:: Books: The Best of Secular Wisdom
:: Get the RCPC Church Planter Manual
:: Got Church Planting in You? Find Out!

ADVANCING THE GOSPEL INTO THE 21ST CENTURY
Part IV: City-Focused Strategy
by Tim Keller, Senior Pastor, Redeemer Presbyterian Church

This the fourth of a four-part article by Tim Keller, based on his plenary remarks at the 2003 annual meeting of the Mission America Coalition. The first three parts were presented in the December 2003 and February 2004 issues of The Movement.

CITY-FOCUSED: Acts 16-19
This is the fourth crucial principle of ministry for the 21st (and the 1st!) century.

We should not ignore the rest of a nation, but we should focus our efforts on large cities in the greatest way possible. We have noted that now there is a mobility of ideas, people, and capital unprecedented since the Pax Romana, and this leads not only to globalization and pluralization (again) but urbanization again. As Wayne Meeks put it - travel during the Pax Romana was easier than it ever had been and ever was again until the 19th century. And when that happened, cities rose again. The works of Wayne Meeks and Rodney Stark have shown that the rise of early Christianity was largely an urban phenomenon. Globalized cities became furiously multi-ethnic and international and thus became more enormously influential and central than their nations - essentially they were city states. Why? Antioch was really a United Nations, with Asian, African, Jewish, Greek, and Roman section. From Antioch there were powerful networks that led back into three continents. Capital and culture flowed back and forth through those networks. And thus Paul's mission strategy was remarkably 'urban-centered'. So should ours be.

1. Urbanization
In 1950 New York was the only world city with a population of over 10 million people. Today, however, there are over 20 such cities, twelve of which have arrived in the last two decades, with many more to come. All of these new giant mega-cities are developing in what used to be called the "Third World." Why?

In the 18th century a combination of population growth and technology brought rural Europe to its "carrying capacity", creating a surplus population. In every family there were those who needed to leave the countryside and small towns to make a living elsewhere. As a result there were 150 years of urbanization in which the great cities of Europe swelled to be the largest in the world.

Many experts now believe this is beginning to happen in Africa, Asian, and to a lesser extent in Latin America, where the cities are literally exploding with new immigrants from the villages and rural areas. If urban-rural population in the southern hemisphere stabilizes at 75%-25% as it did in Europe and North America, then over the next few decades we will see over half a billion people move into the cities of Africa and Asia alone - i.e. one new Bangkok (8 million people) ever two months. [ This assertion and everything in the preceding paragraph are take from the Economist article "The Brown Revolution" (May 9, 2002) ].

It is this urban explosion that has been the main vehicle, in the providence of God, for the most important new development in Christian history in centuries.

While Christianity has declined in Europe and has only held its own (at best) in North America, it has been growing at many times the rate of population in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Now the majority of Christians live south of the equator. Christianity is growing more rapidly than any other faith, but the vast majority of believers will be neither white nor European nor Euro-American. [ Phillip Jenkins, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity (Oxford, 2002), p.2. ]

Why? It is because of the staggering growth in cities. The millions of newcomers to burgeoning cities have characteristics that make them far more open to Christianity than they were before arriving.

First, they are more open to new ideas and change in general, having been uprooted from traditional settings.

Second, they have great need for help and support in order to face the moral, economic, emotional and spiritual pressures of city life. The old kinship support networks of the rural areas are weak or absent, while the cities have "next to nothing in working government services". Churches offer supportive community , a new spiritual family, a liberating Gospel message. "Rich pickings await any groups who can meet these needs of these new urbanites, anyone who can at once feed the body and nourish the soul." [Jenkins, p 93]

2. Globalization
The technological/communication revolution has led to an unprecedented mobility of people, ideas, and capital which is often called 'globalization.'

First, this means that major world cities are far more connected to other major cities around the world than they are to their own nations. On the one hand, the "business class" and other elites of New York, London, and Tokyo are able to identify more with one another than with the non-urban citizens of their own countries. [See Saskia Sassen, The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo, Princeton Univ 1991] But the strong connections between major cities are not only through the 'elites'. Huge, diverse immigrant populations in global cities tie each urban area more tightly to scores of other countries around the world than to its own regional locale. In other words, thousands of residents of NYC are far more connected to the Philippines, Haiti, Columbia, China, and Nigeria then they are to New Jersey or Connecticut.

Second, these networked world-cities are becoming more economically and culturally powerful than the national governments of their geographical regions. Why is this? 1) The mobility of capital means national governments are now virtually powerless to control the flow of money in and out of their own economies, thus greatly decreasing their influence in general. The cities are the seats of multi-national corporations and international economic, social and technological networks. 2) The technology/communication revolution means that national governments are now virtually powerless to control what their people watch or learn. (This was a major factor in the collapse of communism of Europe). As a result, it is the culture/values set of world-class cities that is now being transmitted around the globe to every tongue, tribe, people, and nation. A major city like New York or Los Angeles now is far more influential in forming the culture of residents in, say, rural Indiana or rural Mexico than are the national or local governments or civic insititutions.

Harvie Conn concludes that we are witnessing again the rise of the 'City-State'. He quotes N. Pierce: "Great metropolitan regions... not states, not even the nation-states - are starting to emerge as the worlds' most influential players." [Harvie Conn, The American City and the Evangelical Church, Baker, 1994] Thus world-class cities are increasingly crucial to setting the course of culture and life as a whole, even in the areas of the world (Europe and North America) where cities are not literally growing in size [Conn p 182]. In other words, urban culture now reaches out far beyond the city limits into the suburbs and even rural areas. Kids in Iowa or even Mexico are becoming more like young adults in L.A. and New York City than they are like adults in their own locales. The coming world 'order' will be a global, multi-cultural, urban order.

Summary: If anything, the city is even more influential now than it has been in the past. During that last 20 years we see increasingly in the 'developed' world that the young and the global citizens/influencers want to live in cities. Meanwhile, in the less developed world, people are streaming by the millions out of the hinterlands and into the city. James Boice in Two Cities: Two Loves (pp.165ff.) suggests that if even ten percent of the evangelicals of the nation moved into the largest cities and lived out lives of love, truth, and servanthood, the culture would be fundamentally changed. The gospel alone can give us the humility ("I have much to learn from the city"), the confidence ("I have much to give to the city") and the courage ("I have nothing to fear from the city") to be effective in the city. Most Christians avoid the city because it is so filled with "the other."

Text: Acts 16:6-12: Here we see that Paul is called to Macedonia, but to reach it he automatically chooses to go to the largest city of a region (v.16). The apostle consistently targeted the largest city of a region and did extensive urban church planting and then left the region. Why? He knew that once he'd reached the city he'd reached the society and culture. Meeks explains why it was so brilliant to target cities. Humanly speaking: a) City dwellers going through changes are more open to new ideas than more conservative rural people. b) City dwellers are more connected and mobile so that when one of them is converted, your chance of gospel spreading far and wide is much greater. Rodney Stark looks at why Christianity spread so rapidly, and it was because the cities also had more social problems, and the love and service of Christians, the family life and character of Christians, was so striking.

To cities filled with the homeless and impoverished, Christianity offered charity as well as real hope. To cities filled with newcomers and strangers, Christianity offered an immediate basis for attachment. To cities filled with widows and orphans, Christianity offered a new and expanded sense of family. To cities torn by ethnic strife, Christianity offered a new basis for social solidarity... I am not saying the misery of the ancient world caused the advent of Christianity... people had been enduring for centuries without the aid of Christian theology or social structures. I am arguing that once Christianity did appear, its superior capacity for meeting human problems soon became evident and played a major role in its ultimate triumph... for what Christianity brought was not simply an urban movement, but a new culture. [Stark, The Rise of Christianity, p.161]

The Biblical Mandate. Paul's focus on the city should not surprise us. The rest of the Bible shows us the importance of the city.

1. Old Testament - God invents the city - so, as the city goes, society goes.

God tells Adam and Eve to "have dominion" , develop the earth, to bring forth the riches God put in nature (and human nature) at creation. A call to engage in the arts, science, enterprise, family life - to develop a civilization and society under God. But Adam and Eve soon failed their commission to be servants of God, cultivating creation under his Lordship. Instead, Jesus Christ comes as the "new Adam". He becomes the head of a new humanity who creates a world under God.

But when we look ahead to the ultimate fruit of the new Adam - in Revelation 21-22 - when we catch a glimpse of the climax of history, when the world is finally in the condition Jesus died to produce, we discover that the earth has become a city. God begins history in a garden, but he ends it in a city! In the middle of the City-to-Come we see the tree of life! Why? This is paradise restored. God's future world is urban. When God said, "develop the earth" he intended for Adam and Eve to build a city.

Even today, in our broken world, cities continue to be the main way that the culture develops. As the city goes, so the arts, scholarship, communication, philosophy, commerce, etc. goes. From the beginning, cities have been centers of cultural power. Changes develop in the city and from there flow out into regions of city influence. Why? At the center of cities has traditionally been some common space - called a "town square" or "marketplace" - that served as both a place for and a symbol of how people make commercial political, social, and cultural connections in cities. In cities the number and diversity of human connections outstrips the possibilities for such anywhere else. (As testimony of this fact, the purpose of a convention is connection - a place people make connection with expertise, peers, money, and other resources - but the best way to facilitate these connections is to create a temporary city!) All the connections lead in the end to creativity - new alliances, new ideas, new art, and new movements. This is the third reason people who don't live in a city are at a disadvantage. They are marginal to the centers, the places of "cultural forging."

(continued on page 2)