Moving into Discipling the City

Theological Unpreparedness

• No longer a valid distinction between pastors working in home country urban contexts and overseas. 
• Urban pastors need the skills in linguistics and cultural adjustment once only needed by foreign missionaries.  
• Study: 9/10 of all missionaries going to 2/3 world countries came from small towns themselves.  Most overseas missionaries ended up in rural environments.  [Why?!  (a) Lower cost of living.  (b) It was assumed this is where the unreached people lived.  (c) They were trained in methods of rural engagement.  Cities were complex, pluralistic cultures.  (d) They felt more at home in rural and small town contexts].  
• Headquarter mentality of missionary societies abroad-located on missions compounds in the city but have no effective ministry to that city.  
• Professional church leadership comes overwhelmingly from the existing professional classes in suburbia.  
• Ministers are given tools to exegete scripture–Greek, Hebrew, etc.  But few tools to exegete the city such as social psychology, urban politics and urban history, etc.  
• Most theological education offers: (a) standard prescriptions for opening a franchise.  (b) Training that assumes all environments are culturally neutral. 

Evangelical Reluctance: Reasons

1. Greek-mindedness: thinking is focused on analysis, breaking the whole into parts separated from the context; good news is interpreted in one-dimensional terms.  Rather Hebraic thinking focuses on synthesis rather than analysis, intuition over empiricism; system rather than segment, the integrated whole over the part.  
2. Class captivity: Middle class treasures predictability, privacy, possessions and power.  They are taught to dislike unpredictability, public displays of feelings, poverty, weakness, and dependency.  They assume certain facts about life quality such as the relative safety and proper functioning of public services.  Anything less reflects weakness and dependency leading to shame.  Therefore theology should deal with matters of the spirit, not material issues.  Preaching is cognitive, dispassionate, linear, sequential so as to avoid loss of control or eruptions of spontaneity.  [it's all about needing to be in control or to feel like the situation is truly under control even if an individual isn't in control].  
3. Professional priesthood:  Institutionalized training of technicians who are highly skilled in the art of running a church.  While the laity sit as spectators.  Because of specialized training necessary, the limits on time, the passive role of the laity the minister is restricted to activities within the church.  The church becomes self-focused, non-evangelizing, and boring.  
4. Self-Defense: as white evangelicals have captured material resources they have been captivated by the comforts they bring.  Orientation shifts to getting rather than giving.  Energy guarded rather than expended.  
5. A misunderstood mandate: “Love the Lord with all your heart soul and mind and love you neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12;30-31).  This has been interpreted as a spiritual, soulish activity only.  But love is about meeting needs in concrete, incarnational ways.  Case Study: John Wesley preached 45,000 sermons in his lifetime and wrote 223 books and pamphlets.  He started a free dispensary for medical aid to the poor.  He organized a friends society to aid needy strangers.  He supported efforts for elementary education.  He opposed the slave trade.  He encouraged prison reforms.  

Basic Barriers to Urban Ministry

1. No enough organized prayer in the city.  
2. Too few properly trained leaders, both pastors and lay.  
3. Most evangelicals lack vision, motivation, and a burden for the lost.  
4. Churches and pastors have a rural mentality.  
5. Failure to use the opportunities given.  
6. The Christian community lives as if it were in a ghetto, out of contact with non-Christian friends.  
7. Churches do not cooperate with each other.  
8. Christians live busy lives and have many meetings.  
9. There is a generation gap  between existing leaders over 55 and newer leaders under 30.  
10. Lack of suitable buildings and facilities.  

Questions Ministry Leaders Should Ask in Coming to the City.  

1. What is the church?  People or structures?
2. How do I develop local leadership?
3. How can I bring in my expertise without intimidating local people?  
4. How do I identify and overcome barriers to communication?  
5. How can the old core of faithful folk be renewed for new mission?  
6. How do I handle the diversity of languages and social groups?
7. Which comes first evangelism or community -building?  
8. How do we care for special groups-the elderly, the bereaved, broken families.  
9. How do we initiate dialogue with suburban churches?  
10. How do we cope with community problems?
11. How do I cope without support systems?  

Factors Diverting Attention Away from City Populations and Ethnic Evangelism

1. Ambivalence toward immigrants: natives tend to fear competition and diversity.  
2. The negative image of the city: cities are viewed as too bit or too bad to be redeemed.  
3. Fear of the social gospel: the social gospel grew up in the city but was built by its advocates on a shaky theological foundation, which was liberal and weak.  
4. White flight to the suburbs: between 1963-1983 massive white shift to the suburbs- demographic map changed- strongest urban churches today are non-white.  
5. “Pith helmet” stereotype of missions: romance of traditional missions vs. local responsibility.  
6. Cultural inflexibility: difficult to release long-held patterns of worship, discipline, pastoral leadership, and training
7. Inadequate theology of the city: the bible is read and theology is discussed in ways that filter out pressing issues such as social justice, poverty, suffering and urban density.  

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~ by caitlinshirley on March 4, 2009.