I spent the last three days in New York City, and I must say that I fell in love with this behemoth of a city. I have been in major cities all over the world, Berlin, Moscow, Taipei, Calcutta, Delhi, Sao Paulo, Hong Kong and Mexico City to name a few. I grew up in Frankfurt Germany, no small town by any stretch of the imagination, and I live downtown Austin, but this city is on an entirely different level. New York defines metropolitan, it is jam packed with people from every nation on earth and it captures the imagination of people the world over. While I've travelled the world I had never been in this amazing city and I must say until you've seen NYC you haven't lived (alright that is a gross overstatement, but hey I'm trying to make a point).
Four of us from Austin were in NY for a conference on urban church-planting put on in collaboration between Acts 29, a church-planting network out of Seattle started by Mark Driscoll (pastor of Mars Hill Seattle), and Redeemer Presbyterian, a church in Manhattan led by Tim Keller. The conference was called Dwell and had an incredible lineup of speakers, including Tim Keller, Mark Driscoll, CJ Mahaney and Darrin Patrick. More on the conference in another post...
The sessions ran from 9am to 9pm and we did our best to see the entire city between 9:30pm and 2am. Seeing the Statue of Liberty, Ground Zero, Times Square, Rockefeller Center, and Central Park in person for the first time was an incredible experience. We walked for miles taking in as much as possible. Ground Zero was eerie and impacting even 7 years after September 11th, while the view from the top of the Empire State building is still edged in my mind.
2 comments:
Hey Matthias, it was good hanging with you in NYC. And yes, it is a city that stands alone.
It sounds cheesy to say "I Love New York" but it always seems appropriate, doesn't it? I always have to say, No, really, I LOVE NEW YORK!!
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