The Fifth Act | The Gospel for the City - Tim Brown

Church of the City New York

COTC NYC

Religion & Spirituality, Cotc, Churchofthecitynewyork, Cotcnyc, Christianity, Jontyson, Churchofthecity

4.8 • 837 Ratings

🗓️ 11 August 2025

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week, Pastor Tim Brown continued our series in the Book of Acts with a look at Paul’s time in Athens and exploring what it means to engage a culture like ours with the Gospel in 2025. In many ways, Athens mirrors New York City today: a place of great beauty and creativity, but also deep brokenness, competing worldviews, and misplaced worship. Pastor Tim challenged us to follow Paul’s example, seeing our city through God’s eyes, feeling His heart for the lost, and stepping into both familiar and unfamiliar spaces to reason, build relationships, and proclaim the Gospel, the only message that can truly transform lives.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I would love to invite you to remain standing for the reading of our teaching text.
0:11.0	If you would stand with me for the reading of our teaching text.
0:15.0	Tonight's teaching text comes from Acts, chapter 17, verses 16 to 18.
0:25.1	And it says, while Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols.
0:34.4	So he reasoned in the synagogue with both Jews and God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the
0:39.3	marketplace day by day with those who happen to be there. A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers
0:45.3	began to debate with him. Some of them asked, what is this babbler trying to say? Others remarked,
0:51.1	he seems to be advocating foreign gods. They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection.
0:58.1	This is the word of the Lord.
1:10.7	Church the City, how are you guys doing? Good?
1:14.2	Well, my name is Tim. I'm so honored to be with the guys this evening.
1:18.3	And I'm really excited to share this message with the guys tonight.
1:21.9	We're continuing forward in our series to the Book of Acts.
1:25.4	And today we're entering into what I believe, a very important
1:29.4	message for the current cultural moment that we live in as followers of Jesus in a city like New York
1:36.5	in a year like 2025. And here's why. If we take a step back and we look at the state of the gospel in our city, we see an
1:47.9	interesting tension. On one hand, we have absolute beauty, all these incredible stories of people
1:54.0	coming to faith, people receiving new life in Jesus, people being healed, freedom, redemption.
2:01.4	And on the other hand, there's real brokenness in the city.
2:05.8	Just here at Church the City, we have seen more people come to faith in Jesus this year
2:11.9	than the last two years combined.
2:15.2	That's significant.
	...

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