One Crazy Summer

August! Already!!! School is starting back, and I look back in disbelief at how fast this summer has passed. So much has happened in such a short amount of time that I’m having a hard time piecing it all together in the order it happened. The summer simply seems like a massive rubber band ball of intertwined events making it difficult to sort out in my head. Yet I know one thing: summer ’11 was amazing.

God has blessed the Gallery Church tremendously this summer with about 200 people coming to NYC to serve alongside us to take the Gospel to the people of this city. I am amazed by the Kingdom impact that I have been privilege to be a part of this summer. NYC is hard soil, but we have gained some major traction and had some huge wins in reaching out to our neighborhood.

The youth outreach program, which is led by our incredible worship and youth leader Chris Mills, started meeting this past spring semester in a McDonald’s and met a few weeks into the summer. We ended the year with an incredible block party that collaboration between the mission teams and our members made possible. Over 400 people came to the block party! We made some great connections there and were really able to show the community that our church loves them.

To end the summer, we had our very first VBS. A team from FBC Goodletsville in TN built the set, planned the VBS, and put it on. It was a huge service to the mom’s in the church, but we also had about half of the kids attending come in from the neighborhood!

Now we are about to make some major transitions in our space with condensing and building out office space.

Those are just a couple of the highlights from this summer. God has been so good to us every step of the way. I’m constantly amazed at how God works despite my lack of ability and/or knowledge. I’ve seen time and again how God loves to show Himself as provider, the all-sufficient one, and my strength in the midst of weakness.

I continue to come back to the Scripture that God showed me when I first arrived in NYC: Psalm 73:26 – “My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” Let us always remember this.

BMoore

A NYC Summer

The transformation of New York City from Winter to Summer happened in a flash, and to say the least, it is amazing. After what seemed like the longest winter of my life (although the snow was great, it was just cold way too long), NYC burst to life with Spring for about a week and then Summer hit. The energy that came with the warm weather was tremendous. My love for NYC has grown in a major way over the past month. The discovery of a golf course 40 minutes away from my apartment by subway has definitely contributed to that, but it's not the only thing. The activity on the streets is invigorating to be around. Street performers, beautiful parks and piers along the Hudson, great free activities, seemingly endless places to explore, and amazing friends to enjoy it all with makes for an incredible place to live.

However, as amazing as the amount of life and energy in NYC is, walking among the millions of people day in and day out brings me to a sobering thought as well. 97% of that massive amount of people I pass by every day do not know Christ. What am I really doing about it? Just being present in the city isn't enough. I must not sit by and wait for opportunities to share the Gospel to come upon me. But I must be actively pursuing those opportunities to share.

Please pray for both my church family and me as we live in this incredible city that we might be totally unashamed of the Gospel in a city that finds it to be foolish. Pray that we might boldly proclaim the Gospel no matter the cost and seek out opportunities actively rather than sitting back passively waiting for opportunities.

Grace and Peace,

BMoore

The Times, They Are A-Changin

My life has been pretty crazy lately. Transition has been the name of the game, and I'm definitely still in the midst of this transition. For the most part transition as always been an energizing and exciting time in my life. This time, however, has definitely come with ups and downs, some much more difficult than others. But taking some time to reflect upon this turbulent time in my life has made me appreciate several things about transition. Here are a few:

1. Being in transition is, well, quite simply, human. We are constantly changing, especially believers in Christ (For we are being sanctified daily. Constantly being transitioned to be more like Christ.). So we shouldn't try to hide from transition/change. We need to embrace it as part of being human. Even into eternity with the Father, we will gain a greater and greater knowledge of God and find more and more joy in Him forever (it will be an ever-increasing transition through all eternity, for since God is infinite, there will always be more of Him to experience and enjoy).

2. God uses intense times of transition to refine us to be more like Him. These intense times of transition often test and try our faith, thus transition is often a form of God's discipline for us (not discipline in the sense of punishment but in the sense of refining us through a painful process). The author of Hebrews gives us great encouragement when facing times of discipline such as intense periods of transition: "He (God) disciplines us for our good, that we might share in his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it." (Hebrews 12:10-11)

3. Another aspect of being human, however, is that we long for consistency and stability, which is why transition can be so difficult and disheartening. For during those intense times of transition, we feel like nothing is constant. We have done everything we can possibly do to control our world in order to make it consistently how we would like it. Thus when we lose control, we lose that consistency that we long for so much. The problem is that we can't find that consistency in ourselves or anything else in this world. The author of Hebrews once again reminds us of the truth that we need to keep close at hand: "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever." (Hebrews 13:8) Jesus is to be our rock in this midst of this world of transition. We hope in His unchanging self and His unchanging promises.

This time of transition has stretched my faith, and I encourage you to embrace times of intense transition. For transition is a major part of how God is "working all things for the good of those who love him." Rest in His constancy and the promise of Romans 8:28.

My Prayer for You and Me

It’s that time of year again (at least for all you students out there). Finals are upon us. Studies have worn us down, we are exhausted from a long semester, and we are salivating at the thought of summer break just around the corner. For me, this will be the first time I haven’t taken class since summer after my senior year, and I can’t wait to finish that last final next week. In the midst of all our studies and other pursuits in life, exhaustion can come quickly. I think I’ve felt that more this semester than any other and in just about every way. I must admit with great sadness that at times because of my exhaustion my studies (yes, I mostly study the Bible or about it) have become simply academic tasks to trudge through. My goal is always to understand God more fully in such a way as to make my affections and joy in Him greater. However, often I gain a greater intellectual understanding without drawer nearer to Christ, which in reality is no understanding at all.

Recently, my attention has been drawn to a passage multiple times. In Ephesians 3:14-19, Paul prays an incredible prayer:

“For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

Paul is praying for a much deeper knowledge of Christ than any sort of mere intellectual study can provide. This is a knowledge of the love of God that grips our hearts. It transforms our passions, and it fills us “with all the fullness of God.” This is knowledge worth pursuing. Knowledge that brings strength and ultimate satisfaction rather than exhaustion. And it is knowledge that God grants us through the Spirit, thus it comes from no academic effort (Praise God!) or merit on our own part. It comes from bowing on our knees before the Father humbly asking for this “strength to comprehend.”

I noticed that in the margin of my Bible I had written, “What a prayer! This should be every pastor’s prayer for his flock.” So true! However, stopping there is dangerous. Not only should we (all Christians) pray this for brothers and sisters in Christ, but we must also pray this for ourselves. If we are to have an effective ministry to others, we must be gripped by the love of Christ. Our time in the Word can’t become simply intellectual pursuit. It must become much more than that: an intimate, affectionate knowledge of the love of God. This must be our prayer for others and most certainly ourselves, too.

Paul’s prayer is my prayer for you and me.

Grace and Peace,

BMoore

Easter & Thereafter

The push toward Easter had been long and tiring, but I was hopeful that God would do great things. And this Easter weekend at the Gallery Church was a fantastic one indeed! I am continually blown away by the hard work and creativity of our people. This past weekend was so extraordinary because of all the hard work that they invested. Leading up to Easter, they devoted hours to planning, they stuffed thousands of envelopes with incredibly well-designed invites to our events, and they prepared an amazing art exhibition for Saturday night.

On Good Friday, we came together as a congregation to prayer walk in our neighborhood and spend an extended amount of time meditating upon the cross. The time in worship that night was very sweet. Saturday night was a great night of outreach that actually occurred in our space. An amazing team from our congregation planned a great art show themed on the idea of waiting. It was a fantastic night in which we were able to meet new faces and think deeply upon the forgotten day of Easter weekend, the day in which the disciples waited with no clue what to expect. Finally Easter Sunday at the Gallery Church was great. We had many new faces, and a great time of worship and fellowship. We celebrated our Savior’s resurrection together with great joy and delight. And another great joy on Sunday was that the city finally warmed up as the sun came out for what seemed like the first time all year.

After a great weekend of meditation and celebration on the great salvation that our Savior provided, what do we do now? In 1 Corinthians 15:58, Paul addresses that next step after having declared the victory that we have in Christ saying, “Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” We are to keep pressing on in the work that God had given us to do, but with this victory ever before us, we can now press with the sure hope that our “labor is not in vain.” After such a great weekend of fellowship and celebration, one can easily get back into the grind of life and begin to tire and waver. However, the salvation that has been given to us provides a purpose and a strength for the work that we do, for life is not over after just a few short years on this earth. What we do here matters. There is a resurrection to come. Our labor will not be in vain. So let us begin to do what we will be doing for all eternity: bringing glory to God in all that we do.

Preach the Gospel... to Yourself

The community of believers, who I have grown up in and am now living among (along with the authors I read), emphasize the importance of preaching the gospel. My passion for reaching the lost and fulfilling the Great Commission by taking the gospel to the nations has been ingrained within me from childhood. I’m incredibly grateful for the men and women that God placed in my life that have instilled in me a great passion for preaching the Gospel and seeing the glory of God spread throughout the world. However, we all too often, whether consciously or not, view the Gospel simply as something that we must share with those who don’t know it. Our focus becomes preach the Gospel to those in need while we (believers) move onto greater things in the Christian life. The problem is we are always in need of the Gospel. We don’t move on from the Gospel. It is the means by which we must live. The Gospel is our only hope before and after our initial justification. We aren’t saved to then live holy lives by having certain disciplines in our lives. Rather we are saved to live holy lives by the power of the Gospel. Even after we are justified (we have that initial moment of salvation), we still live by grace alone through faith alone in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Yes, we are made new, but we are still in the flesh. Our only hope of following Christ is to continually live by the Gospel of grace through faith.

So we can’t allow ourselves to solely preach the Gospel to others. Yes, this most certainly must be top priority, but we must also preach the Gospel to ourselves daily. If we are to live in a manner worthy of Christ and His Gospel, we must keep the truths of that gospel before us constantly. This past week at a conference I attended, C J Mahaney brought the importance of this truth fully back into view. He preached out of Jude and explained that in order for us to “keep [ourselves] in the love of God” (v. 21), we must preach the gospel to ourselves daily. To keep our affections passionate toward Christ, we must constantly remember the Gospel, always preaching what Christ did for us upon the cross, always meditating upon the glorious grace poured out upon us, and always reveling in the love of God revealed in the Gospel. This will not only keep our hearts warm toward our God, but it will also keep us reliant upon grace as we seek to follow after Christ. So preach the Gospel to the nations, but also to yourself.

Grace and Peace,

BMoore

VBS Big Apple Adventure

Hey everyone!

Over the past seven months I have been incredibly blessed to be a part of what God is doing in NYC and the Gallery Church. Now, there is an incredible opportunity for you and your church to get involved as well! This years VBS theme from Lifeway is Big Apple Adventure. We are so pumped here at the Gallery Church, for we know that the hearts of thousands of churches will be turning to NYC in prayer this summer during VBS's across the nation. We have some exciting ideas to connect your church's VBS with the work that God is doing in NYC. We have created mission moment videos of our pastor at different landmarks throughout NYC. We are also discussing with churches about doing Skype conversations during their VBS and we would love to do that with your church too.

Now here is how you can get involved in the work here. The Gallery Church is a Southern Baptist church plant, and because of the great cost to live and do ministry in the city, we are supported by outside church partners. Please consider giving your VBS missions offering to the Gallery Church. Doing so will greatly propel the Kingdom work in the city. I've embedded below a video that tells about what ministries specifically that your offering would go to support.

VBS Missions Offering from Freddy T. Wyatt on Vimeo.

Also check out www.nycmission.com to find out more and see the Mission Moment videos.

I hope we can connect and partner in this incredible opportunity to propel the gospel forward both in your town through your VBS and in NYC!

Grace and Peace,

BMoore

Don't Settle for Good

One of the greatest things that I've learned while in NYC is the importance of striving for excellence in everything I do and just how hard that truly is. Churches in NYC have had a reputation for doing things half way for quite some time. So when trying to minister in a city that does literally everything with excellence and moves out those who don't, churches have had a bad reputation. However, that culture is changing as many churches are being planted in the city with resolve to minister with excellence. This standard for excellence, though, should not only be for the Church in NYC.

We serve the most worthy and glorious God of the universe, and He deserves only the most excellent. We must seek to do everything with excellence for the glory of God. Whether you are a part of a church in NYC, the Bible Belt, or a foreign land, we must represent God in a way that is worthy of His name. The key is constant evaluation of everything we do, constant improvement in the areas that can be made better, and constant willingness to change everything including the things that have always been done and even those that are working well. For excellence is what we are striving toward not just simply good.

While we must certainly seek this excellence in our churches, that pursuit must start in our individual lives. We must have constant evaluation, constant improvement, and constant willingness to change even in our everyday lives. Do not settle for good. Be excellent in everything. Paul exhorts us to this too, “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.” [Colossians 3:23-24]

The constant process of evaluation, improvement, and change can be exhausting though. So we must find our strength more and more in the Lord. Time and time again, I have found myself returning to the verses that God gave me during my first few weeks in NYC: Psalm 73:23-26. V. 26 says, "My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever." We serve an eternally faithful God, and He is faithful to continually give us strength for the glory of His name. Let us live lives of excellence for the honor and glory of the One who is infinitely worth.

May the grace and peace of Christ be with you all,

-BMoore

A New York MInute

“A New York minute is an instant. Or as Johnny Carson once said, it's the interval between a Manhattan traffic light turning green and the guy behind you honking his horn” –Urban dictionary’s definition of a New York Minute. From the time that I landed in New York last fall 'til today, life seems to have passed by like a New York minute. When I look back on all that I've done and learned over the last seven months, I'm truly blown away by how fast life moves in this city. It's really unlike any other place on earth. The energy that flows through the atmosphere here is incredible. Just being on the streets here makes you want to do everything faster.

When I first got here, my pastor threw me into the deep end hoping that I would be able to swim, and by God's grace, I have. I'm working as the administrator for the Gallery Church of Manhattan, and I literally had no clue what all that entailed. I had no idea how much work went into the basic day-in and day-out operations of a church especially in NYC (probably the most regulated and taxed place in the world). I've learned how to handle the finances, plan church-wide retreats, and minister to very diverse people.

I feel like I have just now gotten into a good rhythm in my life here in the city. So I look forward to sharing with you what God is doing here in NYC and teaching me while I’m here. I hope that this will be an encouragement to all who read this to follow Christ with total abandon for His glory in whatever context you find yourself.

May the grace and peace of Christ be with you all,

-BMoore