Dreams for the City in ‘09

One more hour until it’s 2009 here in our time zone.  Most of the time I simply go to bed before midnight before any hoopla or partying goes on which is probably a sign I’m getting older.  Today, I started a new book called The Creative City and I have to admit that even the Preface of the book completely grabbed my attention.  The more I learn about the city the clearer I see not only my role but the church’s role in renewing cities.

So when I look at not only my city but cities in general for 2009 here’s what I’m dreaming of …

1. More church plants in our city centers.

2. New churches that are woven into the fabric of urban renewal / revitalization.

3. An outpouring of rapidly multiplying organic churches housed in coffee shops and other Third Places in our cities.

4. For Christians to flood back into the cities.

5. For our churches to become less multi-racial but more inter-racial.

6. For Christians to start up non-profit organizations in the city to not only be part of God’s Saving Grace but to be agents for His Common Grace.

7. For new missional forms /modes of churches to develop in the city that we’ve yet to see or imagine.

8. A personal one … to start learning Chinese (Mandarin).

9. To see a strong push of church planting among the Creative Class with a heart for community transformation and that they’d use their creative talents to redeem the city.

10. That more church planters would purposely be bi-vocational with their jobs tied into community transformation.

These are some of my dreams for ‘09 for the city … what are yours?

The Loft Discussion

For those who’re interested I’ve set up a “social network” site to further the discussion on all things city, urban church planting, city transformation, and so on.  Click on The Urban Loft to go to the website.

The Christian in the City

“’The city in the American imagination has played roughly the role of hell in Christian imagination,’ writes Garry Wills. For Americans, the density and diversity of the city are enemies of the suburban ideal.” (Mark Gornik)

Ouch, that smarts a little. This morning I’m putting together a talk for this sunday on a Theology of the City. For me this is something akin to “getting in my zone” because this is a driving passion of mine and a topic I read and think about more than any other topic with the implications being how to plant churches in our urban cores.  It’s amazing I can get an undergrad degree in Biblical Studies, a Masters in church planting, but it wasn’t until my doctoral work that I was exposed to this idea of what God thinks of the city.  How could I sit through endless classes on theology, biblical book surveys, ministry, church planting, but altogether never hear once what God thinks of the city or the role of the city throughout Scripture.  We know cities are of utmost importance … even though the Bible’s story starts in the garden it ends in a city of mega-proportions that make NYC or Tokyo seem like a sleepy borough.

It is interesting how cities come to play in the Christmas story.  I’ve pondered this next quote for a long time now and every time I read it I’m drawn even closer to the heartbeat of who God is.

“As our cities swell with immigrants and migrants, I’m reminded that Jesus was born in a borrowed barn in Asia and became an African refugee in Egypt. So the Christmas story is about an international migrant. Furthermore, a whole villageful of baby boys died for Jesus before he had the opportunity to die for them on the cross. Surely this Jesus understands the pain of children who die for the sins of adults in our cities.” (Ray Bakke)

As we glide into Christmas this week I’m reminded Jesus came and died for humanity.  The city is central to God’s plan and purposes for humanity … why?  Because that’s where most of us live.  Maybe the best thing we can offer God this Christmas is to give ourselves to our city and be willing to incarnate ourselves in it like Jesus and give our lives for those who live there.

1st and Amistad

I found God

On the corner of First and Amistad

As the song “You Found Me” by The Fray trickles into my headphones on my iTunes I can’t help but ponder the lyrics. Where is God?  Is he truly at the corner of 1st and Amistad? Also, is he smoking a cigarette?

Several years ago a couple of my favorite urban ministry heroes wrote a book that I’m thumbing through again today for the 6th time called “Street Signs.”  The basic premise of the book is that God is at work in the city and there are street signs … signs of hope that God is here.  So yes, in more ways than one God is at the corner of 1st and Amistad. As one who grew up in rural America I was inclined to think of cities as dark insidious places full of corruption and violence.  They scared me to death.  Of all places on earth God was NOT in the city.

But then something changed. Simply put, God gave me a heart for what he loves … cities.  It’s one of those things that wasn’t a conscious decision but an evolutionary process.  Can God be found on our major urban centers?  Yes. If we believe that God is a sovereign God then maybe we need to wake up and realize that God is calling all of the nations to migrate to the cities.  In a few decades global urbanization will be in the 80% range.  As of now it has crested 50% for the first time in human history.  There is a reverse-diaspora taking places will people are no longer SCATTERING but instead are GATHERING in cities around the world.

Many nights as I pray over my boys at bedtime my prayers is that they’d grow up to be “global urban Christians” with a heart for the cities of the world.  Sometimes we’ll sit down and look at the pictures and read about cities from all over the world.  I want them to have a heart for what God has a heart for.  I pray that somehow someway they’ll be engaged in cultural transformation in some city somewhere.  As they grow and incarnate themselves in the cities they’re doing the same thing Jesus did 2,000 years ago. So maybe when someone writes of meeting God at the corner of 1st and Amistad it will be that they met someone who follows God and points them to the Messiah.

What If?

I think one of the benefits of not growing up thick in the churched culture is that I’ve always felt like an outsider looking in, even still to this day.  This has led me to always be asking lots of questions of why we do what we do … and now 16 years later after deciding to follow Jesus that part of me hasn’t changed.

This last few days I’ve been pouring over research and demographic materials and websites from a couple of regional small cities here with a burgeoning Creative Class.  These great cities also house top notch universities as well as downtown cores in the revitalization process.  One city in particular, Champaign, even was bold enough to state that they’re investing in the downtown core because of Richard Florida’s writings on this Creative Class and their desire to attract and keep this valuable asset.

What I’m constantly doing is asking how we need to go about church planting differently.  Here’s the reality … our current strategies have brought us our current results yet we all dream and long for a true movement.  Me too but our current practices will NOT take us there.

WHAT IF?  What if the way to movements hasn’t been conceived in our imaginations yet? What if we’re honest enough to admit our current funding processes and strategies will not and can not birth a movement?  What if we opened our eyes to see that the more control institutions have the more it squelches movements?  What if we learned that less control meant fertile soil for something spectacular to happen?  What if all our current strategies are doing is quenching the Holy Spirit as we rely on our own wisdom?  What if God still uses foolish things to confound the wise? What if the foolish things were ordinary Christians in the marketplace and the wise were us denominational church planting strategists?  What if we had less strategies and more action? What if we realized that the world doesn’t need another new church like the way we’ve beeing doing it?

What if we had it all wrong?  What if we chucked our plans and lived life on the lunatic fringe of church planting?

Who’s Your City?

Who’s your city?  Have you ever asked that question?  Not only who are the people that make up it’s geographic boundaries but what is the overall culture / identity of your city?  In some ways it’s easier than you might imagine.  Let’s play the word game.  I’ll name a city and you tell me your first response … ready?  New York … big apple, diverse, probably the most influential city in the world, etc.  LA?  Endless beaches, laid back, Hollywood, music, lots of glamorous people.  San Fran? Cultural liberalism, art, gays, incredible diversity, Silicon Valley. See my point?

Who’s your city?  What happens when your city rolls off your tongue … Springfield, Champaign, Bloomington, Tucson, Chicago, KC, Cleveland … what comes to your mind?

As consumers and creators of culture where do we fit into all of this?  Each city, as you know, has a unique vibe and contribution to the whole.  What could God’s purpose be for that city?  What is the church’s role in that city?  I’m afraid that for the most part churches resemble the old mission complexes of yesteryear.  We have our high walls for protection and we’re culturally removed from our surroundings.  As ones who’re incarnational we ought to take on the culture of our city.  (Seriously)  You should be able to identify us by the city we’re from.  Make sense?  If I live in NYC it should ooze out of my every pore, same with Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago, and so on.  That is the basis of the incarnation and exactly what Jesus did.  If my target group is the Bohemian/Gay segment of XYZ City than culturally (not morally … hear me clearly) I ought to be a fellow integral part of that sub-culture.

I think if we were to do that then church planting would happen a lot more naturally and organically.  As we’re embodying Jesus in the incarnation and others are drawn to follow him then new churches will simply be a biproduct.

Latte Art and The Front of Mission

As I was reading over Ralph Winters’ “4th Era” mission idea he explained the movement of missions over the past couple hundred of years.  When missionaries left the U.S. or Britain they first would go to the coastal areas (1st Wave), the 2nd Wave saw mission efforts move inland, the 3rd wave focused on unreached people groups, and now we’re in the era of the 4th Wave.  What is it? It is reaching cities and the great diaspora of tens of millions of people flocking to the city EVERY YEAR.  The front lines of global mission is in the cities … mega-cities, 1st-tier cities, 2nd tier, 3rd tier …

Implications?  We’re not ready.  That’s our current reality.  Since our current mode of thinking and strategy is rural or suburban at best when we look at the city we just cringe, shurg our shoulders, and say something along the lines of, “Well, I hope that someone does something there.”  We need to develop a city-centric theology.  We need to take the next step in our evolutionary process as missionaries to and with culture.

Look at all the evolutionary steps of coffee.  In recent times we moved from bland low quality coffee like Folgers to uber hip coffee shops replete with latte art and trendy decor.  They’re not just serving coffee they’re creating culture. The missional church of the 21st century has a ripe opportunity to jump into our cities (urbs and suburbs collectively) and be part of creating something new and Lord willing, influence culture.  If something simple like coffee can influence culture then why not the Gospel?  Like coffee we need we need to translate it into the language and lifeblood of the America people.  Obviously we don’t change the Gospel just like you don’t change the basic coffee bean. It’s all about adapting it to its hearers (or consumers for coffee) but with a city-centric feel to it.

It’s time to run to the cities since the whole world is migrating there yet many of our denominational HQ’s are in the  burbs our distant small towns.  Let’s run to the city!  Let’s be on the crest of the 4th Wave!

The “4th Era” of Modern Missions

We’re meeting with Dr. Hesselgrave and talking about the current state of missions / church planting.  In preparation we read several articles / papers pertaining to Ralph Winters’ proposal of what he calls the “4th Era.”  What’s funny is that everything written in the article was almost a “duh” and I kept thinking, “That’s new?”  Or maybe some of academia is finally getting around to what’s already a current reality for most church planters?

In overly simplistic terms the 4th Era simply is the refusion of the proclamation of the Gospel with what is dubbed “social gospel.”  Meaning this … that as the Gospel goes out not only does it transform lives (souls) but it also has a transforming effect on culture (i.e. community development, societal transformation, etc).

As I read and listened today I kept thinking, “That’s what I’ve been hearing, teaching, and seeing for a while now.”  For example, the church plants in Tucson are all about that and live it out daily.  Everything I’ve been studying and learning while working on my DMin at Bakke Graduate University is to that end as well.  So, what does this all mean?

Is it that what has been practiced in the “field” is now simply being (finally) theologized in some academic circles?

The Church as Transforming Agent

So we’re in our monthly all-team all-day staff meeting in a downtown coffee shop in Springfield.  The goal is to work on 2010 goals which seems a LONG way off.  (I can’t even think beyond Christmas ‘08 it seems) However, we’re talking vision now and how everything flows from vision.  The vision for us is a New Testament church within easy reach of every person in Illinois.  What does that mean?  Is it clear?  Is it even inspiring?  Does it move us to action?  Does it evoke passion?

So what?  What if we plant 3,000 churches in the next few years?  If we’re planting “conventional churches” then I see no impact nor influence on culture.  Right now, we have GOBS of churches that have little to no influence on culture. The early church grew because they were agents of community transformation it seems … living a radically different life, rescuing babies from the trash dumps, and so on.  I believe we can plant thousands of churches but have no affect on culture.  BUT, that’s not what we want.  Maybe our goal should be holistic community transformation which is accomplished by the planting of thousands of NT churches?

Push back … what are your thoughts?

The Role of Creativity in Church Planting

One of the tensions I hear, see, and feel among church planters and those who’re getting ready to embark down that road is a nervousness over creative issues.  Some want to be minimalists and say its all about proclaiming the Gospel and building relationships while others seem to have been born with extra creative genes in their DNA and all they do seems to be incredibly engaging and cool.  The question arises that asks, “How creative must one be to plant a church?”

As church planting becomes more and more mainstream we see a flood of people launching new churches which is truly an exciting time to be part of the American church.  If we run through our mental lists of church plants we know or the famous ones out there we notice a whole spectrum of churches ranging in creativity.  Some church plants start off with multiple staff, a big budget, and right off the bat they’re doing insanely creative things.  At the other end of the spectrum you have planters who struggle in the creative world and having a semi-decent website is even hard to pull off.  Is creativity and creative expression the determining factor for success in church planting?  If you don’t have lots of hype and creative juices flowing are you doomed to mediocrity?

What is interesting to note that among numerous “famous” church plants that we’re all aware if you were to worship with their community often times you’d walk away and say to yourself, “That’s it?”  In reality there was no hype, no laser light-show, and nothing out of the ordinary except ordinary people worshipping an extraordinary God.  So what’s the scoop on creativity?  Be yourself.  That’s it … don’t try to be anyone else other than yourself.  We’re way too keen on trying to replicate what someone else has done in Other City, USA.  What if the best thing you can do in church planting is simply be yourself … the one made by God.