Church of the City New York

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 kingdom has arrived, and believers now live under His authority. In the teaching, Pastor Sam offered practical guidance for navigating spiritual opposition. One of the enemy's great aims is to steal our song—our wonder, our confidence, our worship. Yet throughout Scripture, God's people continue singing in prisons, in exile, and in suffering. Their songs are acts of remembrance, resistance, and hope, and we can live with that same posture today.

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 showed that forgiveness is not minimizing an offense, but absorbing the debt, humanizing the offender, and releasing them. The invitation of Jesus is clear: unforgiveness imprisons us, but forgiveness opens the door to freedom.

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 honor-shame architecture of first-century Jewish culture to show what Jesus was subverting every time He ate with tax collectors, touched lepers, and stopped for the people everyone else walked past. Jesus coming to deal with our shame was a central theme to His ministry. From the animal skins God fashioned for Adam and Eve to the white robes of the saints in Revelation, Scripture traces an important story—God clothing the naked and the shamed in righteousness and glory. That is what Jesus came to do. That freedom is available today.

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, the devotion of youth, the love of a bride. Idolatry, in God's framing, isn't just disobedience, it's betrayal. The quickest route into it is simply forgetting who God is and what He's done. The text calls us to respond to idolatry the way God does, appalled, heartbroken, undone. Jeremiah 2:13 gives us the clearest picture of why. God is a fountain of living water, and our idols are cracked cisterns that can barely hold what they promise. The sermon concludes by saying that in God's wrath, He remembers mercy. Like the father in Luke 15, He doesn't wait for us to close the whole distance, He runs.

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 with. Jesus leaves all of us with the compelling invitation is to join Him in the light.

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 community that embodies humility, gentleness, and love. And Jesus invites us into the Kingdom, a cause worth giving our lives to, restoring what is broken and giving dignity to the overlooked. Like the woman at the well, our response is to invite others: "Come and see." Over the next eight weeks, this series will equip us to share this hope with the people around us and our city.

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

This Sunday, Pastor Keithen Schwahn continued our sermon series, God Comes Where He's Wanted, with a teaching on the altar of the home, drawing from the story of Gideon in Judges 6 and the words of Jesus in Matthew 18. We need to confront the brokenness of the altar of the home in our culture and take responsibility for the next generation. In Judges 6, we see the great danger of generational drift when vision is not matched with action, reminding us that renewal begins with tearing down the idols that compete for our devotion. As God restores Gideon's identity and calls him into partnership, we are urged to pursue fully integrated lives marked by obedience and faithfulness to remove idols. In Matthew 18, we are reminded of Jesus' deep care for children, and we are all invited to fight for the future of the church by blessing young people, breaking generational cycles, and intentionally passing on faith.