At City Light we’ve started a series of studies on Urban Ministry. It’s been a revelation studying more carefully the growing shift toward cities. The United Nations says by next year for the first time in history the majority of people (3. 3 billion people!) in the world will be living in urban areas. This trend will only continue to increase especially in the developing countries of Africa and Asia.
We often think of missions as evangelizing to a primitive tribe in the jungles. But the picture of missions should now be evangelizing in the context of high rise buildings in a dense urban context. The world is increasingly urban but the question is whether the church will follow the masses of people and culture in this urban shift.
Christianity in America has long had an aversion toward urban ministry. As early as 1859 one minister said this about cities:
“All dangers of the town may be summed up in this: that here, withdrawn from the blessed influence of Nature, and set face to face against humanity, man loses his own nature and becomes a new and artificial creature – an inhuman cog in a social machinery that works like a fate, and cheats him of his true culture as a soul. The most unnatural fashions and habits, the strangest eccentricities of intellect, the wildest and most pernicious theories in social morals, and the most appalling and incurable bararism, are the legitimate growths of city life.” The cities were places that would corrupt the soul and compromise character. The retreat to a suburban utopia was the inevitable result.
It’s understandable that Christians have by and large retreated from the city to the suburbs. It offers safety, quiet, community and better schools for our children. But the costs of the shift are enormous. We abandon some of the neediest of people who have fled to the city to find refuge. We have very little cultural influence because the cities are the place where culture grows and spreads. Suburban churches often become places without any local mission and become ingrown and banal. We definitely need suburban churches for there are still people living in the suburbs. But if people are increasingly coming to the cities, if cities are the places where there are the greatest number of needy people, if cities are the places where culture is formed, how can we steer clear of the cities to build our own suburban dreams?
An urban ministry requires much thought and sacrifice. I am only on the brink of the realization of these things for myself and church. But I am convinced that urban ministry needs to become the fundamental battleground for God’s kingdom.
Filed under: Uncategorized
