Church of the City New York

This Sunday, Pastor Jon pointed us to Jesus' unexpected faithfulness in the face of criticism, cultural pressures, disappointments, and suffering. He reminded us that as Jesus' disciples we must follow His lead, not losing the nerve to stand apart or hearts that freely love through seasons of hardship.

UNEXPECTED PEACE - This Sunday, Pastor SUZY preached through the story of Jesus calming the storm and ushering in unexpected peace in the midst of fear. She encouraged us to learn from the disciples, and instead look to Jesus with eyes of faith, trusting that He is who He says He is, and that His heat and plan are always good.

UNEXPECTED VISITATION - This past Sunday, guest Pastor Rafael Castillo preached about the power behind the resurrected Jesus' encounter with the disciples on the road to Emmaus. He taught that, like He did for these disciples, Jesus can defy our expectations, bring revelation, inspire a spirit of hospitality, and set a fresh fire in our hearts.

NO QUID PRO QUO - This Sunday Pastor Dr. Bryan Loritts, called on us to follow the command of Jesus to give up our rights, love our enemies, and be reconciled to each other.

UNEXPECTED EXTRAVAGANCE - This past Sunday, Pastor OLIVIA preached about Mary of Bethany pouring out a year's worth of wages onto Jesus' s feet. Just like King David before her, Mary became undignified before the Lord, washing His feet with her hair and sitting on the floor to listen to Him speak, all because she was able to recognize the presence of God and the beautiful opportunity she had to worship Him.

UNEXPECTED KINGDOM: This past Sunday, Pastor Jon Tyson kicked off the Unexpected Jesus series by exploring Jesus as an unexpected king bringing about a new kingdom, and challenged us to reorient ourselves toward the true Gospel.

SIN: FALLING SHORT - This Sunday, as we enter into Holy Week, Pastor Suzy preached on sin as falling short of God's perfection, by reflecting on Jesus's suffering in the garden of Gethsemane the night before his crucifixion. While many of us may want to skip from Palm Sunday straight to the victory of Easter, Holy Week is an invitation for us to look at our sin, recognize everything it cost Jesus to forgive and to redeem us, and enter into his suffering with him.

This past Sunday, Pastor Jon preached about lawlessness — an utter disregard for God and his laws. Lawlessness manifests as rebellion and causes devastation, not fulfillment, keeping us from being apostles of love and instead dragging us into the world's toxic, selfish culture.

SIN: ADULTERY - This past Sunday, Pastor Ashley preached on sin as adultery. Adultery can be defined as not only violating a law, but also as breaching our relationship with the God who loves us enough to tolerate no other lovers in our lives. Just like the Israelites, we can fall into the sin of adultery in three ways: 1) distrusting God; 2) not sharing in God's purpose; and 3) forgetting God's faithfulness. Even though we still break His covenant today, God has paved a path of mercy and restoration for us through the life of Jesus and the price He paid on the cross.

SIN: IDOLATRY - This past Sunday, Pastor Olivia preached on how idolatry can creep deep into our hearts without us even knowing something has become an idol until we actually sin. If we are not careful to guard and examine our hearts, our impatience with the Lord can lead us into idolatry, which can then lead to immorality and consequently, independence from God.

SIN AS REBELLION: This past Sunday, Pastor Jon continued our sin series, defining sin as rebellion against God and as sovereignty of the self. The same lies that Adam and Eve believed in Genesis 3 still haunt us today, but God pursues, covers, and restores us, just as He did for them. It is only through His divine mercy and Jesus's death and resurrection that we can be more than conquerors of sin.

SIN: AN OVERVIEW - This past Sunday, Pastor Suzy dove into the topic of sin, how it affects us, and why it's so insidious. Identifying sin is the first step in understanding the gravity of Jesus's sacrifice.

CREATIVE MINORITY: PARTICIPATION - This past Sunday, Pastor Jon preached about the importance of the way we as Christians participate in our culture. We must show up in hard places with the presence of Jesus Christ and welcome the vulnerable to push against the darkness with light and faith.

This past Sunday, Pastor Suzy challenged us to ponder what we do when our narratives, ethics and practices as Christ-followers come into conflict with the many authorities of the world. She exhorted us to remember that as Christ-followers, our one true allegiance is to God, and when we live as a creative minority and choose to be exiles, we can be light in dark places, in the world but not of it.

This past Sunday, Pastor Jon preached about examining our own tangible practices as we continue to develop into the likeness of Jesus. We can continue to form as disciples by developing our practices of abiding in Jesus, discerning where He wants us to move, and interceding on behalf of others privately and publicly.

This past Sunday, we continued our Creative Minority series, and Pastor Olivia challenged us to consider ethics and how we make decisions in our lives. Christian ethics must be a response from our hearts to the grace, character, and love of God, putting a spotlight on our Savior, and forming us in a way counter to our culture, especially in the areas of money, sex, and power. As Christians, we must ask ourselves: how can I love generously, faithfully, sacrificially, and humbly so that the world is enticed to ask follow-up questions for which the gospel is the answer? Ultimately, the Christian ethic is love from beginning to end.

This past Sunday, Pastor Jon continued our Creative Minority series by talking about the importance of the stories we believe in. Living in a time of warring narratives, we must deeply root ourselves in the one, true narrative that Jesus Christ is Lord. By routing our actions, thoughts, and expectations through the person of Jesus, our lives will become compelling stories that display the Gospel, and shake the world from spiritual sleep.

This past Sunday, Pastor Jon launched our new sermon series, A Creative Minority, and laid the groundwork for how we can begin to grow a new kind of community in our current moment. If we build a web of stubbornly loyal relationships, we can then knit them together in a living network of persons who are committed to practicing the way of Jesus for the renewal of the world. Communities built on covenantal relationships like this can create nets that have the power to capture the hearts of those around us and reveal Jesus like never before.

This past Sunday, Pastor Jon cast a vision for where our church's confidence needs to be rooted going into the new year. When we go beyond stating our belief in God and place our trust in Him, we develop an unshakeable confidence in His divine ability. Setting our hearts rightly before God, and prioritizing His presence in our habits, will allow us to attain a hidden source of life that will enable us to flourish no matter our circumstances.

For the last Sunday of 2020, Pastor Jon walked us back through this year that has been full of disruption and division, and revealed that our current world mirrors the one Jesus was born into. He pointed us to Mary who, despite her difficult circumstances, pondered the work of God around her and in her, and treasured these things up in her heart. Pastor Jon encouraged us to finish the year like Mary by taking time to remember God's faithfulness in our church, our city, and our lives, and store these things up in our hearts as we prepare for the new year.

This Past Sunday, Pastor Jon wrapped up our Advent series by talking about the defiant love of God that is manifested in Jesus the Messiah. By looking at Isaiah 61, we learn that Jesus is the prophesied Servant of the Lord who would come to restore the world and usher in a celebration of redemption. Pastor Jon reminded us that once we receive the renewing love of Jesus, we are called to join Him on mission, and be the ministers of His scandalous, radical, love here on earth.

This Past Sunday, Pastor Susy brought good news in her message in the midst of our Advent series, talking about the great joy that is available to us all through Jesus Christ. After such a difficult year, and an uncertain future ahead of us, it is more important than ever for us to find the source of a lasting, defiant Joy. Proverbs 13:12 defines joy as the fulfillment of a longing, stating, "Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life."

This Sunday, Pastor John continued our advent series by talking about having defiant peace. When we look to our own selves or earthly systems for peace, we will be met with darkness and despair. But God shines light in the most surprising places. Ultimately, we have defiant peace inside us because we have the Prince of Peace inside us.

Pastor Suzy kicked off our Advent series this past Sunday, preaching on what it means to have defiant hope in a year like 2020. Over two thousand years ago, God gave a message of hope and deliverance to King Ahaz of Judah: a baby would be born as a sign of God's presence in the besieged city. Today, this baby, Emmanuel, is a sign that God is with us in the midst of our suffering and sin, and the reason we can have defiant hope for a better future.

To wrap up our series on disruptive discipleship, Pastor Jon preached on Jesus's closing metaphor for the Beatitudes: that those who embody Jesus's kingdom are the salt and light of the world. To be salt is to be radically devoted to Jesus and His teachings in a culture of compromises. To be light is to engage in boundary-crossing missions into dark places that Jesus calls us to. In being salt and light with purity and integrity, we can become potent disciples of our times, that our cities and communities need.

This past Sunday, Pastor Jon taught on Christ's words of blessing over those who are persecuted and His calling to rejoice in the midst of it. In a world that is offended by righteousness and claims of Christ's exclusivity as the way to freedom, our efforts to follow Jesus and cling to His words will increasingly set us against the current of our culture. Yet in this we rejoice, remembering that we are exiles in this world and following Christ's example of enduring persecution with joy and humility.

This past Sunday, Pastor Jon Tyson preached about Jesus' call to be peacemakers (Matthew 5:9). At a time when the world thought leadership meant violence and military prowess, Jesus declared that peacemakers were the children of God.

BLESSED ARE THE PURE IN HEART- This past Sunday, Pastor Ashley Anderson preached about how to cultivate a pure heart. Purity is leveraging all desires for God's kingdom's purpose, allowing his will on earth to be the single driving force of every decision that we make. We cultivate pure hearts by aching for encounters with God, fleeing from sin, and embracing confession.

This past Sunday, Dr. Derwin Gray, lead pastor of Transformation Church in South Carolina, preached on the fifth beatitude: "Blessed are the merciful for they will be shown mercy." In the divisive times we are living in, he encourages us to take up a mantle of mercy, and through the parable of the Good Samaritan, shares with us how to truly love our neighbors as ourselves.

This past Sunday, Pastor Jon examined the fourth beatitude and its vision for righteousness as both personal holiness and social justice. In the midst of our current cultural decline, he exhorts us to become people who are desperate to see biblical righteousness break into our world today.

This past Sunday, Pastor Suzy illuminated the third beatitude in Jesus's Sermon on the Mount, blessed are the meek, and walked us through how to become more like Jesus by posturing ourselves toward meekness so that we can inherit the New Jerusalem.

This past Sunday, Pastor Olivia, our new pastor of discipleship and formation, shed light on Christ's blessing and invitation to enter into redemptive mourning. As we mourn the brokenness of this world, as well as our individual and collective experiences of it, we are comforted by the promise and hope of Christ's resurrection life.

This past Sunday, Pastor Jon reminded us of the importance of maintaining our relationship with God by recognizing our spiritual bankruptcy. Being welcomed into the kingdom of God requires us to relinquish our pride and choose humility, else we are blind to what is above us.

This week, Pastor Jon set the foundation for our season-long study of Jesus' teaching of the Beatitudes. In the face of the crises around us, we need to be rooted more deeply than ever in the core teachings of Jesus about discipleship and the Kingdom of God.

This week, Pastor Jon cast a vision for our church as we head into the fall season. We are tired, but resolved to regroup and rebuild through pressing deeper into our core values--Presence, Formation, and Mission. However, in this season, we are taking these values to a deeper level. We are pursuing the tangible presence of God, understanding that no human solutions can rescue us from our cultural trauma; we are committed to counter formation, recognizing that there is no neutral ground and fighting against culture's attempting to pull us away from becoming like Jesus; and we are pursuing sacrificial mission, adopting the "I sacrifice, we win" mentality of Christ and embracing the high cost of living for the good of this city. New York needs a community of champions, and now is not the time to shrink back but to rise up.

This past Sunday, Pastor Suzy preached about what it looks like to prayerfully join Jesus in his mission to seek and save those who are far from God. Luke 10:1-4 tells us that we are to: look, ask, go, and sacrifice — to see with compassion the harvest, to ask the Lord to raise workers up, and to go ourselves willingly, knowing that Jesus sends us to where He is already going.

This past Sunday, Pastor Dimas Salaberrios preached a powerful word about prioritizing prayer. As humans, we were built to need constant communication with God and to flourish in intimacy with him. In Daniel 6:1-11, Daniel distinguished himself in Babylon by consistently tapping into the spirit of God, and by prioritizing God over man's decree. Prioritizing prayer is hard work, and at times, can feel like fighting a brick wall, but the results are astounding. Church, may we seek the face of the Lord, trust him in prayer, and be patient.

In this past Sunday's sermon, Pastor Jon discussed the importance of repentance in following God. The full journey of repentance begins with the radical pursuit of God, followed by total annihilation of idolatry, the repair and rebuild of the ruins, and finally ruthless obedience to the Word.

This past Sunday, Pastor Jon preached about the opportunity for divine intervention through intense, persistent, and united prayers. It is only through prayer that we can shape our communities, church, and city, and ensure 2020 ends differently than how it started.

This past Sunday, Pastor Suzy Silk shared with us how God's wisdom is far better than the wisdom of this world. Through scripture, we see that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, wisdom comes from and is given by the Holy Spirit, the path of wisdom is in obedience to God's laws, the wisdom of God is worth seeking, and most importantly, godly wisdom is available to every believer.

Dr. Bryan Loritts teaches about Christ's exhortation and example of humility. As we look at Jesus' words from the Sermon on the Mount, "blessed are the poor in spirit," we see God's invitation to posture our hearts in humble acceptance of His grace and extend that grace unto others.

Pastor Jon teaches about three encouraging exhortations from Hebrews 10:19-25: the encouragement to draw near to God, the encouragement to remain faithful, and the encouragement to love and good deeds. As we spur each other on, God can release the full potential of what He wants to do through us and make us into a community of hope.

Pastor Jon teaches about the power of encouragement. In a culture of criticism, cynicism, and attack, the Church is called to build a counterculture of encouragement and speak life into people's hearts. In doing so, we live out the ministry of the Holy Trinity, who is the source of all encouragement and who can use our simple words to shape a life in powerful ways.

Pastor Suzy Silk teaches about what it looks like to continue on in hope and prayer through seasons of fruitlessness, instead of asking that they immediately end. Throughout the Bible, we see God's faithful ones crying out to Him in seasons of despair, remembering that God comes for His people and choosing to rejoice and be obedient. Like those before us, we can rest in the conclusion that God will strengthen us, transform us, and enable us to tread in the high places.

Pastor Jon Tyson teaches about sacrificially living for others. As the body of Christ, we can flip our current cultural narrative from "I win, you lose" to "I sacrifice, we win" and mimic Jesus by taking on the position of a humbled servant who gives from the heart. Regularly stewarding our resources and living in the way of the cross holds real power to change the world.

Guest pastor of Christ Church, Dr. David Ireland, preached about what it means to be more a multiethnic church, providing us with three coaching tips to bridge racial barriers based on how Paul coached Peter in Galatians 2:11-14: welcome confrontation, face the challenge and accept the coaching.

Pastor Jon Tyson teaches about intercessory prayer and the spiritual authority this kind of prayer gives us. Exemplifying the ultimate spiritual power in Jesus, God calls us to identify with the brokenness of the world, enter into an agony deeper than empathy, and move through the world with spiritual authority (Isaiah 53:12).

This past Sunday, Pastor David Bailey preached on the long history of racial injustice in America, and how our hearts may cry out in response with grief, anger, fear, and shame. God gave us the language to express these emotions through the Psalms, as a balm for our souls. Through the resurrection of Jesus, we have hope that God is doing the work of reconciliation and restoration in our time. Pastor David Bailey teaches on the long history of racial injustice in America, and how our hearts may cry out in response with grief, anger, fear, and shame. God gave us the language to express these emotions through the Psalms, as a balm for our souls. Through the resurrection of Jesus, we have hope that God is doing the work of reconciliation and restoration in our time.

Pastor Suzy teaches about the elements of prophetic lament in Scripture and what it means to weep with those who weep. Through the example of Jesus, God invites us to courageously enter into the pain of others and to bear the mark of lamenters (Ezekiel 9:4). We do this by looking closely at the sin in our hearts and communities, by learning our history of oppression, by listening to God's voice and asking Him what grieves His heart, and by lamenting in a way that produces lasting change.

Pastor Jon introduces a vision for our church this summer: learning to pray in this time of crisis with an eternal perspective. During this season, we have the opportunity to pray like we never have before, to cry out to God with urgency and fervence, knowing the end of all things is near. We've changed our plans and practices because of COVID-19. Teaching Text: 1 Peter 4:7 "The end of all things is near. Therefore be alert and of sober mind so that you may pray." This is the Word of the Lord."