Welcome to the Eric Mataxis Show. Please keep your arms and legs inside the car at all times. This is your final warning. Now here's your host, Mr. Thrill Ride Himself, Eric Mataxis.

Hey folks, this is the Eric Mataxis Show where I get to talk to people that I think are very interesting and you get to listen in. And if you're following us on YouTube, the Eric Mataxis Show channel, some of our programs are on TBN. It's just a wonderful host of options that you have. But today, and this is particularly close to my heart, I get to talk to a friend who's a pastor here in New York City.

Some of you know him. He's been on before his name is John Tyson. He's the pastor and church planner that is currently the head of the church of the city here in New York City, originally from Adelaide, Australia, which is why he has the non-New York accent. John Tyson, welcome.

What's up, Nate? How's it going? Thank you for having me on the show.

See there you go. What's up, Nate? That's not normal for New Yorker. So right away, I know I'm talking for somebody from down under, but you've been here a long time. You've been here what 20 years?

No, so I've been I've been in the US 23 years. I've been in New York City 15 15 years in Manhattan, which means I'm almost a New Yorker. I'm getting close, getting close.

Yeah, I think I think another week and you're officially a New Yorker. I want to I want to talk to you about well, first of all, you're a church planner, which is different from being just a pastor. In other words, you've started a movement of churches.

Tell us a little bit about that, particularly with regard to New York City.

Yeah, I remember very clearly, we've just celebrated the anniversary of 9-11 and you know, a lot of people I was actually down in Tennessee at the time when 9-11 happened and a lot of folks attention sort of turned towards New York.

And so I came up after 9-11, basically to visit Brooklyn tab and visit their prayer meeting just to pray for the city. And as it happened, I stayed in the double tree hotel in Times Square and ended up staying up all night walking around the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood, which is where I've lived for the last six years.

And I just fell in love with the place. And I remember just thinking, dear God, is there a way that you can put me in New York to serve you here? I love that. I like everything about it. Energy pays, diversity people.

And so when I got a little bit older, I was just a youth pastor then, and I started thinking about what the next season was, New York had been in my heart the whole time. And as a Protestant, I remember thinking, who's permissioned the need if you don't have a Pope to go and start a church?

And I realized you didn't need a whole lot of permission. What you needed was willingness and resources. And so yeah, 2005, a group of friends sold their homes, did the Book of Acts chapter two, shared their resources, started a Bible study in that group into what we've done the last 15 years here. So it's been a total joy. I love New York.

If people want to find you on the internet and your church movement, where do they go?

It's a great URL. It's church.NYC.

How is that possible? Church.NYC, that's it.

That's it.

That's unbelievable. Who did you have to pay? Did you go to Al Gore and like slip him a crisp, see note when he invented the internet and you said, sir, can I have church.NYC? And that's how it happened.

That's pretty close to how it happened.

That's unbelievable.

I love the idea when corruption.

I just love the idea when corruption and the right brain serves the gospel. It's a wonderful thing. Church.NYC.

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