New Urbanism in Small City, USA

It’s funny, I post on New Urbanism last night and as I sit here this morning at the Coffee Hound in Normal, IL I’m looking out the window at the reality of this concept unfolding before me. Home to Illinois State University downtown (or actually called Uptown) Normal is going through a revitalization process of its own as they apply principles of New Urbanism.  Wider sidewalks, beautified streetscape, new incoming trendy apartment lofts, right next to the university, shops and restaurants galore … and my first question always is, “Where’s the church?”

I know the inherent dangers of chasing after such things as New Urbanism because these types of areas attract young urban singles and DINKS (double-income no kids) who tend to be white collar, have discretionary income, and so on.  Often times areas being revitalized are older, thus have great character, and have fallen on hard times.  Usually lower income working class people live in the area. But when a place becomes a hotbed and building and retrofitting sets in the cost of living sky rockets which forces working class families out (maybe not so much in Normal, IL). A church could be planted in these areas and be just as homogeneous as the suburbs and the poor/lower class will only continued to be marginalized and forgotten.

My dream would be to plant churches in these hotbeds with a church having a distinct missional ecclesiology.  The trajectory is outward and all people are loved and cared for whether that be mainstream or marginalized.  It could be akin to some of the apostle Paul’s writings where he talks about how when we’re in Christ there’s neither Jew nor Gentile, male nor female … poor nor wealthy, white collar nor blue collar nor no-collar, Black nor White nor Yellow, etc.  In Christ we’re all family loving and serving one another as well as our cities.

I’m humbled to live in such a time as this where cities are truly the new frontier in mission whether that be Normal, New Songdo City in South Korea, Dubai (UAE), or wherever.