God Comes Where He's Wanted | The Altar of the Church - Jon Tyson

A special podcast episode featuring a conversation between Pastor Jon and his dad on multigenerational faithfulness and prayer. 

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 identity, sharpens discernment, and releases freedom, while the Word is living and active, releasing promises and shaping the future God has prepared for us. This teaching calls us back to devotion, inviting us to open our hearts again and allow God to rekindle what may have grown cold.

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 idols that compete for our devotion. As God restores Gideon's identity and calls him into partnership, we are urged to pursue fully integrated lives marked by obedience and faithfulness to remove idols. In Matthew 18, we are reminded of Jesus' deep care for children, and we are all invited to fight for the future of the church by blessing young people, breaking generational cycles, and intentionally passing on faith.

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 yield to God's healing and return to daily dependence on the Gospel and God's Word, we make room for the Holy Spirit to renew us and allow God's life to flow through us once again.

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 who is truly with us, meeting our sin, shame, and weariness with restoration, hope, and the gift of salvation to all who receive Him.

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 time and time again, we can trust Him with our futures. Pastor Suzy invited us to lift our eyes above the chaos into a long-term perspective focused on God's faithfulness and to remember that the antidote to anxiety is not answers but the person of Jesus—resting in the certainty that the Messiah has come and will come again.

This Sunday, Pastor Jon continued our Advent series, He Shall Be, with a teaching on Jesus' greatness and how He redefined what greatness means in the Kingdom of God. He contrasted our culture's pursuit of success, status, and recognition with the way of Jesus, whose greatness is revealed in humility, dependence, and self-giving love. In a world obsessed with achievement, Jesus' greatness is found in His descent; he had everything but became a child for our sake. And when we follow Jesus' example and rest in the Father's secure love, we are freed to serve others without fear. The path to true greatness is not a life shaped not by recognition, but by humility and Christlike love.

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 grief with Himself, and Pastor Ralph invited us to consider that the best Christmas present of all is Jesus' tangible presence with us.

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 transformed, and made each day to look even more like Christ.

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