This week, instead of our regularly scheduled programming, we take time to recap and practice the Spiritual Disciplines we studied together in our Missional Communities (MC). The disciplines have served the Church since its founding, teaching God's people to pursue deeper presence with the Him. Pastor Pedro gives us a brief word and issues an assignment: Pursue presence with God. Care to join us as we take time to ask God to meet with us?

As we bring “Our Beatitudes” sermon series to a close, we discuss the last part of the Beatitudes: rejoicing! The end result of being a beatific follower of Christ is a call to rejoice, even in the face of persecution. Pastor Pedro breaks down how suffering in the hands of a good, healing, and redemptive God produces true blessing.

This week's sermon places those who are reviled, persecuted, and spoken evil against on Jesus’s account are at the center of His blessing. Pastor Pedro breaks down what it means to be on Jesus’s account, why His blessing accompanies this hardship, and why Jesus preaches directly to us His followers. When Jesus calls us to be “beatific followers”, He calls us into the practices AND the promises.

This week, we look at what it means to be persecuted. If Our Beatitudes describe a person satisfied in Christ, why “in God’s Name” then are we called to have a healthy relationship with persecution? What does it mean to be persecuted for righteousness’ sake rather than for being a jerk? What does it mean to be a beatific sufferer? Short answer: we’re called to know Christ in both His joy and burden.

This week, the Peacemakers shine forth. Jesus calls all of His followers to be makers of peace in a world that cannot adequately define what peace is. The Father desires His children to take up the family business of establishing peace. Pastor Pedro discusses why peace is so central to God's work and how peacemaking, according to the Bible, costs.

This week, we take a look at the Pure In Heart. This beatitude may be the most pertinent beatitude to a New York City area church with regard to our hearts and schedules. How can busy, ambitious, and successful people live lives that deeply evidence Christ? How can this promise shape life and allow us to say no to being overworked, overwhelmed and too tired at the end of the day?

This week, we learn that those who both FEEL and PERFORM mercy are blessed! This raises some important questions such as, “What is mercy?”, “How is it unique from other loving characteristics?”, ”How do we become a merciful people?”, “How is mercy a perfect combination of need and relief?”, and “If acts of mercy never materialize in our lives, are we truly merciful?” Jesus teaches about mercy and how to become the merciful community we have been called to be. 

This week, we learn how and why the hungry and thirsty are blessed. Jesus preaches that we are blessed when we relentlessly search for truth, or as Scripture often puts it - righteousness. Blessed are those who seek after Jesus and allow nothing else to fill them because nothing else truly can. Pastor Pedro breaks down hunger as it pertains to our character and how hunger for righteousness over comfort produces profound satisfaction.

This week, Jesus’s and #OurBeatitudes shine the spotlight on those who never really get spotlighted, the Meek. Pastor Pedro asserts that meekness may be the strongest of the Christian character qualities, yet it is most often incorrectly correlated to weakness. How is it that meekness becomes strength in Jesus? How is it that Jesus changed the world with meekness? Why does Jesus call His mature followers to be meek? We ponder this as we try to understand the Kingdom blessing behind meekness.

This week, we focus in on Matthew 5:4 in order to understand what our next step is in #LivingOurBlessedLives according to this portrait of one of Christ’s followers. Pastor Ryan walks us through the kind of mourning that promises to bring us the true comfort of God and the idea that enduring the pain of confession and repentance is much like learning to ride a bike without training wheels. In the same way that satisfaction and freedom in riding a bicycle comes only after pushing through the pain of falling down, satisfaction and freedom in Christ comes only after we confess and repent over sin.