Church of the City New York

This week, Pastor Raegan continued our FOLLOW series by teaching from Jesus' temptation in the wilderness in Matt. 4:1–11. If apprenticeship to Jesus means learning His way of life, then it also means learning how to resist what pulls us away from Him. Looking at Jesus' three temptations in the wilderness, Pastor Raegan explored the ways the enemy still works today—drawing us toward comfort over d...

This week, Pastor Keithen opened our FOLLOW series with a question that kicks off the heart of the series, "Is it possible to be a Christian and not a disciple of Jesus?" Teaching from Matthew 4:18–22, he argued that discipleship is not simply about believing Jesus' teaching but apprenticing under His way of life. Looking at Jesus' first call of the fishermen, Pastor Keithen showed that Jesus' inv...

This Sunday, Pastor Sam Gibson concluded our FREED series with a teaching on freedom from spiritual oppression. Teaching from Colossians 1 and 2, he argued that how we understand spiritual warfare depends on how we understand the Gospel. The Gospel is not only the message that our sins can be forgiven. It is also the announcement that Jesus is King. The powers of darkness have been defeated, His k...

This week, guest teacher Luke LeFevre continued our FREED series with a sermon on fear, exploring how fear can quietly lead us into self-preservation rather than faithful stewardship. Drawing from Matthew 25, Luke unpacked Jesus' parable of the talents, challenged the comparison that keeps many of us from embracing our God-given assignment, and called us to live with an eternal perspective. The in...

This week, Pastor Tim Brown continued our FREED series with a sermon on unforgiveness—what he called one of the most ignored sources of bondage in the Church today. Drawing from Matthew 18, Pastor Tim explored why forgiveness is so difficult, how bitterness quietly takes root in our lives, and why Jesus speaks about forgiveness with such urgency. Through the parable of the unforgiving servant, he...

This week, Pastor Sam Gibson continued our FREED series with a sermon on rejection—opening by admitting he couldn't promise freedom from it. Rejection is inevitable. The real question is whether it will deform you or transform you. Pastor Sam unpacked the snare of recognition as rejection's dangerous shadow side, walked through the Greco-Roman context of adoption in Romans 8, and landed on this: i...

This week, Pastor Jon preached from John 7:53–8:11, using the story of the woman caught in adultery and dragged into the temple courts before a crowd with stones as his text for the freedom Jesus offers us from shame. He pushed back on the typical cultural responses to shame—the "you're worthy" or "do better" responses. Neither reaches the place where shame actually lives. He walked through the ho...

This Sunday Pastor Reagan Griffith continues our FREED series with a teaching on freedom from anxiety. Drawing from Matthew 6:25-34 and Philippians 4:6-7, Reagan identifies the roots of anxiety within lies and the cycle this creates. As New Yorkers we may feel exempt from this freedom, but God calls us to be free and empowers us to "not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer...

This week, Pastor Ralph Castillo continued the FREED series with a teaching on freedom from idolatry. Drawing from Jeremiah 2, Pastor Ralph traces God's grief over a people who abandoned Him for lesser things. The passage is startling in its intimacy. God isn't issuing a legal verdict, He's asking a relational question. "What happened between us?" He speaks in the language of a wounded covenant, t...

This Sunday, Pastor Tim continued our FREED series with a teaching on freedom from lies, drawing from John 8:31–47. He opened with a confession that many of us could relate to: New York has trained us to believe that freedom is always one system away, and if we are not careful, that same restless optimization spills into our spiritual lives too. Pastor Tim argued that the problem is not that we ha...

This Sunday, Pastor Sam continued our FREED series with a teaching on freedom from sin, drawing from 1 John 1:5–10, 2:1–2. He opened by naming what sin actually does to us: it separates, stains, sensitizes, steals, and spreads. The heart of the message, though, was not diagnosis. It was invitation. Through the lens of both guilt-innocence and honor-shame frameworks, Pastor Sam showed that Jesus do...

This Sunday, Pastor Jon continued the FREED series with one of the most personal questions it will raise: can you actually be free from your past? He opened with a number—nine out of ten—his and Christy's combined score on the Adverse Childhood Experiences assessment. The score wasn't shared for sympathy, it was shared to make the question real. As James Baldwin wrote, "people are trapped in histo...

This Sunday, Pastor Jon opened the new series "FREED" by putting our cultural moment under pressure. We are the freest people in history, and among the most anxious. The freedom we've been promised has not delivered the peace it advertised. What we got instead was exhaustion, comparison, and a quiet sense of fragmentation. The Bible's definition of freedom is entirely different. The question is no...

This Resurrection Sunday, Pastor Jon asked a question most of us don't say out loud: what happens to hope when it dies? He opened with the concept of "hope theory" — the idea that hope requires a vision, a pathway, and a sense that you can actually get there — and traced what happens when that vision collapses. The disciples on the road to Emmaus knew that feeling. They had built everything around...

This Sunday, Pastor Jon concluded the "Come to Me" series by asking a question worth sitting with: why Jesus? He pointed to a cultural moment where confident secularism is losing its footing, and the Christianity quietly growing is not the therapeutic, accommodating kind — it's the traditional, committed, and costly one. From there, Pastor Jon offered three reasons to come to Jesus: longing, forgi...

This Sunday, Pastor Keithen taught from John 11 and made the case that most of us, have gotten the story badly wrong. He opened with a telling moment from an "Ask the Pastor" session at a high school on the Upper East Side. Every question the students asked him was about who gets into heaven. Not one was about Jesus. From there, he traced the two answers to eternity we've inherited — secularism, w...

This week, Pastor Tim Brown unpacks one of Jesus' most profound declarations — Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life — and gets to the heart of what it means to follow Him. The Christian life is not a transaction with God, a performance for His approval, or a checklist of spiritual obligations. It's a relationship, and there's a sobering difference between knowing about God and truly knowing H...

This week Pastor Jon taught from John 10:11-21, where Jesus declares "I am the good shepherd" and asked a question that cuts straight to the heart of modern life: who is actually forming you? From global trust collapsing in institutions to Jesus exposing the Pharisees in John 9, the cycle of bad shepherding is always the same, they scatter when the cost gets real. Jesus differentiates Himself from...

This Sunday, Pastor Jon taught from John 10:1–10, where Jesus declares "I am the door," and meets us in one of our most quietly carried human aches -- our desire to belong. When the world offers an exclusive inclusivity, "you're welcome in, as long as you conform," mentality, Jesus offers the inverse. His door is open to anyone, and through His door isn't merely entry, but protection, freedom, and...

This Sunday, Pastor Jon taught from John 15 and offered a different diagnosis for burnout. While our instinct is often to assume we've simply given too much, he challenged us with another possibility: the problem isn't output but source. We haven't been drawing from the right one. When Jesus calls himself the True Vine, it's one of the most sweeping claims He ever makes. From that foundation, Past...

This Sunday, Pastor Jon continued our Come to Me series with a teaching on Jesus' declaration in John 8:12: "I am the light of the world." Jesus' radical claim has both personal and universal implications for us today. Our human tendency may be to impute goodness to ourselves and attribute darkness to others, but the reality is that each of us have darkness in our own hearts that must be dealt wit...

This week, Pastor Suzy continued our "Come to Me" series exploring Jesus as the bread of life. She challenged us to consider what's really satisfying us, recognizing things that often comes to mind (kids, relationships, work) often fade, leaving a deeper longing only God can fill. In John 6, Jesus declares "I am the Bread of life," positioning himself as the true bread from heaven who meets our de...

This Sunday, Pastor Jon kicked off our new series on the "I Am" statements in the Gospel of John with three words that help us make sense of history and our own lives: Messiah, Church, and Kingdom. Jesus is the Messiah, the relationship we were made for. In the midst of our shame, weariness, and brokenness, He invites us to find true rest in Him. Jesus forms the Church, a counter-cultural communit...

What happens when God's presence comes into a city? In this conversation, Pastor Jon and Pastor Sam close out our "God Comes Where He's Wanted" series by teaching on the altar of the region. After exploring the altars of the heart, church, and family, we now address what can seem most daunting, moving from personal peace to embracing God's heart for an entire region.  Only when we are heartbroken...

A special podcast episode featuring a conversation between Pastor Jon and his dad on multigenerational faithfulness and prayer.