul Podcast

Pastor Katy Warren preaches. If we are to place our faith in a God that does unexpected and unimaginable things, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that God could break into our lives in some unconventional way. One of the themes of the Advent season is to make room for Christ in our homes and in our lives. To prepare a space for God where we have otherwise been too busy, too distracted, or...

Pastor Sara Olson-Smith preaches on the reign of Christ. The view of our own route is often narrow. Jesus has a wide view, a great big holy atlas. Jesus is spacious, expansive, supreme, towering over all things and all time. Jesus sees the whole big picture, from the beginning to the end of it. Jesus has this big broad view. Jesus’s purpose is to save and redeem the whole universe, to bring togeth...

Pastor Peter W. Marty preaches on sticky faith. Skills and talents accumulate. Learning a new language is built on layers and layers. Our lives are like ten-layer cakes. Faith is the same. When you face challenges or crises in your life, you have accumulated layers and layers of insight, depth of heart, and a Godly hope that comes from attending to your faith. The best kind of faith is a sticky fa...

Pastor Peter W. Marty on saintliness. Saints don’t have to be perfect, famous, or dead. Some of the best saints we know are sitting among us right now. When you refuse to live only for yourselves because you know your lives belong to God, that is what it means to be a living saint. It’s not about the good life but living a life that is good.  Preaching text: Luke 6: 17, 20-26 

Pastor Megan Eide preaches on God’s forgiveness. No one wants to be remembered for their mistakes. Jesus’ message is about identity and grace. Who we are and how we see ourselves is all wrapped up in who God is and how God sees each and every one of us. Nothing we do or say can overshadow our identity in Christ. We are not defined by our mistakes or enslaved to the sins of our past. We are redeeme...

Pastor Katy Warren preaches on repaying debts. We’ve all been “victims” of time lost that we wish we could have back. God promises to repay us for our struggles, not with money, goods, or services but with hope. Hope for what comes next. “Be glad and rejoice...I will repay you.”  Preaching text: Joel 2: 23-28

Pastor Peter W. Marty preaches on knowing God best through the struggles in our lives. We meet God most clearly, most vividly, most especially through our struggles and hardships. The things in life that require the most of us are often the most rewarding. Sometimes suffering, struggle, and blessing are all comingled. We may be wounded through the hardships in our lives, but they are our best chan...

Pastor Sara Olson-Smith preaches on simplicity. Sometimes in faith we don’t have to make things too complicated. So often we think that understanding God or receiving God's mercy or experiencing God’s love demands complicated or elaborate actions. We think there is some complicated recipe we need to cook up a bit of faith to experience God’s healing goodness. We often get in our own way of re...

Pastor Peter W. Marty preaches on 2 Timothy 1:1-7,14. “Guard the good treasure that has been entrusted to you, with the help of the holy spirit, keep safe what has been deposited in you.” What is it about your character, your integrity, your values, and priorities of faith that you would like to leave this world? You have to fan the flames of the precious faith, that treasure that is within you. K...

Pastor Sara Olson-Smith preaches on Luke 16:19-31. This parable offers us an invitation to abundant life now, a way out of the stuckness, of breaking out of the circumstances that keep us apart and divide us. We break out of these patterns that divide the prisons of our own circumstances when we get to know a person beyond their situation, beyond their label. The way we build this new way of being...

Pastor Katy Warren preaches on Luke 19:1-10. There is no better time than right now to reevaluate what consumes our time, our attention, and our efforts in different ways. What we’ve prioritized and what we've put off. We can discover for ourselves the ways God’s love and grace actually move us toward lives that simply can’t wait to do something with that love. 

Pastor Peter W. Marty preaches on Exodus 32:7-14. To have a change of mind or a change of heart when we are wrong,  mistaken, or blind to a very important truth is a beautiful thing. To alter our course or reverse our ways of thinking when we have wronged others, disrespected them, or been too certain of our own certainty is a magnificent move that is open to all of us. Faith is all about change;...

Pastor Megan Eide preaches on Psalm 139:14. ”I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” What difference will it make in our lives when we remember that we were fearfully and wonderfully made? If we saw our worthiness through God’s eyes we would live less for the approval of others, and instead, live freely and boldly as our unique selves.

Pastor Peter W. Marty preaches on gratitude from Luke 14:1, 12-14. How do you repay certain people for something life-changing they’ve done for you? There are times in our lives when gratitude wells up so deeply within us, the unstoppable kind of gratitude, and no note can possibly describe that feeling. There is a way to live life that honors God and others for the blessings we’ve known. 

Pastor Katy Warren preaches on the instinct toward love. That instinct includes choosing to look past societal norms, etiquette, or rules to show love and compassion when someone is hurting. Every day is the right day to care for one another. There is no wrong day to be overwhelmed by the peace and love of God. What are our instincts of faith? What is so ingrained in us that we don’t give a second...

Peter W. Marty preaches on the gifts of discernment. We each have our own unique gift of discernment that makes each of us who we are. We need more than heads full of knowledge, we need hearts full of wisdom. To better discern what is permanent and what is transient in this life and for this, we need wisdom of the heart.

From the early 20th century to the present day, the dream of America as a Beloved Community has grown in response to social conditions and shifts in worldview among philosophers, theologians, and social activists. Like each American Dream in this series, it has ties to certain aspects of the Christian gospel and has implications for ideas about the self, God, and others. That triad offers a lens t...

In week three of the series, the impact of both Enlightenment ideas and the dynamics of the 19th century leads some in society and the church to conceive of the American dream as "a land of opportunity."

Katy Warren preaches on faith. Faith is not being sure where you’re going but going anyway. It is a journey without maps. If true faith is being sure of what we hope for, then we need to regularly evaluate what consumes our hopes and our dreams, placing God at the center of our lives, and letting Christ guide our steps in many ways. Faith has less to do with gathering together a certain quantity a...

The second session in this series takes up the American dream of "a more perfect union," enshrined in the opening lines of the US Constitution (1787). Its relationship to the God-language of the Declaration of Independence and to the "city on a hill" of the Puritans offers a window into the vision and project of the country's founders to respect both the foundational place...

Peter W. Marty preaches on the gift of forgiveness. Receiving the gift of forgiveness should prompt us to develop the kind of mindset of forgiveness. It should inspire in us a posture of generous pardon, to recognize how readily God reaches out beyond our deeds and how God looks beyond consequences to give us a second chance and from which we are to become new people. If we take seriously the Lord...

Drawing heavily on research presented by Abram Van Engen in his 2020 volume, City on a Hill: A History of American Exceptionalism , the introductory session of the 4-part series explores the origins and use of "a city on a hill" as one expression of the American dream. Biblical sources and presidential usages of the phrase contribute to the complexity that the phrase carries today. (Corr...

Pastor Sara Olson-Smith preaches on the plurality of the Lord’s Prayer. This prayer is always a communal thing, even when we pray alone. These words are powerful in how we share them. When we pray, we are pulled into connection with each other; even when we can’t hear each other prayers, we can feel them. 

Pastor Megan Eide preaches on Isaiah. Big or small, Jesus listens with love. Take time to sit in the presence of Christ, building a relationship together. Jesus was not just a character in Bible stories, maybe Jesus is someone we could get to know personally and someone who wants to know us. You are worried and distracted by many things, but there is need of only one thing.  Our worries and duties...

Pastor Katy Warren preaches on the parable of the Good Samaritan. In no Bible will you find the heading named the parable of the robbers. Jesus gives the robbers little attention, focusing on the good Samaritan who showed mercy, was kind and thoughtful, and a good neighbor. The way Jesus decides to tell this parable demonstrates that we have a choice about what we focus our lives on. Are we focusi...