The Five Tasks Of A Local Church Teacher
And How I Discovered Them In New York City
Picture an old church on a busy corner in Lower Manhattan—nestled between grimy bodegas and glossy new developments, somewhere near the 14th Street / 2nd Avenue junction. It's a Monday night, and the city is still buzzing with the residue of the workday. Inside the rickety wooden building, the floors creak with the weight of eager, anxious twenty-somethings packing into the sanctuary. The pews—probably repurposed from some long-gone denomination—are filled with the beautiful, the ambitious, the uncertain.
You’ve got actors and models, entertainment industry brats with legacy connections, entrepreneurs grinding on the edge of burnout, streetwear designers in $400 sneakers, athletes fresh from practice, Wall Street boys in cufflinks, corporate America girls in Zara and ambition. Students from FIT, NYU, and a scattering of other borough-based colleges take their seats next to digital vagabonds trying to make something happen in the Big Apple. Many come straight from the L train or the 6, earbuds still in, office coffee still on their breath.
Some of them are here because their friends made them sign up. Others were personally invited by Carl—especially the athletes and high-potential types. For a few, the phrase “Systematic Theology” just hit at the right time in their spiritual curiosity. And then there are the wanderers—those who don't quite believe, but aren’t ready to walk away either. They're here because something about this space feels like a breadcrumb on the path to somewhere truer.
The room is loud. Chaotic. Excitable. Everyone’s catching up, mingling, half-listening, half-scanning the room. A few came alone and are hoping to make a friend. The place is a real-life Instagram feed—filled with good-looking, single young people who are probably going to exchange numbers before the night’s out. Maybe go for a drink afterward. Maybe end up in a situationship that lasts three months and ends in a mutual unfollow.
Beneath all the coolness and chatter, though, there’s a shared low-frequency hum of anxiety. “What am I doing with my life?” “Should I still be in New York?” “Am I actually called to this industry?” “Is there any plan at all?” Questions like that aren’t spoken aloud, but they sit in the air like humidity. The Church feels like a place where those questions might finally start to get answered. It’s spiritual, but not suffocating. Curated, but raw enough to feel real. That’s the Hillsong NYC effect…
