Church of the City New York

This Sunday, Pastor Billy closed our FOLLOW series by asking what it would look like to take Jesus' command to go and make disciples seriously—not as a monumental assignment reserved for pastors or people who have it all together, but as an ordinary part of following Jesus. He began with the sobering stat: The average Christian will make one new disciple every 26 years. With nearly 6 million lost New Yorkers, this approach to discipleship is not sustainable.

God's discipleship plan is "you!" Pastor Billy said. You already have relationships, access, and places of influence no pastor could replicate. The invitation is to make yourself known as a Christian, ask God for one person to disciple, and look for opportunities to lean in. We do not change heart, Jesus does. Our part is to be faithful with the person He has already placed in front of us.

This Sunday, Pastor Reagan continued our FOLLOW series with a teaching on worship. She began with the story of a woman who poured an entire jar of expensive perfume over Jesus. Where the disciples saw waste; Jesus saw worship. But the question beneath the story is not simply what we are willing to give Jesus, it is what we believe He is worth. Pastor Reagan traced worship back to the act of beholding—to giving our attention to Jesus long enough for our vision of Him to be enlarged. Mary's extravagant offering was not an isolated moment of devotion. It was the natural response of a life that had come to see Jesus as worthy, and when Jesus becomes our highest good, our lives begin to reorder around Him.

This Sunday, Pastor Tim continued our FOLLOW series with Jesus' difficult words to the Pharisees in Matthew 23. Rather than using the passage to confront everyone else, he invited us to ask a more personal question: Where does Jesus want to confront me? Pastor Tim explored how hypocrisy can take root when our outward lives become disconnected from what is happening within us, and how easily we can notice the failures of others while overlooking our own. Jesus' confrontation is not meant to leave us in shame, rather it is an invitation into honesty, mercy, and freedom. Allowig God to form in us what we cannot produce on our own.

This week Pastor Keithen continued our Follow series in Matthew 20:25-28, where Jesus tells His disciples that greatness in the kingdom looks nothing like greatness in the world. Preaching to a room full of New Yorkers, Pastor Keithen named the "main character energy" that drives so much of this city, the ambition and grit that gets us here and keeps us here, and asked whether we've quietly assumed Jesus only wants to tweak that energy rather than replace it. He walked through four shifts from the text: from consumption to contribution, from criticism to compassion, from main character energy to a life of consecration, and from extracting from New York to laying our lives down for it.

"Not so with you," Jesus says. Whoever wants to be great must become a servant.

This Sunday, Pastor Tim continued our FOLLOW series by asking what it means to love God with our whole lives. Jesus' command to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength is not simply about how we feel toward Him—it is about loyalty, trust, and choosing Him even when His ways are difficult to understand. Pastor Tim reflected on how our love for God is formed through both joy and disappointment, and how faithfulness becomes deeper when we learn to trust His character even when we don't understand His circumstances. That love eventually moves outward, shaping the way we see and love the people God has placed around us. Following Jesus means learning to love God like this, and letting that love change the way we live in the world.