Citizens Church

Citizens Church

Weekend messages from Citizens Church in Franklin, TN. For more information visit citizens.church

  1. 12h ago

    Faithful Servants Enter Into Joy

    Everybody's waiting on something. A diagnosis. A decision. A phone call that hasn't come yet. And most of us handle the waiting the same way — we either check out completely, or we white-knuckle it, watching the clock, unable to actually live in the meantime. This episode starts there: with the strange, universal discomfort of not knowing when the thing you're waiting for is going to happen. From that starting point, the conversation moves into an old story — one about servants left in charge of a household while the master is away, and about ten people waiting for a wedding, half of whom show up unprepared. Strip away the ancient setting and the questions underneath are startlingly current: What do you do with the time you've been given when you don't know how much of it you have? Do you drift, distract yourself, and assume there's always more time later — or do you actually build something with what's in front of you right now? The core idea is simple to say and hard to live: real faithfulness isn't a dramatic, one-time performance. It's ordinary obedience, shown up for daily, even when no one's watching and the outcome is delayed longer than expected. It's the difference between people who talk a good game and people whose lives actually hold up under pressure — who keep showing up, keep doing the quiet, unglamorous work, instead of coasting on good intentions.

  2. 6d ago

    The Elephant in the Church

    Here's a question most of us avoid: who's actually forming you right now? Not in an abstract way — literally, day to day. Your feed, your job, the people you spend the most time with, the shows you watch before bed. Something is shaping how you see money, success, relationships, and yourself. Most of us never stop to ask what it is, or whether we'd choose it on purpose. The idea at the center of this conversation is simple but easy to avoid: real change in a person's life doesn't usually come from a program, a class, or an expert. It comes from ordinary people — imperfect, still figuring things out — who decide to be intentional with the people already around them. A parent. A coworker. A friend who asks good questions. You don't need a title or a decade of experience to help someone take their next step. You just need to be a few steps ahead and willing to turn around and show someone the way. There's also something freeing in here for anyone who's ever felt disqualified — too messy, too uncertain, too new to whatever they believe — to be a positive influence on someone else. The people entrusted with the biggest task in this story weren't polished experts. They were ordinary, doubting, imperfect people who said yes anyway. Whether you've got this all figured out or you're just curious what it means to intentionally invest in another person's life, this episode is an invitation to ask a simple question: who's one person you could show up for a little more on purpose?

  3. Jul 17

    The God Who Sees

    There's a particular kind of loneliness that has nothing to do with being alone. You can be in a house full of people who need you, a marriage that looks fine from the outside, a job where everyone depends on you — and still go to bed at night feeling like nobody actually knows what you're carrying. Everyone knows your role. Almost no one knows your pain. This episode starts there, with an old story about a woman named Hagar who had about as little power as a person could have — no say over her body, her home, or her future. She gets used, then discarded, then runs into the wilderness pregnant and alone. And it's there, in the middle of nowhere, that someone finally stops long enough to ask her a real question and wait for the real answer. What follows is a case for two of the most basic human needs we tend to underestimate: being seen and being heard. Not glanced at — actually noticed. Not half-listened to while someone waits for their turn to talk — actually heard. The episode makes the case that most of the harm we do to each other isn't cruelty, it's hurry: we're moving too fast, distracted, assuming everyone's fine because they said so. And it argues that the people who feel the most unseen are often the ones everyone relies on the most.

  4. Jul 7

    5x5 Sunday

    Citizens Church

  5. Jun 30

    Summer at Citizens |  Andrew Atkinson

    Summer has a way of filling up our calendars while quietly emptying out everything else. Trips, kids' activities, time off from normal routines — none of it is bad, but somewhere in the middle of all that motion, it's easy to end up busy and depleted at the same time. This episode starts with that very ordinary, very human tension: how do you stay full when life keeps pulling you toward distraction, comparison, and drift? The conversation centers on an old story about a wedding that ran out of wine — and how something completely unremarkable (plain stone jars of water) became the setting for something unexpected. The idea isn't really about the miracle itself, but about what it represents: the ordinary parts of our lives having the potential to become something richer when we stop trying to manage them alone. The episode lands on three patterns worth noticing when life starts to feel thin: drifting away from the things that ground you, getting pulled in too many directions at once, and measuring your life against everyone else's highlight reel. None of these are dramatic failures — they're just quiet, everyday slips that add up. The counter to all three isn't a bigger effort, but a smaller one: making room, staying present, and choosing to show up even when it doesn't feel urgent. Whether you've got a long history with faith, a complicated one, or none at all, this episode is really about something everyone deals with — how to keep your life from running on empty when the world keeps asking for more of you.

  6. Jun 18

    Created, Called, & Confident

    Most of us spend a significant amount of energy trying to figure out who we are — scrolling through other people's lives, measuring ourselves against what we've accomplished or failed to accomplish, and quietly wondering if we're enough. The comparison trap is exhausting, and the confidence it occasionally produces never seems to last very long. This episode pushes back on that cycle with a straightforward but surprisingly freeing idea: your identity isn't something you have to construct or earn. Drawing from ancient texts and some remarkably practical observations about human nature, the teaching argues that you were made with intention — and that the source of that intention matters more than any external validation ever could. The sermon walks through three grounding claims: that you carry something of the divine in how you were made, that you're wired for a life of meaning and impact (not just accumulation), and that real confidence isn't manufactured — it's received. The "good life," as it turns out, looks less like a personal brand and more like a person genuinely at peace with who they are and why they're here. There's also an honest look at how easily we trade away the things that actually sustain us — settling for counterfeits of peace, joy, and purpose — and what it looks like to reclaim what we've given up. It's a conversation about identity, belonging, and what it means to live like someone who's already been chosen.

  7. Jun 3

    The Book of James | Waiting in Faith

    We all know what it feels like to be in a waiting room. Not just the physical kind — hard chairs, bad lighting, a TV no one picked — but the invisible kind. The one where you're sitting with a relationship that won't heal, a prayer you've said so many times you've almost stopped meaning it, or a version of your life you're still hoping will show up. Waiting is uncomfortable precisely because you're not in control. You can't speed up the outcome. All you can do is sit there and wonder if anyone on the other side of the door knows you're out there. In this episode, we're looking at one of the most honest pieces of ancient writing about what to do when life stalls out. Written to a community of people who were exhausted and wondering if they'd been forgotten, it reads less like a theology lesson and more like a survival guide. The central question it asks is a sharp one: How you wait reveals who you actually trust. That's either convicting or comforting, depending on where you are — and probably both. We unpack three ideas that hold up whether you're a lifelong churchgoer or someone who wandered into this podcast from somewhere else. First: that patience isn't the same thing as passivity. There's a way to act on your circumstances and trust something bigger than yourself at the same time — and a farming metaphor from two thousand years ago turns out to be a surprisingly useful image for it. Second: that prayer isn't a formula you run to produce an outcome — it's a posture, and there's a meaningful difference. Third: that the thing quietly eating at you in a hard season doesn't get better in isolation. What you don't bring into the light, you tend to medicate in the dark. It doesn't promise that the waiting ends the way you want it to. But it does make a case that waiting doesn't have to hollow you out — that there's a way to stay whole, stay connected, and stay honest with yourself and the people around you while you're in it.

  8. May 27

    The Book of James | When Your Plans Fall Apart

    Most of us are running some version of a plan. A career plan, a financial plan, a family plan — maybe a backup plan for the backup plan. And for a lot of us, that planning isn't just practical, it's emotional. Our plans are where we park our sense of security. So when one collapses — a diagnosis, a job loss, a relationship that doesn't hold — it doesn't just disrupt the schedule. It rattles something deeper. This episode digs into a passage from the book of James that cuts right to the heart of that rattled feeling. The problem, James argues, isn't that we make plans. It's the quiet assumption buried inside them — that tomorrow belongs to us. That if we're organized enough, prepared enough, strategic enough, we can secure the outcome. James calls that assumption out for what it is: not wisdom, but a kind of subtle arrogance that puts us at the center of a story we were never actually in control of. From there, the conversation explores one of the most unsettling questions in the passage: What is your life? James answers it with an image — a mist. Here for a moment, then gone. It's not meant to be depressing. It's meant to be clarifying. Because when life is brief, the question of what you're actually trusting becomes urgent in a way that's hard to ignore. The episode lands on something more practical than you might expect: the difference between planning wisely and planning as if God has no say in the outcome. And beyond future plans, it gets at the quieter disobedience most of us are already living — the apology we keep putting off, the hard conversation we're "waiting for the right time" to have, the thing we already know we should do but haven't. If you've ever felt the exhaustion of trying to control things that were never yours to control — or if you're just curious what it might look like to hold your plans a little more loosely — this one's worth a listen.

See All (109)

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
3 Ratings

About

Weekend messages from Citizens Church in Franklin, TN. For more information visit citizens.church

Information

  • Creator
    Citizens Church
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    109
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Citizens Church
  • Show Website
    Citizens Church