Gender is one of many categories that we deploy to organize society and create order. We demand, thus, that people who don't fit into categories neatly explain themselves, justify themselves. But as Christians we worship a God who doesn't fit into categories and refuses to justify Themselves. Listen to former Forefront Community Director, Kai (Sarah) Ngu (they/them), as they speak about "God as They" in our GenderFULL sermon series.
Read MoreUnlearning 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
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.
The 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Sarah Ngu explains how tithing -- giving a percentage of your income to the church -- is an outdated concept rooted in a time when Israel was a sovereign nation where people had to give tithes to their priests.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 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 More“But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”
Sarah Ngu, Makenzie Gomez, and Jonathan Williams discuss how to interpret this passage for today. The "narrow road" that Jesus talks about is not about orthodoxy -- believing and doing the right things. Instead, it's about living with intentionality and purpose, and embracing the process and not just the destination.
This is the fifth sermon in our “BE” series.
Read MoreIntegrity starts with being grounded in yourself.
Sarah Ngu reminds us that Jesus sees us as more than the worst decisions we’ve made or things we’ve said.
In Jesus’ sermon on the mount, he tells us that words matter and that truth matters. Integrity means not just saying what we really mean, but also realizing when we don’t really mean what we are about to say. This starts with being grounded in ourselves and recognizing when we are not in the right mind to speak honestly.
This is the second sermon in our “Be” series.
Read MoreBuilding a community through uncommon kinship.
Sarah Ngu unveils one of Forefront Brooklyn's new core values: uncommon kinship. Common kinship often focuses on taking care of people who are in the center, but what makes kinship uncommon is taking care of people who aren't in the center of their community, and how it's worth having a community that will take a risk to ensure those who aren't typically centered feel loved, valued, and elevated.
This is the second sermon in our "Make A Joyful Noise" series.
Read MoreWhy does the concept of heaven and hell play such a powerful role in Christianity?
The death of Christ on the cross does not change God's mind about us. Our beliefs about heaven and hell originate from our inability to make sense of suffering in our present lives. Heaven and hell used to be ways to help us cope with suffering today. But when Christianity became an empire, they morphed into tools to make people suffer today.
Do your beliefs about the afterlife help you or prevent you from living your life presently?
Sarah Ngu walks us through an enlightening perspective and an emotional story about the limiting effects of living out of fear of hell.
Read MoreRethinking the role of the Bible in our faith.
In our fourth sermon in the "How We Got Here" series, Sarah Ngu presents an engaging perspective on the Bible and how we've interpreted scripture over the centuries. Biblical interpretation is not something to be afraid of but that is baked into our tradition. Wherever there is divinity, humanity is mingled in with it. We ourselves are living testaments. In fact, we are living Scripture.
Read MoreWhat does church history tell us about organizing a church?
Sarah Ngu starts off our new series: How We Got Here. It begins with a closer historical look at the organizational structures of the church. Sarah touches on the commissioning of deacons in the book of Acts and shares her personal story as a queer person growing up in the conservative church and what it means for them to be appointed as a deacon for the first time as an openly queer person.
Read MoreSelf-control: the meta-fruit empowering all Fruits.
Sarah Ngu makes the case that self-control is kind of a meta-fruit: it helps you do all the other Fruits well. To be able to ensure that when you are exhibiting the other Fruits of the Spirit you are doing so in a way that is rooted from within and carried out by the power of the Spirit.
Read MoreIs poverty inevitable?
Sarah Ngu leads our fourth and final sermon in our Work & Capitalism Series. Reflecting on Matthew 25 and 26, Sarah brings theological light to the struggles more and more of us face these days with debt, eviction, homelessness and poverty. Sadly, capitalism enables these injustices to exist.
Jesus says the poor are always with you because you have made it so. Why do we insist on spending a billion dollars a year on shelters rather than placing our families in affordable housing?
Read MoreHumanity wasn't destined to toil
We welcome Sami Main this week as our guest preacher. Sami's an accomplished life coach, media specialist and published author. In this sermon, Sami explains why our fixation on busyness, work and profession can be harmful to our spiritual health and that taking a step back to rest and to reflect on the glory of existence is not only healthy, but, perhaps even, the most important activity we can do.
Read MoreDealing with tyranny in the workplace
Sarah Ngu starts off our "Work and Capitalism" Series with a deep dive into the power of "bosses" in organizations.
The workplace in general is structurally set up as a tyranny where one person has the power to greatly determine the economic livelihood of another, and if you have a good boss, that’s nice but you’re lucky because that’s basically the equivalent of a benevolent dictatorship. The only leverage that workers have is that we have power in numbers, and so we can organize collectively together for fair wages, fair hours, otherwise known as a union.
Read MoreChristian supremacy, anti-semitism, and the origins of racism.
Sarah Ngu explores how white supremacy is intertwined with Christian supremacy and how this is a key example of power and principality. This sermon focusses on how the church's treatment of Jews in the middle ages paved the way for its treatment of Africans and the creation of "race" as we know it today.
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