Whether you call them homilies, sermons, or talks, there’s a lot you can learn from the spiritual leaders in our community. While in a perfect world, you’d have time to listen to everyone, that simply isn’t possible for most with limited time to spare. To help, we’ve surfaced and summarized the teachings from the audio sermons of some of the most influential priests and pastors from around town and in the Christian sphere.
You can skip to a specific section by clicking the links below.
Jump to:
- Fr. Mike Schmitz
- Buckhead Church
- Cathedral of Christ the King
- Passion City Church
- Want to add your church? Request that here
Fr. Mike Schmitz
Fr. Mike Schmitz begins by addressing a common desire among people who take their faith seriously: the longing to love God better and possess a deeper, stronger faith. Many people mistakenly believe that having more faith would make life and prayer easier, or that faith is built on having all the answers and constant feelings of certainty. However, Fr. Mike clarifies that beyond the baseline requirement of God’s grace, true spiritual growth requires two very specific things that people rarely look for: trials and prayer. While we do not need to go looking for trials—as difficulty, suffering, and weakness will inevitably find us—our deliberate response to these hardships is precisely where our faith grows.
Drawing from the 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time’s second reading (Romans 8), Fr. Mike emphasizes St. Paul’s words: “The Spirit comes to the aid of our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought.” This scripture highlights a profound truth that many believers struggle to accept—that the Holy Spirit meets us in our weakness, not our strength. Citing the Catechism, Fr. Mike explains that our trust in God as a Father is tested and proven in times of tribulation, particularly in the silent gap between making a petitionary prayer and receiving an answer. It is in this uncomfortable space of waiting, or during ordinary trials like dryness and distraction in prayer, that our faith is fortified if we choose to patiently remain with the Lord instead of running away.
Fr. Mike then shifts the focus from the procedures of prayer to the posture of prayer. While tools like the Rosary, Lectio Divina, or acronyms like A.C.T.S. (Adoration, Contrition, Thanksgiving, Supplication) are genuinely helpful, prayer at its core is not a mechanical checklist. True prayer requires a posture of complete dependence rather than self-reliance or competence. Fr. Mike admits that even as a priest, when people ask how they can pray for him, his honest answer is usually, “I don’t know.” Like the blind man Bartimaeus in the Gospels, it is wonderful to share our vulnerable, small desires with God, but we must also acknowledge that we frequently ask for things against God’s will or demand quick answers simply so we can stop worrying.
Ultimately, prayer reveals the hidden conditions we place on our relationship with God, such as promising to be at peace only if He does what we ask. To break free from these conditions, Fr. Mike invites everyone to adopt a simple practice used by many devout student missionaries: beginning every single prayer by pausing and saying, “Come, Holy Spirit, teach me how to pray.” By intentionally starting from a place of admitted weakness and total reliance on the Holy Spirit, we allow God to step in and lead us. The homily concludes with the reminder that because trials will always come, our only job is to face them with a posture of absolute trust, relying on the Spirit to teach us how to pray through our dependence.
Listen to the full version here.
Buckhead Church
In her sermon at Buckhead Church, part of a series titled “The Garden,” April Farmer explores the vital spiritual discipline of pruning. Building on the previous week’s lesson that gardens must be intentionally cultivated rather than passively consumed, Farmer argues that simply planting good seeds is not enough. Even the healthiest garden will eventually be overtaken by weeds—unwanted, uninvited habits and attitudes—if left to nature alone. Using the personal analogy of her own neglected rose bushes, she emphasizes that nature favors weeds, and without active intervention, our relationships and hearts will naturally gravitate toward dysfunction.
Farmer defines pruning as the intentional removal of whatever prevents healthy growth, emphasizing that it is done not because a plant is bad, but because it is valuable. Drawing from the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, written while Paul was literally in chains, she highlights his urgent plea for the early church to live a life worthy of their calling. She clarifies that Christians are called to stand out and look different from the surrounding culture, living not for God’s acceptance, but from a place of gratitude for the sacrifice of Jesus.
To contrast a healthy community with a weed-infested one, Farmer challenges the congregation with a modern “antithesis” of Paul’s teachings, showing how current culture encourages people to cancel others, defend their own opinions at all costs, and make themselves the ultimate authority. She contrasts the cultural fruits of pride, harshness, and hostility with the spiritual call to cultivate humility, gentleness, and peace. True unity, she notes, is an inheritance purchased by the blood of Christ, and it requires continuous, intentional effort to protect because relational weeds grow much faster than flowers.
Ultimately, the sermon calls for deep personal reflection and humility, reminding the audience that “nobody pulls weeds standing up.” Citing John 15, Farmer reassures the congregation that God’s pruning is not a sign of abandonment, but concrete evidence that He wants His garden to flourish. The message concludes with an open invitation to prayer, urging individuals to stop managing their personal weeds—such as offense, impatience, or the need to always be right—and instead get on their knees to let God heal and transform their hearts.
Listen to the full version here.
Cathedral of Christ The King
Archbishop Hartmayer opens his homily by drawing from the Book of Wisdom, pointing out a concept that is easy to say but difficult to truly believe: God’s supreme might is the absolute source of His justice. Because God is the ultimate master of all things, He chooses to judge humanity with profound clemency and governs us with immense tolerance. The Archbishop notes that people frequently treat power and gentleness as opposites, operating under the assumption that a powerful leader would have no patience left over for mercy. However, scripture radically upends this dynamic, proving that God’s patience is not a limitation on His power, but rather the ultimate expression of it.
This divine patience takes center stage in the day’s Gospel parable of the weeds and the wheat. When servants discover that an enemy has secretly sowed weeds among the master’s good crop, their immediate, impetuous instinct is to take control and aggressively rip the weeds out. The master flatly refuses, commanding them to let both grow together until the harvest to prevent the good wheat from being accidentally uprooted. The Archbishop observes that human beings are naturally uncomfortable leaving things unresolved; we crave instant clarity, wanting to clean up life’s messes and definitively label who is faithful and who is not right now. The parable, conversely, demands that we trust a timeline and a final judgment that are completely out of our hands.
Crucially, Archbishop Hartmayer emphasizes that waiting for the harvest is not the same as being indifferent to evil. The parable explicitly identifies the weeds as destructive elements destined for the fire, never pretending they are harmless. However, the authority to separate the crop belongs exclusively to the harvester at the end of the age, not to the servants. The Archbishop notes that this delay is actually a gift of mercy for our own sake, as none of us would want to be judged based on the current state of our lives. Unlike literal weeds, human beings possess free will, an intellect, and a heart, meaning that keeping the field unresolved leaves the door open for genuine conversion and a change of heart.
Listen to the full version here.
Passion City Church
Louie Giglio begins his sermon by challenging the broader congregation to reject the passive discipleship of modern algorithms that seek to dominate human attention and shape cultural positions. Reflecting on the profound spiritual hunger he witnessed among teenagers at a recent youth camp, he notes how these young students arrived eager to be taught rather than entertained, sitting with open Bibles and notebooks. Giglio argues that while the average person is discipled for hours every single week by screens telling them what to buy, think, and love, God is recommending a radically different posture. Believers were not created to simply stare at screens, nor was salvation meant to be the final destination; rather, salvation is the starting line of a life spent actively going out into the world.
Drawing from the calling of the prophet Isaiah, Giglio illustrates the transforming sequence of encountering God’s holiness, recognizing human brokenness, and receiving unexpected grace. When Isaiah witnessed the overwhelming majesty of God in the temple, his immediate reaction was terror and ruin over his own sinful condition. However, instead of destruction, God met him with a purifying coal from the altar, declaring his guilt taken away and his sins atoned for. It was only after experiencing this profound grace that Isaiah heard the Lord ask who would go for the Trinity, prompting him to instantly volunteer without knowing any of the operational details. Giglio stresses that this absolute availability is the heartbeat of the Gospel: a willing heart that responds to God with five simple words: “Here am I, send me.”
To demystify the call to be sent, Giglio offers several liberating keys for regular people who feel unqualified for the mission field. He explains that individuals do not need to have their entire lives perfectly together, pointing to the woman at the well who immediately shared Christ with her village despite her messy past. Furthermore, believers do not need to possess all the answers to complex theological questions; they simply need an “irrefutable argument,” which is the personal testimony of what Jesus has practically changed in their lives. Crucially, Christians are relieved of the burden of saving anyone, as salvation is the exclusive work of the Holy Spirit. The only requirement is to genuinely care about others as image-bearers of God and to faithfully share the message of grace.
Concluding the homily, Giglio uses the powerful visual metaphor of a bow and arrow to illustrate the ultimate purpose of a life saved by grace. He reminds the congregation that they are not sent in their own limited strength, but rather in the power of the Holy Spirit, who acts as their advocate. God’s ultimate goal was never to merely gather crowds inside church buildings, but to place believers’ lives—including the good, the bad, and the ugly—into the bow of a sovereign archer and launch them into the world. Whether that looks like a student returning to a local middle school, a professional serving in an Atlanta business, or a missionary running a hospital in the Middle East, every single believer is called to be a sent arrow, letting their lives be deployed for God’s glory.
Listen to the full version here.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed on our site are written by our local community of contributors as a reflection of their personal experiences. All information is researched and provided in good faith, however, it does not necessarily represent the views of the organization they’re writing about nor that of the City on Purpose staff, and/or any/all contributors of this site. If there are issues with the accuracy of this piece, we want to fix them. Please contact City on Purpose to submit a request for an update. We strive to be an honest resource for all those in the city – thanks for helping us make that possible! You can also review our full Disclaimer, Terms and Conditions, and Privacy Policy.