I woke up with a jolt.
The room was still dark, but my mind was racing with a deep sense that something wasn’t right. I swung my legs over the side of the bed, heart pounding, staring at the quiet floor. My wife stirred as I stood there, unsure what to do with this rising ache.
We were five years into pastoring a new church we had planted. We had good people. Good worship. A growing crowd. But that morning, one unsettling question broke open inside me.
“What would it take for the gospel to transform this city?”
It was a dangerous question. Once you ask it, you can’t go back.
Up until that point, I’d been asking a different question – something much safer. I had been asking, “How do I grow my church?”
It’s the question we had been trained in seminary to ask. The one that the church growth movement had taught us to ask. The one we measured success by.
But there’s a massive difference between these two questions. If you strive to grow your church, you will never reach your city. If you seek to reach your city, your church will grow.
Growing a church is about addition. Reaching a city is about multiplication. Leaders who spend their lives growing churches may fill buildings. But leaders who spend their lives loving cities will see movements.
And our cities need Jesus movements.
People are flooding in to our cities in hope and desperation. Our cities are buckling under the pressure, and the pace of urbanization isn’t slowing. More than half the world already lives in cities. By 2050, 70% of the world’s population will reside in cities. And with that comes mess.
Poverty. Violence. Isolation. Loneliness.
Urban planners like to think the biggest problems are traffic, housing and infrastructure. But the real issue is spiritual. Pride. Greed. A loss of love for our neighbours. And no urban planner can fix that.
Only the gospel can.
But here’s the twist: cities, for all their churches and steeples, are some of the most unreached places on earth. People live their whole lives within walking distance of a church and never hear the Good News in a way they can understand.
The mission field is no longer just rural.
It has migrated from the mud hut to the coffee shop.
It’s time for our strategy to follow.
6 Responses
“If you strive to grow your church, you will never reach your city. If you seek to reach your city, your church will grow.”
This really hit me…
Thought-provoking, thanks!
Yes! This question should unsettle us and shake us awake. It’s meant to challenge us deeply, and we cannot ignore it. We must seek the Lord earnestly for His answers.
Love this: “The mission field is no longer just rural. It has migrated from the mud hut to the coffee shop. It’s time for our strategy to follow.”
Great article David!
Love it
It has been a privilege to journey with you, David and think and practice what it takes to catalyze movements of Gospel in urban and urbanized environments. In urban spaces complexity is a challenge. Also the fact that social networks – which are the soil of God movements – are scattered and zig-zagged across the multitude of affinities. Creating God spaces for spiritual conversations, finding champions in multiple affinities, leading them to Jesus, and inviting them to a journey of practicing The Way are some of the focus points we must be intentional about. Cracking the code of urban movements is at hand. Let’s grab it!