Our Story

We live in between the garden and the Garden City of God.

We daily experience the brokenness of the world. We know deep in our bones this isn’t how things are supposed to be.

Our family desires to be an imperfect picture on Earth that points back to the garden and ahead to the Garden City and declares, “That’s how it’s supposed to be”. We know where all of human history is heading. We know where the story ends. And so, in our imperfections, we’ll seek to embody that future and coming city here and now.

Our Mission

Garden City Church Exists to be a Family of Diverse Disciples Rooted in Christ to Receive Life, Share Life & Give Life for His Glory

We are wholly dependent on God to receive His life. Abiding in Christ through prayer, fasting, worship, rest & rejoicing are foundational rhythms for Garden City Church.
We believe we are a transcultural and multilingual family who love to gather regularly in missional communities to love one another as we have been loved.
We renew Edenvale by generously scattering the gospel around the community hoping to see people saved, churches planted & goers sent in Edenvale & to the nations.

Our Vision

At Garden City Church we hope to see all filled with the life of Christ, overflowing with the love of Christ and renewing the world by the power of Christ.

Our Values

Our Beliefs

Our Team

Mitch & Amber Thomson

Eldership

Our Partners

Join our Family

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Mitchell Thomson
Church Planter - Garden City Church

My life is a testament to the gracious pursuit of God for wayward and wandering hearts. I was blessed to be born into an incredible family who wholly love God and His Church. However, as an extroverted only child, I yearned for siblings and deeper connections. Despite being in church throughout my life, I often felt a sense of isolation. I longed to be part of a family filled with loving brothers and sisters. This desire for love and acceptance consumed me, yet it always seemed out of reach.

I began to seek for this love and acceptance in many places outside of Christ. My wandering heart led me down destructive paths as I sought desperately for the love I desired. Yet, each pursuit left me feeling empty, and more alone than ever before.

It was in 2011 that I joined a church plant in Johannesburg, where Jesus met me through His body, the church. I witnessed a people who were living as a true picture of family on earth. Their selfless love, sacrificial kindness, and unity in diversity beckoned me to join them.

Since then, my deepest desire has been for God to glorify Himself in and through my life. In His grace, God blessed me with a wonderful wife who shares my conviction to reach the lost, lonely, and broken, that they too may be pursued and welcomed into God’s family through the gospel of Jesus.

The Holy Spirit has ignited within both Amber and myself an unquenchable desire for Acts 2 community, where the body of Christ lives life together, serving as a blessing to the world. Over the course of nearly ten years of ministry respectively, Amber and I have witnessed the glory of God as He works in the hearts of broken people like ourselves, crafting incomplete yet breathtaking pictures of heaven on Earth.

It is through these experiences and the perspective gained from our own messy and imperfect lives that Amber and I feel a strong calling to church planting. We believe that God has uniquely equipped us to embrace human messiness and imperfection, granting us the patience to endure brokenness, knowing that it is in these imperfect situations where the perfection of Christ is most glorified. We hold unshakable hope for what He plans to do in Edenvale and beyond.