CityFellowship | Union Square NYC

It’s been a little over a year since we started meeting at the Union Square Loft.  And I want to thank everyone who has made it possible - even if you left NY before we got to this location - it’s because you believed in a crazy dream that we could make it this far.  To redefine church, to try and do everything God wants of us, to build a community of friends based on the God of the Bible, to the best of our ability, without compromise. To respect diversity and individuality while at the same time learning to live as a God’s family…  This wasn’t an idea dreamed up in the high towers of a corporate headquarters somewhere, this was a call and desire implanted in us by a living God. Continue Reading »

Here’s the passage (click click) that most sane and progressive women don’t want read at their weddings… it’s the one that says “wives SUBMIT to your husbands as to the Lord.”  We’re not really good with the idea of submission.  Whenever we hear the word we can only think of bad examples, unhealthy roles, oppressive relationships, etc.  And those are valid concerns, God sets us free, we should be wary of anything that’s going to put us under its thumb…  But there is such a thing as healthy submission.  And actually it’s at the heart of knowing what real love is…  Because real love is about something MORE than yourself…the Bible’s word for what you do when you get that is “to submit.” Continue Reading »

“Honor your father and mother” is probably the underdog of all the commandments.  It’s the one that no one can remember…  It’s also the one that seems the least controversial and easiest to ignore.  But the context argues that this commandment holds the single biggest determining factor to your happiness. If you want to be happy, please at least check out what God is trying to tell you with this one…

Now I hope someday soon someone will come along and do a better job at expounding and articulating what the Bible has to say about this - but for the time being you can try this (Honor your parents - mp3).

There’s a silly and sometimes bizarre tendency to want to make church center on something other than God.  Some of these are obvious: “the gun-toting church…” for instance. There are some I kinda’ like: how about a “motorcycle riding church?”  But other versions of this are more subtle: the hipster church, the yuppie church, the intellectual church, the anti-intellectual church, church for older people, church for young people, the politically conservative church, the politically liberal church, etc, etc… Sometimes we do this with good intentions.  We want the people who fall into these categories realize that Jesus is for them too.  The problem is that Jesus is not limited to these, and so it’s very easy to wind up misrepresenting Jesus (usually without realizing it).  Continue Reading »

I think most people have dating all wrong.  As a result, if you’re single, you’re probably not having as much fun as you could if you made just a few simple changes.  Instead you get stuck with conflicting emotions, feelings of guilt, crossed signals (where one person is “serious” and the other is not), perpetual dating that leads nowhere (when you want it to lead to something else)… Continue Reading »

It can be amazingly difficult to do something new.  Ever notice how long it seems to take to get somewhere for the first time, compared to how quick it is to get back home?  Time and space seems to warp when it comes to new things.  New is hard.  New is stressful.  New is terribly inconvenient. Old things on the other hand are surprisingly easy (even when they’re not!). It’s “easy” to go to the same places you always go, even if you’re miles away and it’s terribly inconvenient. It’s easy to stick with dysfunctional relationships (rather than try to fix it or leave) even when they’re hurting us or holding us back.  It’s easy to stick with a job or career or major, even when you can’t seem to find any good reason for it.

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There’s nothing like garbage day in NY!  And since my regular household chore is to take out the trash, I’m often surprised at how much we create.  Sometimes I’m just lazy and don’t take it out for a day (or two!).  Even though we don’t eat or cook at home, and we don’t often buy things, I wind up having to make a couple of trips to the trash chute. What if this is true in a spiritual sense too?  What if we regularly produce a good bit of spiritual trash?  A little resentment, selfishness, a scrap of bitterness, a wad of jealousy, a cap full of lust…  What would happen to this trash after a few days?  A week?  A month? Continue Reading »

I used to be the sole-pastor for a church filled with college students.  Aside from all the fun and energy, and the miracles God works in people’s hearts, I can sum up the day to day experience in one word: DRAMA.  There was LOTS of drama.  Fortunately most of it didn’t involve me.  The most common situation was when person “A” disliked person “B”.  Sometimes they were roommates, sometimes BFF’s, sometimes bf/gf’s…  Fortunately I’m pretty good at keeping other people’s stories to myself… But what was surprising to me was that these weren’t just interpersonal disputes, almost all of them turned out to be about holiness… Continue Reading »

You’ve probably seen this video.  Part of what makes it disturbing is that the police say that the officer was following protocol: He repeatedly warns her and tells her what to do, and she disobeys.  If this were a 300 lb muscle builder guy doing the exact same thing, we’d be on the officer’s side.  Right?  But this wasn’t a big burly guy, it was a tiny feisty elderly woman who obviously posed no danger officer. The officer may have been following protocol - but if that’s the case then in this instance the protocol sucks.  There has to be a better way… Continue Reading »

Great things aren’t always accompanied by lots of hubbub…  So there were no bugle calls when Einstein came up with his theory of relativity.  And when Coltrane played the Village Vanguard, the place wasn’t crawling with paparazzi.  No, like most great moments, these things happened quietly and most people didn’t notice until many many years later. Continue Reading »