My experience at City Church was mixed. There were things that were great about it (a bit of the sermon and the music) and things that weren't (tithing, tithing, tithing and argument from Authority). I'll get into it more later in the post.
City Church is pretty close to Saint Thomas More Catholic Church, which made the drive there pretty easy. Once there I found that the area was pretty spacious and that the main area where the sermons take place looked like a performance venue.
The service kicked off with an add, and the add wasn't too bad. They said they were a lot about Jesus, weren't perfect (all churches need this disclaimer) but that they're willing to grow (maybe true?). After this there were three Christian Rocks songs that were pretty good and after an announcement video by the pastor. Way too much talking about the Church and donating to it, that was the the entire middle portion before the Lead Pastor's sermon. At least some of that money is going to service work in Guatemala though and service work in the area, so that was a plus in a mostly bad introduction to it. The church is also moving locations so that was talked about too.
Finally the sermon. What I liked about it was the emphasis on character, that people notice if you are good at what you do since that was why Joseph got promoted by Potiphar, the Warden and the Pharaoh. He was good at working and noticed attention to detail. In the story the pastor said this was true until Joseph advocated for himself and pointed out the how unjust it was that he was in prison for a crime he didn't commit and that he was sold into slavery. The pastor said God punished him for depending on the Butler whose dream he interpreted to rescue him rather than counting on God. In the story this makes sense, since God is a horrible person in the Old Testament who only values loyalty, when in reality a person has to advocate for themselves to reach their goals. Life generally doesn't hand you rewards, opportunities pop up, but they can only really happen with action...which is what Joseph did with the Butler.
The idea about character being noticed, being positive, not lying, working hard...these things can be rewarded depending on circumstances so I'd say this was a pretty good universal lesson. The idea of God providing everything (a deity with personality taking action in the world) doesn't quite hold up. Which is why the story works well as a metaphor and lesson on patience and forgiveness (Joseph forgiving his brothers at the end) but when it comes to a God or Gods, the fact that it is unknown doesn't really give a basis for me to take action for it. Also the Old Testament God is not a being worthy of worship given the things that orders the Israelites to do for their enemies and it's lack of love for it's own creations.
The sermon ended with the pastor calling to take Jesus into one's heart. I really don't like when pastors do this. It's like a way of pressuring someone to believe something that there isn't concrete evidence for either way and effectively allowing the pastor power over the individual. Besides the money, and God should be followed because God (argument from authority and circular reasoning problem), it was mixed. The theme of character was a good and important lesson though.
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