It’s Saturday morning and I set my alarm for 6:00 AM. I hate getting up early on weekends like this. My back hurts, my head aches, and I want to go back to bed. I’m up against a deadline for my dissertation so I cruised on down to my local Starbucks to get writing before the family awakes. But I’m too tired and too fuzzy to write so I thought a quick blog may prime the pump.
I’m giddy and really nervous to begin my research. Giddy because I love to learn but nervous because of what the results may lead to. The whole gist of my dissertation stems from the question, “why don’t we plant churches in the city compared to the suburbs?” As a strategist obviously my heart is for the entire metro area … ‘urbs, ‘burbs, and outlying areas …. white, black, brown, locals, foreign-born, rich, poor, etc. Tucson is my city and I love this city like a child. I know that is an odd admission but even during the while where I thought of leaving it was really painful to think of letting go because I’ve invested so much in studying, trying to understand, and falling in love with this city. I love this place and I love that we’re rapidly becoming more diverse. We have about 500 refugee families moving here within the next few months with most of them from Iraq. In my opinion the more diverse a city is the better.
I don’t have a bias against the suburbs. Since the bulk majority of church planting taking place across tribal lines is in the burbs I feel I don’t need to beat the drum for there. Most will gravitate towards the suburbs so we’re good to go. Since my heart is for the metro area I want to see churches planted ALL OVER which is why I have to constantly beat the drum for the city … for the Hispanics, for the refugess, for the internatoinal students, for 4th Ave dwellers, for the creative class, for the downtown, for the poor, and so on. The hard part is that the truth is … it really is much more difficult to plant a financially sustaining church in the city than the burbs. Again, not one is better and even in the suburbs there is no such thing as easy. Its just going to take a completely differernt appraoch to plant in the city.
Ok, I think I’m primed now so TTFN!
