Welcome to the Church of the City Podcast.
Church of the City New York is a church community passionate about making disciples who "practice the way of Jesus together for the renewal of the city." We believe in the authority and power of the scriptures to shape our communal life and practice, as we seek to teach God's word with clarity and conviction.
Most of the teaching in our community is done by Pastor Jon Tyson and our teaching team. We have both morning and evening services and meet in the heart of Manhattan.
For more information visit: churchofthecitynyc.com
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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...
This Sunday, Pastor Tim continued our FREED series with a teaching on freedom from lies, drawing from John 8:31–47. He opened with a confession that many of us could relate to: New York has trained us to believe that freedom is always one system away, and if we are not careful, that same restless optimization spills into our spiritual lives too. Pastor Tim argued that the problem is not that we haven't tried hard enough. It's that beneath every sin pattern is a lie we have been carrying so long ...
This Sunday, Pastor Sam continued our FREED series with a teaching on freedom from sin, drawing from 1 John 1:5–10, 2:1–2. He opened by naming what sin actually does to us: it separates, stains, sensitizes, steals, and spreads. The heart of the message, though, was not diagnosis. It was invitation. Through the lens of both guilt-innocence and honor-shame frameworks, Pastor Sam showed that Jesus doesn't just declare us innocent; He restores the relationship. Through the practice of honest, specif...
This Sunday, Pastor Jon continued the FREED series with one of the most personal questions it will raise: can you actually be free from your past? He opened with a number—nine out of ten—his and Christy's combined score on the Adverse Childhood Experiences assessment. The score wasn't shared for sympathy, it was shared to make the question real. As James Baldwin wrote, "people are trapped in history, and history is trapped in them." Sin works the same way. It exerts power by keeping you in what ...
This Sunday, Pastor Jon opened the new series "FREED" by putting our cultural moment under pressure. We are the freest people in history, and among the most anxious. The freedom we've been promised has not delivered the peace it advertised. What we got instead was exhaustion, comparison, and a quiet sense of fragmentation. The Bible's definition of freedom is entirely different. The question is not whether you're free to do whatever you want. It's whether you're free to become who you were made ...
This Resurrection Sunday, Pastor Jon asked a question most of us don't say out loud: what happens to hope when it dies? He opened with the concept of "hope theory" — the idea that hope requires a vision, a pathway, and a sense that you can actually get there — and traced what happens when that vision collapses. The disciples on the road to Emmaus knew that feeling. They had built everything around Jesus, and then watched Him die. Walking away from Jerusalem, they said the most honest thing in th...
This Sunday, Pastor Jon concluded the "Come to Me" series by asking a question worth sitting with: why Jesus? He pointed to a cultural moment where confident secularism is losing its footing, and the Christianity quietly growing is not the therapeutic, accommodating kind — it's the traditional, committed, and costly one. From there, Pastor Jon offered three reasons to come to Jesus: longing, forgiveness, and rest. He challenged us with the idea of "miswanting": the gap between what we think will...
This Sunday, Pastor Keithen taught from John 11 and made the case that most of us, have gotten the story badly wrong. He opened with a telling moment from an "Ask the Pastor" session at a high school on the Upper East Side. Every question the students asked him was about who gets into heaven. Not one was about Jesus. From there, he traced the two answers to eternity we've inherited — secularism, which says death is just the end, and a kind of religious gnosticism, which says the physical world i...
This week, Pastor Tim Brown unpacks one of Jesus' most profound declarations — Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life — and gets to the heart of what it means to follow Him. The Christian life is not a transaction with God, a performance for His approval, or a checklist of spiritual obligations. It's a relationship, and there's a sobering difference between knowing about God and truly knowing Him. If you want to know what God is truly like, look at Jesus. His weeping at the tomb of His friend...
This episode explores Jesus' declaration as the Good Shepherd, contrasting His sacrificial leadership with that of "hired hands" and manipulative modern "shepherds" like media and algorithms. Pastor Jon reflects on personal leadership failures and calls for deeper discernment about who shapes our desires, inviting listeners to find their true path and identity in Christ. The sermon emphasizes God's compassion for the vulnerable and the power of His voice to guide us.
This Sunday, Pastor Jon taught from John 10:1–10, where Jesus declares "I am the door," and meets us in one of our most quietly carried human aches -- our desire to belong. When the world offers an exclusive inclusivity, "you're welcome in, as long as you conform," mentality, Jesus offers the inverse. His door is open to anyone, and through His door isn't merely entry, but protection, freedom, and abundance.
In this episode, Pastor Jon Tyson teaches from John 15, reframing burnout not as excessive output but as a disconnection from the true source of life. He explains Jesus' profound claim as the "True Vine," contrasting it with Israel's unfaithfulness and the world's "false vines." Jon illustrates how abiding is a secure, intimate relationship with Christ, transforming believers from servants to friends, and leading to complete joy, intrinsic value, and fruit that lasts, as exemplified by the apostle John's transformation. He concludes with practical steps to receive and respond to God's love, cultivating a "vineyard" within one's heart to avoid depletion and broadcast hope to a weary world.
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.
Pastor Suzy Silk explores Jesus' declaration as the "Bread of Life," challenging listeners to recognize that worldly satisfactions are fleeting and cannot fulfill our deepest longings. She draws on King Solomon and C.S. Lewis to illustrate humanity's innate, God-shaped hunger. The episode outlines four movements to receive Jesus as true sustenance: invitation, dependence, communion, and feasting, inviting a daily, intimate relationship with God.
In this kick-off sermon, Pastor Jon Tyson addresses the Church's challenge in evangelism, revealing a new series designed to equip every believer to articulate their faith. He emphasizes three core concepts from Matthew 16: Jesus as the Messiah, the relationship we're made for; the Church as a counter-cultural community of love and equality; and the Kingdom as a restorative cause. The episode highlights the failing secular narrative and the spiritual openness of society, providing practical resources and a call to share personal testimonies of encountering Christ.
What happens when God's presence comes into a city? In this conversation, Pastor Jon and Pastor Sam close out our "God Comes Where He's Wanted" series by teaching on the altar of the region. After exploring the altars of the heart, church, and family, we now address what can seem most daunting, moving from personal peace to embracing God's heart for an entire region. Only when we are heartbroken over our city and places will we begin to prayerfully build the altar of our region. We have to keep ...
Jon Tyson's father, Ian Walter, shares profound wisdom on prayer, stemming from a lineage of praying men. He recounts vivid stories of spiritual warfare on the mission field and personal experiences, emphasizing how to combat Satan's plans and claim God's promises for family. The conversation culminates in a powerful reflection on living a life devoted to prayer, local and global intercession, and the hope of eternity.
This Sunday, Pastor Jon continued our God Comes Where He's Wanted series with a teaching on the altar of the church, teaching from Acts 6:1–7. He reminded us that the church is meant to be the place where God dwells, yet we often miss His presence not through rejection, but through neglect. When we fill our lives, hunger for God can quietly fade. Drawing from Scripture, Pastor Jon highlighted prayer and the Word as the foundations that sustain God's presence among His people. Prayer restores our...
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 ido...
This Sunday, Pastor Sam Gibson kicked off our January series, God Comes Where He's Wanted, with a teaching on the central importance of the altar of the heart. Scripture and revival history remind us that God moves where He is deeply desired, and that hunger for His presence is the true catalyst for renewal. While we cannot control when or how God moves, we are invited to cultivate hearts that welcome Him. Though our hearts are often damaged by this world and can become dull or divided, as we yi...
This Sunday, Pastor Jon Tyson continued our Advent series, He Shall Be, with a teaching about the good news of Jesus as Savior. In a world marked by exhaustion, violence, and brokenness, the sentimentality of Christmas is not enough for our weary hearts. Scripture tells us that the world became so fractured that God Himself came to save us, out of His deep love for us. Jesus is the true leader our hearts long for—reshaping the world through dignity, mercy, and grace. Advent points us to a God wh...
This Sunday, Pastor Suzy Silk continued our Advent series, He Shall Be, with a teaching on the significance of Jesus as the Messiah, reminding us how Advent and Hanukkah point us back to God's faithfulness and His promise-keeping nature, even in fearful and anxious times. Jesus is the Messiah whom God had long promised, perfectly accomplishing what no earthly king could and fulfilling dozens of specific Old Testament prophecies. Because God is the Lord of history and has proven Himself faithful ...
Pastor Jon Tyson continues the Advent series by exploring Jesus' definition of greatness, contrasting it sharply with modern culture's pursuit of achievement, status, and recognition. He delves into how Jesus' humility and self-giving love offer a revolutionary vision that reshaped humanity, calling believers to embrace a counter-cultural path of dependence on God's unconditional love rather than worldly validation. The sermon challenges listeners to shed spiritual pride and find true freedom in their secure identity as beloved children of God.
This Sunday, Pastor Ralph Castillo kicked off our new sermon series during the Advent season, He Shall Be, with a teaching on Jesus as Immanuel, or "God with us". Pastor Ralph posed two questions for us to consider during this Advent season: How is the coming of Jesus at Christmas good news? And how does He meet the core longings that surface most intensely during this Advent season? Pastor Ralph explained that this is why we celebrate Christmas: because God came. He answered our loneliness and ...
This Sunday, Pastor Sam Gibson concluded our series on Making Sense of Church with a teaching on the Body of Christ, from 1 Corinthians 12. The Body is filled with people who are baptized by the same Holy Spirit, no matter our gender, culture, race, or any other identifiers, but we all play a part in either defiling or restoring the Body. The Spirit's primary role is to reveal Jesus and align us under His headship, and it is by this same Spirit that we are refreshed and renewed, freed and transf...
On Saturday, we hosted our first Vocational Mission Forum. In this recording, Pastor Sam Gibson interviews three young leaders on prayer and the workplace. Find out more at cvm.nyc
This Sunday, Pastor Jon Tyson continued our series Making Sense of Church with a teaching from Ephesians 2:14–18, focusing on Paul's vision of the Church as the "the new humanity." In a society marked by polarization, contempt, and hostility, Pastor Jon reminded us that Jesus Himself is our peace—the One who tears down dividing walls and creates a radically new kind of community. In Adam, the "old humanity" is marked by blame, fear, hiding, violence, and retaliation, but in Christ, we are brough...
This month, we want to take a look back at the remarkable things God has been able to release in our church through the generosity of our community. In 2022, we committed part of our Living the Liturgy Offering to becoming a church that could serve as a patron of the arts and cultivate a community of redemptive artists. We invite you to check out the impact your giving has had over the last few years in the recording. Through your generosity, forty artists have been commissioned to create new wo...
This Sunday, guest Pastor Guy Mason continued our sermon series, Making Sense of the Church, with a teaching on the Church as the City on a Hill. Anchored in Jesus' teaching in Matthew 5 commissioning His people to be the light of the world and a city set on a hill, we are reminded of our calling to pursue a life of undivided worship and Christ-centered holiness as a witness to the world. As we become a people set apart and built together in love to push back darkness with light, we can rest in ...
This month, we want to take a look back at the remarkable things God has been able to release in our church through the generosity of our community. In 2021, we committed to investing a significant portion of this offering to building out our Next Gen Ministry, and we invite you to listen to the impact your giving has had over the last few years in the recording. Through your generosity, our Next Gen Ministry has not only radically blessed our own church, but is becoming a blessing to the city. ...
