DWELL: Driving Urban Church Planters March 2, 2008
Posted by Steve in : The City, Chicago, Church, Urban Church, Methods & Strategies, Missional, The Cultural Conversation, DifferenceMakers, Culture and Faith , add a commentAt Park Community Church, our vision is to be a Biblical community where the Gospel of Jesus Christ transforms lives, renews the city and impacts the world. Being a city center church, we are focused on reaching the city of Chicago and would like to reach 1% (29,000 people) of the city in the years to come. That is why we love conferences that focus on the major global centers like Chicago or New York, and one of those great get-togethers is coming up.
The Dwell Conference is scheduled for April 29-30, 2008 in New York City and involves two of our favorites: Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City will be co-hosting and partnering with Acts 29 Network in a premiere church planting event to create a world-class training for urban church planters. It has a fabulous lineup of some of the most influential church planting leaders as speakers at this event: Tim Keller, Mark Driscoll, Ed Stetzer, CJ Mahaney, and Darrin Patrick.
I also love their anchor verse for this movement of planters (as it has been an anchor for our church about urban living for years):
Jeremiah 29:4-7
“Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all who were carried away captive, whom I have caused to be carried away from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and DWELL in them; plant gardens and eat their fruit. Take wives and beget sons and daughters; and take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands, so that they may bear sons and daughters—that you may be increased there, and not diminished. And seek the peace of the city where I have caused you to be carried away captive, and pray to the LORD for it; for in its peace you will have peace.”
Keller: Ministry in Major City Centers — Part 1 March 23, 2007
Posted by Steve in : The Cultural Conversation, The Arts in the City , 1 comment so far
I am a big fan of Tim Keller of Redeemer Presbyterian in NYC. I came across this excellent article of his entitled Our New Global Culture: Ministry in Major City Centers. He looks at who lives in the major global cities, like
1) The city-center is a culture of expertise. People who live in city centers are usually highly skilled and highly educated. Ministry implications: a) Artistic quality is very important. Amateurish art and music will not go over well, especially with the high percentage of center-city residents who are themselves artists. And the post-modern “turn” puts more emphasis on the visual, on graphics, and on embodiment. b) Commun- ication needs to be very high in quality and be highly intelligent. There is a surprising amount of anti-intellectualism within the evangelical world. (People have noticed for years that campus fellowships at Ivy League schools are often very anti-intellectual and pietistic.)
2) City-center people are living in their career. Many people work in order to come home and have a life. But city-center people essentially inhabit their careers. It is also so expensive to live in city centers that most have to work hard to make enough money to stay there. Ministry implications: You can’t just disciple people on how to be Christians in their private lives (e.g. prayer, witnessing, Bible study). Centercity people don’t have much in the way of a “private life.” If you are in finance or art or acting or medicine your vocation dominates your life and your time. Discipleship must include how to be distinctively Christian within your job, including how to handle the peculiar temptations and ethical quandaries, and how to produce work in one’s field from a distinctly Christian world-view.
3) City-center people are very sexually active and believe their sexuality is completely private—that is, their business alone. Ministry implications: There must be a lack of prudishness about sex, coupled with strong teaching on the Christian understanding of sex: that it is designed for lifetime commitment and for community-building, not personal gratification. The area of sex and gender is (currently) politically explosive, so it is crucial that teaching in this area be smart, irenic, and nuanced—in other words, carefully co-opting existing cultural narratives (about freedom, identity, and community, for example) while upholding a Biblical viewpoint. Even strong Christians in city-centers will be under great temptation to be sexually active in various ways that can undermine or destroy their spiritual effectiveness.
4) City-center people have consumer identities. Traditional culture had “thick” communities in which identity was experienced through one’s role in the family and society. Modern and post-modern culture thins out community (through mobility), and “frees” individuals to create their own identity. (more…)
