The Changing Face of the City

In North America, when you talk about "urban ministry," everyone often thinks of work among the homeless, the urban poor, or in justice ministries. All it takes is one look at our bibliography here at the Center for Urban Ministry Training to see the weight given those ministries. Just this week, however, numerous articles and blog posts have come across my desk(top) describing a significant trend in urban demographics. In July, The Wall Street Journal published a story detailing the end of "white flight" from cities and the growing conflict between urban minority populations and returning whites. This week, Andy Crouch pointed blog readers to a New Republic story titled, "Trading Places." Alan Ehrenhalt describes a "demographic inversion" taking place where immigrants and minorites are moving to the suburbs while affluent suburbanites move to the inner city. Finally, an insert in the Louisville Courier-Journal recently declared that demographic shifts and growing diversity in the suburbs requires "new thinking" on the part of city leadership and citizens.

There is not doubt that the face of the city is changing. Downtown renewal, high gas prices, and a growing fascination with city life is drawing people back to urban centers. So, what does this mean for ministry? Will suburban church planting twenty years from now look like inner-city ministry today? How does the move toward "vertical" living in the rapidly sprouting high rise condos of mid-size cities affect our methods of church planting and evangelism?

That's the direction this blog is beginning to take. My own school is asking those questions as are many others. A presentation at the recent gathering of the National Association of Multi-Housing Ministries and Congregations included a session on affluent condominium dwellers. An initiative in Atlanta is seeking partners and trying to answer the questions raised by this demographic shift -- a shift that is small now but could grow rapidly.

Stay tuned...

Evangelism & Goal-setting

If you voted for the resolution on regenerate church membership, if you have lamented the decline in baptisms in the SBC, or if you simply long to live a Great Commission life, you should read Dr. Chuck Lawless' article today on Baptist Press:

"Evangelism & Goal Setting"

Out of Context

From Shaw & Van Engen, Communicating God's Word in a Complex World,

"Gospel presentation seeks to facilitate a process whereby people everywhere, belonging to every family, tribe, language and nation, may hear God speak in appropriate and relevant ways that impact the deep-level meaning of their worldview" (1).

Exercise Reading

I picked up my January 2008 issue of Christianity Today to take with me to work out (yes, I'm one day into my renewed commitment to physical fitness). This edition is a fascinating mix of articles, covering the gamut from an editorial on the Senate investigation into charismatic evangelists to persecution to social ministry. The highlights thus far are the article on "The Lima Bean Gospel" by Mark Labberton and a brief commentary entitled, "A Hole in our Holism," by Stan Guthrie.

Now, to begin, I must say that Labberton has never had lima beans out of my garden or fixed by my wife, or his analogy of bland American Christianity would fail miserably. Pity aside, the author presents a strong case for our the necessity of a renewed focus on justice and ministry in our churches. He writes,

Rather than seek the God who spoke from the burning bush, we have decided that the real drama is found in debating whether to podcast our services. Rather than encounter the God who sees idolatry as a pervasive, life-threatening temptation, we decorate Pottery Barn lives with out tasteful collections of favored godlings. Rather than follow the God who burns for justice for the needy, we are more likely to ask the Lord to give us our own fair share. A bland God for a bland church, with a mission that is at best innocuous and quaint -- in a tumultuous world.

and

It would be a new day for our testimony to the immensity and scope of the gospel if we lived out persevering, sacrificial love for people near and far, especially for those without power, without money, without education, without food, without sanitation, without safety, without faith. If this counterintuitive, servant love moved us out of our middle-class enclaves, drew the poor to be included in our family values, brought us to worry more about the need for consumption of those who have nothing than the consumptive fantasies of those who have too much, the gospel would be more nearly the life-enlarging gift it is.

Ouch. I think he's right. Guthrie adds a vital balance, though, by reminding us that the gospel is still the gospel -- it's about the reconciliation of man and God. He asks the vital question why we aren't evangelizing as we once did. "Does our heightened social consciousness," he queries, "-- from the Left and the Right -- actually drain our evangelistic zeal?"

Guthrie is absolutely right when he responds, "It shouldn't because we are called to do both."

One of the problems in our church world today is an "either/or" syndrome as opposed to a "both/and" attitude. I realize that this cannot apply everywhere. We cannot be both exclusivist and universalist with regard to the future of the lost. But, we can, as Guthrie points out so well, give both a cup of cold water in Jesus' name AND call sinful people to repent and follow Jesus.