Episodes
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October 25, 2026: Surprising - Week 5
The Surprising Stories of Jesus: The Good Samaritan, Part 2 Jesus’ story of the Good Samaritan asks more than we might expect. Compassion that is real moves us to act, even toward people we’ve been taught to resist. And the parable points beyond itself to Jesus, the one who was beaten and left…
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October 18, 2026: Surprising - Week 4
The Surprising Stories of Jesus: The Good Samaritan, Part 1 Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan in reply to a lawyer who wants to test him, and the story runs deeper than the familiar moral about helping people. Luke places it right after Jesus sets his face toward Jerusalem, where his…
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October 11, 2026: Surprising - Week 3
The Surprising Stories of Jesus: Visions of the Inbreaking Kingdom Matthew 13 gives us eight short stories, and each one is a vision of the kingdom of God. Many in Jesus’ day expected that kingdom to arrive through political upheaval and the overthrow of empire. Instead, Jesus told provocative...
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October 4, 2026: Surprising - Week 2
The Surprising Stories of Jesus: The Sower A farmer flings seed everywhere: on the road, among rocks, into thorns. No careful farmer works this way, and that's the point. In Matthew 13, Jesus tells the parable at the heart of all his parables, picturing God's word scattered with abundant…
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September 27, 2026: Surprising - Week 1
The Surprising Stories of Jesus: Week 1 Jesus could have explained his kingdom with a lecture. Instead, he told stories. This opening message sets the framework for the series: Jesus the one-of-a-kind king, the kingdom he brings, and the parables he told to describe it. In Luke 4, Jesus announces...
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September, 20 2026 - LW Studio: Week 9
Job: Trusting God's Wisdom in Suffering The book of Job isn't really about Job, Steven argues, it's about whether God can be trusted to run the world well, even when the innocent suffer. Job loses everything without cause, and his friends, operating on the ancient assumption that suffering always...
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September 13, 2026 - LW Studio: Week 8
The Big Song You Might Have Missed Every "greatest songs of all time" list misses one, Steven argues: the Song of Songs, a book of Hebrew love poetry so esteemed that ancient rabbis called it the holiest book in the Bible, even as its meaning has puzzled readers for centuries. Steven walks…
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September 6, 2026 - LW Studio: Week 7
Proverbs closes not with a summary statement but with a poem, an acrostic hymn to a woman who works with her hands, cares for her household, invests wisely, and reaches out to the poor. Steven makes the case that this isn't meant as a literal blueprint for wives to imitate, but a portrait of Lady...
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August 30, 2026 - LW Studio: Week 6
How to Live the Final Chapters of Your One Wild and Precious Life Steven turns to a question Proverbs, surprisingly, doesn't spend much time on: what does wisdom look like as we grow old? Proverbs, he explains, was written mainly to instruct the young, so the wisdom literature's real material on...
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August 23, 2026 - LW Studio: Week 5
A Cheerful Heart Has a Continual Feast Proverbs keeps returning to the heart, that inner space Scripture treats as the wellspring of everything we think, feel, and become. Steven sits with a handful of proverbs on this theme, landing especially on Proverbs 15:15, a cheerful heart has a continual...
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August 9, 2026 - LW Studio: Week 4
Proverbs 12:18 sets up two ways of speaking: words spoken rashly that cut like a sword, and the tongue of the wise that brings healing. Steven unpacks what that healing speech actually looks like in practice, timely, comforting, controlled, purposeful, and generous, drawing on Proverbs' repeated...
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July 26, 2026 - LW Studio: Week 3
Wisdom, Folly, and the State of Our Hearts Proverbs sets two voices calling out in the same streets: Lady Wisdom, inviting people to her table to eat, drink, and grow in understanding, and Lady Folly, offering an easier, emptier way that promises pleasure without the work. Steven walks through…
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July 19, 2026 - LW Studio: Week 2
Lady Wisdom's Great Invitation Proverbs picks up where Genesis 1-3 leaves off, wrestling with how to navigate a world that God made good but humanity broke by choosing its own way over his. Into that mess steps Lady Wisdom, a figure who appears throughout Proverbs 1-9 not whispering in private…
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July 7, 2026 - LW Studio: Week 1
Intro to Scriptures’ Wisdom Literature What if Sunday mornings were like walking into a studio, a space where creative work happens and something is always being shaped? That's the image Steven opens with as he launches a new series on the wisdom literature of Scripture. He introduces the five...
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June 21, 2026 - PLACE: Eco System Part II
Every garden has an invisible pulse, an energy that moves through every layer and makes the whole thing come alive. Pastor Steven says the church has one too. It's called grace. In this final sermon of the PLACE series, the E is Ecosystem, Part 2. Steven maps the layers of a garden onto the life…
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June 14, 2026 - PLACE: Eco System (Part I)
The Bible opens in a garden and closes in a garden. In between, Jesus is buried in a garden, raised in a garden, and mistaken for the gardener. That's not a coincidence. In the first of a two-part finale to the PLACE series, Pastor Steven introduces the E: Ecosystem. The word itself comes from…
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June 7, 2026 - PLACE: Catalyst
There's a moment on the edge of a diving board where everything in you wrestles; the part that wants to jump and the part that wants to stay put. A poet calls it less dive, more surrender. In this fourth sermon of the PLACE series, the C is Catalyst. Pastor Steven asks what it takes to become the...
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May 31, 2026 - PLACE: Abundance
Before anything was made, there was already fullness. "In the beginning, God" — and to be God, Pastor Steven says, is to be eternally abundant in goodness, joy, and beauty. Everything that follows is overflow. In this third sermon of the PLACE series, the A is Abundance. Steven traces the…
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May 24, 2026 - PLACE: Leverage
Archimedes once said, "Give me a place to stand and I shall move the world." Pastor Steven takes that ancient intuition and asks: what if a small church in downtown Pittsfield believed the same thing — not about physics, but about love? In this second sermon of the PLACE series, the L is…
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May 17, 2026 - PLACE: Pliability
God begins by creating a place — and the place where you find yourself matters to the kingdom of God. In this first sermon of the PLACE series, Pastor Steven opens with the P: Pliability. Tracing a thread from Genesis through Jeremiah to Luke, he shows that God has always cared about where his...
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May 10, 2026 - APEST: Shepherd
If you were a kid growing up in ancient Israel, Pastor Steven says, you'd have two action figures on your dresser you'd never trade: Moses and David. Both literal shepherds before they became shepherds of God's people. That image runs all the way through Psalm 23 and into Jesus calling himself…
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May 3, 2026 - APEST: Teacher
Every practice has its fundamentals. Bump, set, spike. Bait, cast, wait. For the early church in Acts 2, it was four rhythms: the apostles' teaching, the breaking of bread, the fellowship, and the prayers. Pastor Steven zeros in on that first one and asks what it actually means to be a community...
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April 26, 2026 - APEST: Evangelist
What if the biggest barrier to sharing good news isn't courage but language? Pastor Steven compares the church's familiar phrases to Pittsburgh-ese, the regional dialect where "Jeet yet?" means "Did you eat yet?" and "Kennywood's open" means your fly is down. If you're not from there, you're…
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April 19, 2026 - APEST: Prophet
Paul's vision in Ephesians is cosmic — Jesus filling all things, a new humanity growing up into his glory. But how does that massive vision land in a local church on a Sunday morning? Pastor Steven turns to the second of the fivefold gifts: the prophetic impulse. Prophets are the ones who walk up...
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April 12, 2025 - APEST: Apostle
Paul's letter to the Ephesians carries a dream so big it's cosmic — all things gathered up in Christ, the kindness of Jesus on display for ages to come. But Pastor Steven doesn't leave us staring at the sky. He brings us to the image of a victorious king riding through the streets, throwing out...
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April 5, 2026 - Easter Sunday - Why Are You Weeping?
In John's telling of the resurrection, every detail is a symbol. The tomb is fit for royalty. The setting is a garden — an echo of the very first place God walked with his people. And when Mary mistakes Jesus for the gardener, she's wrong — but she's also right. Pastor Steven walks us through the...
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March 29, 2026 - Palm Sunday
Palm Sunday is one of the most confusing celebrations in the church calendar — and if you're not yet confused, Steven suggests you don't actually understand it yet. Between the triumphal entry and the cross lies a week of riddles, symbolic actions, and a weeping king heading toward suffering....
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March 22, 2026 - MotH: Anger vs. Peacemaking
Anger might be the most complicated monster of all — because unlike the others, it isn't always wrong. It's wired into us as a response to threat and injustice, and it can move in either direction: toward bitterness and rage, or toward something that looks a lot like peacemaking. This week, as…
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March 15, 2026 - MotH: Apathy vs. A Gentle Heart on Fire for Jesus & the Kingdom of God
Most of us aren't short on passion — we have plenty of it for coffee, sports, music, the small pleasures that light us up without much effort. The question this week is why that same energy so rarely finds its way toward God. The monster of apathy doesn't cause chaos by anything it does — but by...
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March 8, 2026 - MotH: Excessiveness vs. the Art of Balance & the Beauty of Belonging
Excessiveness vs. the Art of Balance & the Beauty of Belonging Some monsters are loud and obvious. These three are often overlooked — not because they're rare, but because they've become so familiar we've stopped noticing them. This week covers gluttony, greed, and lust together, not as a moral...
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March 1, 2026 - MotH: Envy vs. the Life-Giving Force of Love & Contentment
Of all the monsters lurking in the human heart, envy may be the most hidden — and the most corrosive. It starts as a familiar ache: I want what they have. But it can quietly slide into something darker: I want them not to have it. From King Saul's spiraling jealousy of David, to the older brother...
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Feb 22, 2026 - MotH - Pride: The Downfall of the Ego Drama
We kick off Monsters of the Heart — a Lenten journey through the seven deadly sins — with the monster that underlies them all: pride. But this isn't a lecture on bad behavior. It's an invitation to look honestly at something quietly lurking in every human heart: the deep, subtle sense that we…
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Feb. 15, 2026 - 7 Signs: Seventh Glory Sign / Spectacularism, Glory & Belief
In this final message from our 7 Signs series, we encounter Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. After this incredible miracle, some believed—but others went straight to the religious leaders to report what happened. Reviewing all seven signs, we see a beautiful pattern: Jesus' glory meets people...
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Feb. 8, 2026 - 7 Signs: Sixth Glory Sign / Seeing Jesus with Muddy Eyes
In this message from our 7 Signs series, we explore the sixth sign from John's Gospel—Jesus healing the man born blind. This powerful story does more than showcase a miracle; it busts theological myths and challenges our assumptions about suffering, faith, and what it means to truly see Jesus....
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Feb. 1, 2026 - 7 Signs: Fifth Glory Sign / Waterworks from Heaven
Episode: Waterworks from Heaven (7 Signs - Part 5) In this message from our 7 Signs series, we explore the fifth sign from John's Gospel—Jesus walking on water and calming the storm. Just as "waterworks" can mean different things depending on the context, this miracle reveals something profound...
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Jan. 25, 2026 - 7 Signs: Fourth Glory Sign / Feeding Five Thousand - Jesus, Abundance & Limitations
In Feeding Five Thousand: Jesus, Abundance & Limitations, we continue our “7 Signs” series—watching how each sign reveals Jesus’ true identity. In John 6, framed by Passover, Jesus meets scarcity with compassion, turns lack into abundance, and points beyond bread to himself as the Bread of Life.
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Jan. 18, 2026 - 7 Signs: Third Glory Sign / The Healing We Can’t Find
John 5’s third sign uses story and symbol to reveal Jesus’ glory. The Healing We Can’t Find explores Bethesda, Sabbath, and healing as signs pointing beyond themselves to the One who restores creation at its core.
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Jan. 11, 2026 - 7 Signs: Second Glory Sign / Long Distance Healing Hints
In week 2 of our “7 Signs” series (John 4:46–54), we explore Jesus’ long-distance healing of a dying son—and the deeper invitation to read the signs rightly, trust his “bare word,” and truly see his glory.
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Jan. 4, 2026 - 7 Signs: First Glory Sign / Potential Wedding Debacle
In Jesus’ first sign (John 2), a wedding crisis becomes a window into new creation. Water turns to wine, shame turns to welcome, and scarcity turns to abundance—inviting us not just to see the sign, but to perceive Christ’s glory.
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December 21, 2025: Shadow & Light - The Magi Movement
On Christmas Sunday, The Magi Movement celebrates the arrival of Jesus—the true King. In Matthew 2, outsider magi follow the star into a troubled world, refuse Herod’s false power, worship the child, and bring gifts that reveal Christ as King, God-with-us, and Savior.
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December 14, 2025: Shadow & Light - The Initial Spark of Heavenly Glory for Ongoing Joy
In The Initial Spark of Heavenly Glory for Ongoing Joy, we reflect on Advent as a slow-building fire that trains our hearts for lasting joy. Through Psalm 16, C.S. Lewis, and Luke 2:10–12, we move from fear and waiting into Christ’s glory—stepping into the light, not just observing it.
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December 7, 2025: Shadow & Light - The Prince of Peace & Our Peaceful Hearts
In Isaiah 9, Steven invites us to cultivate a bigger vision of peace, rethink the small ways we talk about it, and rest in Jesus—the true Ruler of Shalom whose peacemaking work shapes our hearts and our hope.
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November 30, 2025: Shadow & Light - Expectation from the Shadows
Advent doesn’t begin with twinkle lights and nostalgia—it starts in the shadows. In week one of Shadow & Light (“Expectation from the Shadows”), we looked at Isaiah 2 and the promise of a day when God’s glory is raised above all, weapons become tools, and all peoples stream to His light.
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November 23, 2025 - When Good People Get Stepped On: Part II
In part two of When Good People Get Stepped On, Habakkuk 3 shifts from argument to worship—readiness for Babylon’s coming, remembrance of the God of the Exodus, and a rest that rejoices in God even when everything falls apart.
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November 16, 2025 - When Good People Get Stepped On: Part I
We begin our new series When Good People Get Stepped On in the book of Habakkuk, where the prophet pours out raw complaints about injustice and God’s strange use of empires. Steven walks us through God’s five “woes” against Babylon’s injustice and idolatry, and then gives us two anchors to stand…
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November 9, 2025 - Flourish: The Tell-Tale Target
Flourish, Part 8: The Tell-Tale Target (Matthew 5:10–12) Why does following Jesus paint a target on your back? In Matthew 5:10–12, we explore persecution as the tell-tale sign of kingdom formation, rejecting pride, privilege, and power for meek, peacemaking lives that threaten evil—and rejoice.
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October 26, 2025 - Flourish: Peacemakers
Flourish, Part 7: Peacemakers (Matthew 5:9) Could true peace be bigger than a calm feeling—more like everything set right in Jesus? Discover what peacemaking looks like, why it reshapes our identity and reputation, and how to begin where you live and love.
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October 19, 2025 - Flourish: Whole Making
Flourish, Part 6: Whole Making (Matthew 5:8) What if the good life isn’t about spotless behavior but an undivided heart? Jesus teaches that wholeness—not perfection—is what lets us see God. The pure in heart are those made whole from the inside out.
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October 12, 2025 - Flourish: Tender Love
Flourish, Part 5: Tender Love (Matthew 5:7) What does mercy really look like in practice? Jesus calls us to a life “bent toward mercy”—helping the needy, showing compassion to the hurting, and extending grace even to those who don’t deserve it. This is the tender love that makes a kingdom people...
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October 5, 2025 - Flourish: The Hungry for Justice
Flourish, Part 4: The Hungry for Justice (Matthew 5:6) What do you ache for when you see the world’s brokenness? Jesus calls that deep hunger for things to be set right a blessing—and promises that those who long for God’s justice will be truly filled.
About this show
Sermons from Pastor Steven Canfield
Hosted by
First Baptist Church Pittsfield
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