We're excited to welcome the first Guest Speaker from our "Forefront Preaching Bootcamp". Frank M Espinal, a long time Forefronter, took to the stage and opened our new series "What in the...??" Frank explores the difference between forgiveness and redemption.
Read MoreUnlearning Purity Culture and Shame
Jonathan Williams tackles the church and their role in politicizing women's bodies. We're talking about abortion, which has become a Christian rallying point in the past 30 years. Our Pro-Life theology is actually way more political than Godly.
Unlearning Purity Culture and Shame
There is an active movement going on nationally and in New York to decriminalize sex work, and I think as a church we have to participate in this movement due to how purity culture has contributed towards the criminal punishment of sex workers and how our own Scriptures call us to honor sex workers. During this Sermon Series “Sex Positive”. Sarah Ngu explores the role sex workers played in Scripture and how we as a society need to come to grips with this today and respect sex workers.
Unlearning Purity Culture and Shame
There is no biblical definition of sex and marriage unless you count sleeping with your father in law, marrying your brother, having 700 sex slaves, or becoming a eunuch for the sake of the gospel. So what does healthy sex look like? Here's Jonathan Williams preaching about Marriage and Sex in our "Sex Positivity" Series.
Unlearning Purity Culture and Shame
In our second Sermon in the series "Sex Positive", Sarah Ngu walks us through the Song of Songs, the book medieval Christians commented on more frequently than any other book in the Bible.
The Song of Songs uncomfortably dares us to hold all our human experiences, including our sexual ones, as a mirror by which to see God and ourselves. The relationship between the two lovers in the Song of Songs can be seen as an allegorical metaphor of the relationship between God and God’s people.
Unlearning Purity Culture and Shame
Makenzie Gomez (@baby_got_mak__) opened the door on purity culture in the first sermon in our new series: Sex Positive.
The Gospel Of: Community
Guest speaker, Venida Rodman Jenkins, joins Forefront for the first time and speaks on "The Gospel of Community". The Gospel of Community is about bringing people in rather than excluding them. Here's something to ask yourself: "How can you work with others to be an agent of change?"
Read MoreThe Gospel Of: Heaven in a time of Lament.
What if heaven isn't an escape chute? Heaven isn't a place we're whisked to after we die; it's God's order of justice and mercy coming towards us. In this, we know that God cares about community, God cares about suffering, and God is actively pursuing our good.
In this 5th sermon in our EasterTide series, Guest Speaker Shay O'Reilly discusses the coronavirus pandemic, its uneven impacts, and the pressure to move on.
Read MoreThe Gospel Of: Gratitude. Giving as a liturgical act.
Do you believe in 'tithing' or giving a percentage of your income to church? Do you believe it's even worth giving to the church?
Sarah Ngu explains how tithing -- giving a percentage of your income to the church -- is an outdated concept rooted in a time when Israel was a sovereign nation where people had to give tithes to their priests. We don't live in such a context- so why give?
Read MoreThe Gospel of Heaven: Is Jesus the only way?
At some point in your life you were told that Jesus was the only way to heaven or told someone else that Jesus was the only way to heaven. We justify this by using John:6. It says, "Jesus answered, I'm the way the truth, and the life. No one comes to God but through me." This is a terrible interpretation of scripture!
In this 3rd sermon in our EasterTide series, watch Jonathan Williams remind us how Jesus excluded no one from his promise of Heaven. As always, it’s critical that we understand the context of culture at the time these stories were written. When we believe that people who don't believe in Jesus are unworthy of eternal life, we'll treat them poorly in this life.
Read MoreWe Christians never believe that we're holy enough.
We have to believe a certain way. Read scripture a certain way. Attend Church often. Believe that some people are holy and others are not. Believe an atonement theory that says God is holy and separate from us because we are not holy.
With Jesus it seems like we have a really clear picture of what God sees as holy.
God sees refugees as holy. Jesus was one. God sees the politically oppressed as holy. Jesus was politically oppressed. God sees the homeless and underserved as holy. Jesus was too. God sees those ruthlessly murdered by a corrupt justice system as holy. Jesus experienced death at the hands of a broken system.
What God does through Jesus is essentially tell us that there is no line between that which is holy and that which is not. All of it is sacred and all of us are sacred. All of us are holy and worthy to part of God’s priesthood.
If the God we believe tells us that we are separate and not holy then maybe it's time for us to kill that god.
Read MoreMira Sawlani-Joyner, guest preacher and former Community Director at Forefront Brooklyn, shares her personal experiences as an Asian woman. Inspired by the story of Rahab, Mira shows us how Asian women have divine purpose in this world, partnering with and co-laboring with God to bring God's kin-dom to fruition.
Unfortunately, Asian women are hyper sexualized by the media and popular culture, and are relegated to tropes and stereotypes that render them as submissive and docile. These stereotypes lead to their treatment as second class citizens and stand in the way of us seeing Asian women as image bearers reflecting the diverse qualities of God.
This is a powerful, heartfelt sermon that challenges our views towards Asian Americans and helps us take a step closer to a society that accepts, values and respects all.
Read MoreThe resurrection story is not a neat and tidy formula to get us into heaven.
It is a wild and imaginative story that asks us to take big risks for others and to work with God to bring about new creation. Jonathan Williams shares that If what we see in Jesus is God's own self, revealed, then we are dealing with a God who is ridiculously indiscriminate about choosing friends, who would rather die than have a neat and tidy sin management system complete with a scorecard, who would not lift a finger to condemn those who crucified him - A God unafraid to get God's hands dirty for the ones God loves. The resurrection of Jesus Christ did not happen so that your soul would be saved from hell and your sins forgiven, rather so that you would open your eyes to the unexpected and radical love that God has for God's creation.
Read MoreHope is what comes when all else fails.
On this Palm Sunday, Jonathan Williams shares that’s not really what hope is -- it’s what comes when all else fails. The hope that comes when all else feels hopeless -- apocalyptic hope -- shows that the apocalypse isn't an ending, it's a revelation. What can feel like failure or pain can actually be the beginning of hope.
This is the sixth and final sermon in our “This Feeling's Got Me Like...” series.
Read MoreThe opposite of fear is saying yes to living fully.
The future is unknown. That scares the crap out of us. What do we do in the face of the unknown?
Jonathan Williams shares that the way forward is not fear, it’s faith. Faith is a choice to take action and move forward even when there is nothing guaranteed. To make the conscious choice to believe just for today that the great I AM is at work in our fears and in our unknowns. The opposite of fear is saying yes to being made in the image of God, of living fully alive, warts and all.
This is the fifth and final sermon in our “This Feeling's Got Me Like...” series.
Read MoreLonely in the wilderness.
The pandemic of loneliness existed long before COVID-19, and being lonely can make us feel like we’re lost in the wilderness.
In this Sunday’s message, guest preacher and former Forefront Brooklyn associate pastor Jennifer Fisher of Launchpad Partners tells us that the wilderness can be the place where we come to know God the strongest, and can actually be a place of hope for us to grow deeper in relationship with God, each other, and creation.
This is the fourth sermon in our “This Feeling's Got Me Like...” series.
Read MoreCovid has highlighted an unspoken struggle for millions of us. We're not doing well and don't know how to find healing. We suffer silently and are afraid to talk about mental illness in the church. We believe that we're not holy enough, godly enough. That's a lie!
In this sermon, Jonathan Williams explains how our struggles with mental challenges can actually shape the kin-dom of god.
This is the third sermon in our “This Feeling's Got Me Like...” series.
Read More“How anger is a gift and a gateway to positive change”
We’ve been taught that the Christian response to anger is to minimize it, but it’s actually *not* Biblical to deny our feelings of anger.
In this sermon, Jonathan Williams shows us that our anger is not a spiritual weakness or failure, but rather something we can employ to help create positive change.
This is the second sermon in our “This Feeling's Got Me Like...” series.
Read More“I’m not doing enough.”
These days we're all about optimization, self-hacking, and efficiency. We feel enslaved to our to-do lists. How do we resist some of these values?
In this sermon, Sarah Ngu examines the value of productivity in our workaholic society. It all began with industrial capitalism, which led to the “machinization” of the human body. But the Christian tradition starts from a very different place. Our faith begins from the premise that human beings are not machines created for labor, but that we are created to receive.
This is the first sermon in our Lenten series: “This Feeling's Got Me Like...".
Read MoreWhat will you do with what God has entrusted you?
Jonathan Williams looks at Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus tells his audience that they do not have to compare themselves to others because they are already righteous, they’re already loved, and they’re already children of God.
This is the sixth and final sermon in our “BE” series.
Read More
