One of the most famous (and probably top-selling) christian artists of 2009 was at the 11am service at my church this past sunday. The awesome part was that he didn't receive any special treatment or recognition. He probably would've been embarrassed had any of that taken place.

Coincidentally, the sermon was out of phil 2:1-11 on humility.

I woke up early on saturday morning intent upon going for a quick bike ride across the brooklyn bridge before an evangelistic outreach at grand army plaza with my new church family in brooklyn (sovereign grace city church, we passed out free water and cupcakes, we also passed out invites to church and fliers for "brew and the bible", our neighborhood open forum on christianity. We also engaged people in conversations about the faith)  followed by rapfest 2009 (christian hip hop concert in the bronx).

After crossing the bridge, I saw a bunch of people in matching shirts, so i pulled over to ask them what they were about. One lady with an eastern-block accent informed me that park avenue was blocked off (for summer streets) from the brooklyn bridge (it isn't called park avenue by the brooklyn bridge, but the street evetually becomes park avenue) to 72nd street. I decided to go for a ride along the route. Good times. There were a few people out there to race with at spots along the route, but the lights at major intersections and families with small children out for the day made racing unsafe and impractical at times.

OH! in other news, i've decided to press on with my helmet wearing. When riding around my neighborhood in brooklyn, i noticed that i was the ONLY person wearing a helmet. Recently, two friends of mine that spotted me on my bike actually made fun of my helmet!! However, people without helmets at nyc summer streets were the EXCEPTION. AND  yesterday, a bike store owner let me know that the more fashionable looking helmets have less vents and are REALLY hot.

Here are some pictures:

Farmer's market at Grand Army Plaza (THEY WERE ACCEPTING FOOD STAMPS!!! Hooray for low income people!!! :o)

 

NYC Summer Streets sign @ 72nd and Park:



Water station sign:
:o)




Traffic Control Volunteer:




Father and son. My dad and i used to go out for bike rides when i was a kid. :')



Grand Central:



Me at a free maintenance station:

I've got less than one month left in the state of maryland. I'm going to be moving up to nyc on 7/23. Definitely a bittersweet transition. Happy to go back to nyc, sad to leave a lot of the relationships that i've built over the past 3 years.

I've had the opportunity to develop great friendships at work, friendships with lots of different groups of christians:

- Church (wednesday home fellowship, worship team, singles ministry, men's fellowship),
- Various Sovereign Grace People,
- My band and all the other christians that I've made lasting contact with on the music front,
- Baltimore believers (monday bible study, saturday evangelism, fourth friday fundamentals, trinity reformed baptist church, believer's chapel) and

Friendships with my fraternal brothers that live in the dc area (one of whom recently moved away)...and i'm certainly going to miss them. But on the flip side, I get to go back to the greatest city ever to go to business school and to also co-labor with other believers. I'll also be living with family.

In other news, my church recently moved friday bible study to thursdays.

This is both good and bad. Good because I'm now free to do things with everyone else that does things on friday. I've missed countless band rehearsals, dinners, first and fourth friday fundamentals (first in philly, fourth in baltimore) shows, concerts, special events etc etc etc because of friday night bible study  The worship team is on duty on fridays, so taking off every other friday would have without a doubt been an abdication of responsibility. But now (for these last 30 days) i can do stuff.

The bad is that Friday bible study was probably a huge help to a lot of people that would find themselves tempted to go out and sin on friday nights. The best way to remedy this would be for members of all ages to plan fun things to do on friday night with other believers, or at the very least, to make themselves available to hold their siblings in the faith accountable. Either way, this is an opportunity for relationship building outside of church. Who knows, maybe folk will actively go out and do friday night evangelism in the community around the church...