5. An Understanding of Cultural Formation and Change. Following is a synopsis of how cultural change evolves:

• Top-down aspect. Trends in culture flow mainly down from the most influential elite cultural institutions. Even when 80 percent of Americans may be against something, if Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Hollywood, or the New York Times want some change in culture, it is coming to us. Christians have very little presence in any top level institutions or venues; Christians are not writing or producing plays and major films, writing on the op-ed pages of the New York Times, leading the administrations of Ivy League schools, managing elite publications and research organizations.

• Bottom-up aspect. Cultural change does not happen through either church growth or politics. Cultural change happens when a new culture is theorized and imagined by academics, thinkers, artists and when counter-cultural communities (e.g. churches) of significant numbers, size, and “thickness” in all fields (not just politics) adopt this new vision and live for the common good and work for strategic change in cultural centers (major cities or university nexus).

All major efforts by Christians to change society work on a different operating theory of how culture changes, such as defensive enclaves (conservative political), utopian enclaves (Anabaptist), worldview education only (colleges, educational programs), mainline alliance (liberal political), classic evangelistic (Campus Crusade for Christ). But compare the impact of evangelicals who don’t live in cultural centers with ethnic groups who do live in cultural centers but fail to work for the common good—with groups who do both.

As noted earlier, this is a historic moment for Western cities. Christianity is growing in the grassroots of cities as never before. But if individuals come out of the first generation immigrant churches and just go to college and get jobs, there will be little cultural change because of society’s pressure to seal off one’s faith from one’s work and because of the cluelessness of churches to know how to help and support people in secular work. What is needed is the integration of faith-and-work and ministry along the five fronts (as outlined in Part 3 of 4, see Winter 2006 the movement) which operates on this understanding of cultural change. Most of all, we need to be in churches that are completely committed to this view of cultural change.

6. An Understanding of Church Models. The five ministry fronts listed in Part III (engagement with secular people, development of Christian community, service to the city and the poor, commitment to cultural renewal through integration of faith and work, and commitment to regular church planting) are not optional. All five are required by the gospel. The grace-orientation of the gospel makes evangelistic worship and deep community both possible and necessary. The kingdom-orientation of the gospel makes holistic ministry and the integration of faith and work imperative. Both grace and kingdom-mindedness provide the motivation for the hard work of church planting. But in addition, we engage in all five because they are interdependent of each other. Holistic ministry, in which Christians work sacrificially for the common good, is the necessary context for any convincing evangelistic call to believe in Jesus.  (Why should the people of the city listen to us if we are simply out to increase our own tribe and its power?) And culture cannot be changed simply through numerous conversions if Christians continue to seal off their gospel-beliefs from how they work and live in public. Finally, church-planting is ultimately the only way to increase all these other ministries in the city. Only if we do all of these ministries at once will any of them be effective. They are interdependent and interlocking.

Having said this, we must recognize the impossibility of any one church being equally good at them all. There will be different models of churches, even of those who share the same theological DNA. Why is this? First, there is no promise that God will give any one church an equal distribution of gifts; some churches simply attract more people with a concern for the poor than for the arts, and so on. Second, churches will be located in different places in the city center; some will be on the edge of a poor area, others near a center of one particular immigrant group, another in the very middle of the artistic community.  Thus, the immediate context of the church will make it stronger in some of these areas more than others. Third, the lead pastors will rarely contain an equal giftedness in leading the church in each of these five areas; large churches can staff to the pastor’s weakness, but that is not true of smaller churches. So we must expect that on the one hand every church will be better at two or three of these emphases and should capitalize and celebrate that, and yet on the other hand, they must relentlessly work to keep strengthening their weaker ministry aspects. There is no other option for a city-center church. While many churches major exclusively in seeker orientation or in holistic ministry to the poor or in cultural engagement or in cell group ministry or in church planting, a city-center church must possess all five of these emphases in equal measure built on the foundation of a depth-proclamation of the gospel.

If, and only if, we produce thousands of new church-communities that regularly attract and engage secular people, that seek the common good of the whole city especially the poor, and that produce thousands of Christians who write plays, make movies, express creative journalism, begin effective and productive new businesses, use their money for others, and produce cutting-edge scholarship and literature will we see our vision for the city realized and our whole society changed as a result.

SUMMARY

To conclude, an effective city-center church will engage in the following:

• Hold the historic Christian gospel--orthodox and Biblical in doctrine and practice, but are neither legalistic nor liberal, not doctrinalist nor pietist, not individualistic or collectivistic.
  
  
• Have a positive regard for the city and recognize that it is the most strategic possible place for ministry.
  
  
• Will neither over- or under-adapt to the culture of those in their surrounding neighborhood and culture.
  
  
• Are intensely, creatively evangelistic and effective in reaching not just people who are already traditional or conservative but who are very secular.
  
  
• Relentlessly emphasize and seek to build a strong, “thick” countercultural Christian community in cities, especially through cell groups.
  
  
• Are holistic, ministering in both word and deed to their community and the poor in extremely creative and generous ways.
  
  
• Have a bias toward being multiethnic and seek to be at least as multiethnic as their neighborhood.
  
  
• Are arts and culture-friendly, both supportive of Christian witness in “secular work” and willing to train people for cultural leadership, not just church leadership.
  
  
• See church planting as a ministry as natural and important as discipleship, music, education, and pastoral care.