This past Sunday, we continued our Rivers of Renewal sermon series by focusing on God’s heart for Social Justice. 

We saw that we can make two key mistakes in regard to justice:

1. We could deny that it is important. 
2. We could think it is important, but still not allow this conviction to change how we live—for example, how we spend our time or money. 

From Amos 5, we saw three things: 1) what God wants, 2) why we struggle to do it, 3) how we do it. 

We saw in Amos 5 that God wants oceans of justice and rivers of fairness.

We struggle, however, to press into what God wants because it can be easy for us to experience the world as incredibly insecure. Yet, could it be that this is by design? We were made to acknowledge our deep needs so that we can learn a healthy dependence on God. 

Last, the end of the book of Amos, in chapter 9, points to a promise that someday there would be one who would bring about a restoration that would include superabundant wine. We turned to John 2, to see that Jesus is the wine-bringer. We are able to do justice, once we realize that there is one we can rely on to meet all our needs and so much more. 

And because our greatest needs are met, we can be for others. 

David continued our vision series by sharing our desire to cultivate Wholehearted Community. He recounted the story of Jesus healing the paralytic on a mat in Mark 2, reflecting on journeying through the Wall seasons of life. Just like everyone has a mat - areas of brokenness and imperfection - we will all journey through the Wall - or a crisis in life that coincides with a season of wrestling with faith. A wholehearted community is uniquely designed to recognize that we all need to take turns on the mat - carrying and being carried to Jesus for healing and freedom. And a wholehearted community is aware and gracious towards those who are journeying through the Wall - we slow down to do that with empathy, care, and understanding. 

We recognize that New York City puts more people against the Wall - spiritually, relationally, personally, professionally - than almost any other place. We were built to be a wholehearted community where it’s needed the most.

David finished the sermon by mentioning specific examples from our journey together of where we have experienced wholehearted community as a new church community! We were awestruck to hear the many good and miraculous things the LORD has allowed us to experience in a short amount of time. We pray with Spirit-filled expectancy for more!

This past Sunday, Jean continued our Rivers of Renewal series by speaking from Genesis 37.2-5 on the second implication of renewal: deep-life change.

Jean began by exhorting us as a community to heed God's invitation to face the reality of our souls because in so doing we not only live the life we were meant to live but also, become conduits of God's living water to a hurting world. 

Jean showed us from the life of Joseph, who finds himself involuntarily in a pit, that we also can find ourselves in metaphorical pits from generational sins and wounds dealt by those around us. When we are in the pit, we have a choice: 1) will we give ourselves over to pity or 2) will we find the purpose in the hard? 

We find freedom from the pit not through our own effort and activity but by experiencing Jesus' intimate presence protecting and rescuing us. In addition, we believe from 2 Peter 2.9-10, that Jesus not only brings us up out of the pit but also brings us into the Palace of God's presence.

May we live deeply into God's loving presence today and this weekend! 

This past Sunday we continued our Rivers of Renewal series by discussing one implication of renewal: personal conversion. 

We started by mentioning that conversion to Christianity appears to be increasingly taboo. In 2019, the Barna Group found that 47% of millennial Christians somewhat agree that it is wrong to share one's faith with someone of a different faith with hopes that they will one day share the same faith.

However, it seems as though conversion is a natural way of being in the world. Jesuit thinker Bernard Lonergan argues that we absorb and engage the world around us through four moves: 1) Attention, 2) Intelligence, 3) Judgement, and 4) Responsibility. First, we take in the world around us. Second, we discern which ideas are better than others. Third, we make a reasonable call. Fourth, we live our lives accordingly.

In our present moment, it can be difficult to make a reasonable call. We are tempted to discern endlessly. Yet Chesterton writes, "Merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.”

We then moved into John 4, seeing how Jesus invites the Samaritan Woman at the Well through these four moves...attention (v.1-10), intelligence (v11-25), Judgment (v.26), and Responsibility (v.39-42). From this narrative we see this woman as first experiencing Jesus as stranger, before realizing he is Savior, and then responding rightly in surrender.

Where are you with Jesus at present? Is there a step with him he is inviting you to take?   

This past Sunday we continued our vision series, Rivers of Renewal, in John 7.37-39. 

We believe our vision for City Chapel is too big for human hands. City Chapel exists to see and spread the full measure of the Spirit-empowered renewal promised by Jesus that brings personal conversion & deep-life transformation, wholehearted community, social justice, and cultural beauty to New York City and Northern Jersey, and through here, the world.

1. The good news is Jesus is glorified and you have access to the Holy Spirit.

2. God longs for freedom for you.

3. It isn’t a one-time isolating experience to be filled with the spirit. We come to Jesus daily to be filled by the spirit.

This past Sunday we continued our vision series, Rivers of Renewal, in Ezekiel 47 by speaking about the River's Promise. We saw that the river contains 1) a promise of radical reversal, 2) a life-producing power, 3) and an "active" invitation.

First, the river contains a promise of radical reversal. The river in Ezekiel 47 calls back to the Garden of Eden, declaring a vision of the world as it should be. In addition, at the very end of Scripture in Revelation 22, we see another river, which shows us that this river in Ezekiel 47 alludes to not only the world as it should be, but also as the world as it will be. 

This passage promises that there will come a radical transformation that will mean a reversal of the brokenness of our present world. And, this promise, is a uniquely Biblical hope, because we believe in qualitative breaks in time--Creation, Fall, Redemption--which allow us to say that the evil and suffering of the present world is not normal; it is the aberration.

Second, we see that the River contains a life-producing power with two key implications. First, God's presence and love makes lovely. This runs counter to a modern world where love is given to only what one finds already lovely. And this creates a world of pretenders. Yet, the river runs through unfaithful and unworthy people, creating life and beauty even amid their weaknesses and inadequacies. Second, the river of God's presence is able to bring life to the most desolate and barren of environments and conditions. Therefore, you are not ultimately your environment. His grace breaks through all limiting factors. 

Third, we flipped to John 21 to see Peter recognize that this Ezekiel 47 vision has now arrived in Jesus. And, the only proper response is to go all-in and "swim" to and surrender to Him. 

This past Sunday we started a sermon series entitled Rivers of Renewal based on Ezekiel 47. In this chapter, we see a picture of a trickle of water that widens into a full-blown river, healing and restoring everything it touches. 

We opened the series by focusing on "the River's source," which is the Temple. We did that to see how through the Temple God invited ordinary people into a dynamic relationship. And, we started there, because our hope in this series is that it would increase our collective vision of who God uniquely is. 

In Ezekiel, we see God's people squander the unique privilege of having God's presence in their midst (Ezekiel 8-11), yet the hope of our passage is that God returns and rests his presence on an unworthy people (Ezekiel 40-48). And, this here is the good news. This is what God does. He loves persistently.

Last, in John 2, we see Jesus proclaiming that He is the True Temple. He is the true place where Heaven and Earth meet. Therefore, if we want to know what God is like, we can look at his face! :)

I hope you sense his smile over you this week! 

The new year will no doubt bring incredible highs and lows. This past week, we talked of three anchoring promises from Acts 5.17-42 that I hope you remember this year:

• God unlocks tightly guarded doors.   
• God repurposes our gravest failures. 
• God invites us into His inevitable movement. 

In the first, we saw the first Christians thrown into jail and an Angel of the Lord set them free. From this, we know two simple truths, God cares and God acts. If you do not believe God cares about you and God acts on your behalf, you will experience life as one locked door after another that you will have to jam open with your finite ability, talent, and competency. And this will make your soul prideful, spiteful, and tired. 

In the second, we saw the first Christians explaining to those opposing them that though these opposers delivered Jesus to the Romans to be killed, God has repurposed this grave failure of theirs, and now it has become the very basis of God's grace and forgiveness. 

In the last, we saw a respected leader of those opposing warn his own group that if this Christian movement was of God it could not fail. And, that is our ultimate hope. We believe that there is no stopping this Resurrection movement marked by worship, hope, and healing. 

Here' is the link to the video shown at the beginning of the sermon.

This past Sunday, we talked about love from John 3.16. We saw that love's 1)objects, 2) ends, and 3) nature.

John 3.16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

In the first, we saw from Scripture that love is not, as we often view, a merely internal subjective experience, but it is something that God has within God's self. It is something he is, which is ultimately good news, because it is something outside of us that we are invited into (v. a thing we have to manufacture or fight to maintain).

In the second, we saw that God longs for those he loves to experience eternal life. We talked about how we conceive of "eternal" as "life unending," which for us makes Christianity an entirely future hope. But, if time is merely a measure of change, we have to remember that God does not change. He is a-temporal in an incomprehensible way.

Here's the big idea. Our creaturely problem is simply that time changes, and as we experience time changing, it is an incredibly lonely experience as everyone is set-off moving in a direction different from the people closest to them.

Our great hope is that an incomprehensibly atemporal God steps into time and invites us into an incomprehensibly full atemporal love that does not change. 

This past Sunday, we saw the Joy equals possessing what you are desiring. So, looking at Jesus' mention of joy, we asked two questions: 1) what should we desire? and 2) how do we possess it?

Quite simply, Jesus tells us to pursue:

• a FULL joy in a world of partial joy. 
• a PERMANENT joy in a world of temporary joy. 
• a PREGNANT joy that goes backwards into time to transform even our deepest agonies into glory. 

And, how does one possess this joy?

• This joy is caught by "infection" when in contact with His Presence. 

And on Christmas, we celebrate that His Presence has made contact with us.