What does it mean to follow Jesus when home is always changing?

In this special conversation, Piero Gorriti sits down with Solomon Abaki—pastor, football coach, husband, father, and global disciple whose journey has taken him from Kenya to India, London, New York City, and back again. Together, they explore faith, calling, family, and the challenge of hearing God’s voice through seasons of transition.

Drawing from decades of ministry across cultures and continents, Solomon reflects on growing up as a pastor’s son, learning to discern God’s leading in unfamiliar places, raising a child across multiple countries, and discovering that home is not primarily a location but wherever God has called you to be. Along the way, he shares practical wisdom on cultivating a life of prayer, remaining sensitive to the Holy Spirit, and embracing God’s purposes even when they lead beyond comfort and familiarity.

Whether you’re navigating a major life transition, wrestling with questions of belonging, or seeking to hear God’s voice more clearly, this conversation offers encouragement to trust God’s leading and faithfully steward the place where He has planted you today.

What turns an ordinary person into someone whose life points unmistakably to Jesus?

In this special message, Shawn Wallace opens Acts 4:1–13 and explores the remarkable transformation of Peter—from a fearful disciple who denied Jesus to a bold witness who stood before rulers and religious leaders proclaiming the gospel without hesitation. The difference wasn't education, status, or natural ability. As those who opposed him observed, "they took note that these men had been with Jesus."

Drawing from Peter's restoration after failure, the empowering work of the Holy Spirit, and decades of ministry experience across cultures and nations, Shawn reminds us that lasting spiritual transformation begins not with trying harder, but with encountering Jesus and living under the Spirit's influence.

Whether you're carrying shame from past failures, feeling exhausted from relying on your own strength, or seeking direction for what God has next, this message is an invitation to hear the Father's voice, receive His restoring love, and offer yourself fully to His purposes.

When people look at our lives, would they be able to tell that we've been with Jesus?

What does Netflix have to do with the cross?

In this solo message, Koob Vang opens Philippians 2:1–11 and invites us to examine what truly moves us. We know what it feels like to be pulled into a story, to stay up for one more episode, to give hours of attention without needing to be forced. But when it comes to the work of God, especially in seasons that feel tiring, stretching, or slow, many of us find ourselves asking a more honest question: where does real motivation come from?

Drawing from Daniel Pink’s language of autonomy, mastery, and purpose, Koob reframes motivation through the lens of the Gospel. Paul does not call the church to unity, humility, and obedience through guilt or pressure. He reminds them of what is already true in Christ. We are not servants trying to earn a place in God’s family. We are children of God, already transformed, empowered by the Spirit, and called into mission.

And at the center of it all is Jesus, who did not cling to comfort, status, or power, but emptied himself in love and walked the road to the cross. Not by coercion. Not for applause. But because we were the joy set before him.

So what happens when the fire that moves us is no longer pressure, performance, or results, but the mind of Christ formed in us?

Discipleship is not only something we schedule. It is something we carry as we go.

In this message, Kevin Douglas opens Matthew 28:18–20 and focuses on one word from the Great Commission: "Go." But this "go" carries the sense of "as you go" — as you walk, work, parent, commute, eat, listen, and meet the people God places in front of you.

Kevin invites us to see discipleship as a way of being formed by God for the sake of others. It begins with being with God, knowing we are loved, secure, and made in His image. From there, we learn to see others not as projects to convert, but as people to behold with the same love God has shown us.

Through stories from Roosevelt Island, a playground conversation on Mother's Day, Paul and Silas in prison, Lydia by the river, and Kevin's years as a chaplain in a senior living facility, this message reminds us that discipleship can happen in five minutes or over five years. Sometimes it looks like sharing the Gospel clearly. Sometimes it begins with a simple word of presence: "We are all here."

What would change if we stopped waiting for the perfect program and began paying attention to the people God has already placed along the way?

We cannot become a Glocal disciple-making church by strategy alone. We need breath. We need fire. We need the Holy Spirit.

In this final message of our "Becoming a Glocal Disciple-Making Church" series, Piero Gorriti opens Acts 2:1–11 on Pentecost Sunday to bring the whole journey together: Gospel Transformation, Gospel Embodiment, and Gospel Multiplication. The Gospel changes us, becomes visible through us, and is reproduced through us. But none of this is possible unless the Spirit of God fills, empowers, and sends the people of God.

The Holy Spirit is not a force to use, but a person to know. Not a shortcut to spiritual power, but the relational presence of God who meets us in our dependence. And because the Spirit is communal, He does not simply form private spirituality. He forms a new family. A Spirit-filled community where cultural, ethnic, and social barriers are broken, and ordinary people become witnesses together.

But even then, the burden of multiplication was never ours to carry. The Lord is the one who adds. The Spirit is the one who breathes life into the church. We are witnesses, ambassadors, storytellers, embodying the greatest story ever told.

What happens when we stop trying to manufacture the movement and begin asking, again and again, "Come, Holy Spirit"?

We are all waiting for a kingdom. The question is whether the one we're expecting is shaped by God or by our own pain.

In this sixth message of our "Becoming a Glocal Disciple-Making Church" series, Andrea Gorriti opens Matthew 4:12-17 and sits with one word: Metanoia. Often translated as repentance, it is not a command to clean up your act. It is an invitation to change the way you think, to let go of your own kingdom with its own idols and its own ways, and receive something that will actually fulfill you. The Jews were waiting for a Messiah shaped by their hurt and their context. If we're honest, many of us are doing the same.

But what Jesus calls the Kingdom of God is not the upside-down thing the world makes it out to be. It is right-side up, the way we were always created to live. And the man in the parable who found it did not reluctantly sell everything he had. He ran. He sold it all with joy, because when you truly see the Kingdom, giving up your own does not feel like loss.

Discipleship in God's Kingdom costs everything. And yet it turns out to be the best trade you have ever made.

The Gospel doesn't change. But the way we carry it into the world has to.

In this fifth message of our "Becoming a Glocal Disciple-Making Church" series, Piero Gorriti opens 1 Corinthians 9:19–23 to explore what Paul meant when he said he was free from all, yet made himself a slave to all. Not a loss of identity, but a voluntary willingness to bridge the cultural gap, to adopt someone else's standpoint, so that some might be saved. It's a posture that costs something. And it raises an honest question: Have we been willing to sacrifice our cultural comfort for the sake of the Gospel?

But bridging the gap is only the beginning. Because on the other side of it is a person, and that's where Paul moves from preacher to disciple-maker. From follower to multiplier. The way he invested in Timothy. The way a shepherd leaves ninety-nine for the one.

What happens when we stop waiting for the many and start with the one in front of us?

Life has a way of filling every quiet corner. Social media, busyness, anxiety, habits — a constant background noise that keeps us from hearing the whispers of the Holy Spirit.

In this fourth message of our "Becoming a Glocal Disciple-Making Church" series, Andrea Gorriti explores what it really means to live under God's authority — not as a religious checklist, but as a posture of trust and joyful submission. Using Matthew 8:5–13, she walks us through the surprising faith of a Roman centurion who understood something most of us are still learning: that true power flows through those who know who they're under.

If we want to make disciples, we have to ask an honest question first — what authority am I living under?

In the third sermon of our series, Becoming a Glocal Disciple-Making Church, Piero Gorriti preaches “Gospel Embodiment: Living out Jesus’ Mission Boldly,” based on Luke 4:16–21. Jesus begins His public ministry with a mission manifesto, declaring that the Gospel is not only a message to be believed, but a reality to be embodied in word, deed, and power through the Holy Spirit.

This sermon traces how Jesus’ mission continues through His disciples and now through the Spirit-filled church. As glocal disciple-makers in New York City, we are called to stop waiting for better circumstances, let go of the extra baggage that keeps us distracted, and boldly live out the Gospel in our work, neighborhoods, relationships, and everyday circles of influence.

In the second sermon of our series, Becoming a Glocal Disciple-Making Church, Andrea preaches from 1 Samuel 1:9–18 and reminds us that disciple-making does not begin with activity, gifting, or knowledge, but with intimacy with God. Through Hannah’s story, this message explores how God meets us in our pain, anxiety, and waiting, and how His presence becomes the place where our hearts are healed and transformed. Before we can help others follow Jesus, we must first learn to pour out our own souls before Him.

This sermon also invites us to see that our personal stories are not obstacles to God’s mission, but often the very places where His grace meets us most deeply. As we grow in self-awareness, surrender, and dependence on God’s presence, we are formed into healthy disciples who can disciple others out of authenticity rather than performance. In a city marked by distraction, busyness, and burnout, this message calls us back to the throne of grace, where God continues His lifelong work of sanctifying and shaping us into the image of Christ.