The urban context desperately needs people who love God and want study who He has revealed Himself to be in the Bible. Few churches exist in the urban context, and of the churches that do exist, some are not healthy gospel-preaching churches. There needs to be a wave of men and women raised up within the urban who understand the people and the culture and are equipped to stand on the word of God at all costs. The cities in America will not see the change from non-profits or programs if the seed of the gospel is not planted.
The Numbers Are Scary
The United Nations predicts that in 1950, one-third of the population lived in the cities. By 2050, this number will jump to two-thirds. How will the church accomplish the Great Commission without developing urban theologians? There needs to be disciples raised in these places who know the gospel and understand how to contextualize it to the realities around them.
What is the Problem? 7 Lies that Flood the Urban Context
1. “There is no hope.”
Acts 4:12 – “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.”
You drive around your typical American-inner city, and what do you see? In the middle of the day, many walk around without hope. You see abandoned buildings, few businesses, liquor stores, crappy schools with stressed-out teachers, broken families, violence, and a lack of opportunity. With no theological foundation, that is hopeless! The world looks at the urban context and asks why people would waste time there. Let’s live as far away from those places as we can afford.
People live their lives every day in these neighborhoods with no hope. Meanwhile, in the suburbs, gospel-centered churches are popping up, spreading the message of hope to those with white picket fence homes, great jobs, excellent schools, and the means to give to the church. Is that wrong? No. But the reality is that the urban context also needs people who care to make disciples and local churches. Without it, there will always be no hope!
2. “You must protect yourself.”
Genesis 4: 13-17 – “Cain said to the Lord, ‘My punishment is greater than I can bear. Behold, you have driven me today away from the ground, and from your face I shall be hidden. I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.’ Then the Lord said to him, ‘Not so! If anyone kills Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.’ And the Lord put a mark on Cain, lest any who found him should attack him. Then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden. Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch. When he built a city, he called the name of the city after the name of his son, Enoch. “
The first city in the Bible is built by a man fearful of vengeance. God says that He puts a mark on Cain so that he will be protected, yet he feels the need to build his own city to be protected. There is nothing new under the sun; man continues these same practices today.
The urban context is dangerous. The reason violence is rampant is because of the lack of opportunity and hope. There are few businesses and fewer jobs, education is not valued, and the culture deems that the only way to make it is through hustling by illegal means. Many men end up incarcerated and away from their children, children grow up with broken families, poverty and a lack of opportunity and the cycle continues.
People take protection into their own hands. There is no theology about what God says about fear or where protection really comes from. People trust pit bulls and weapons to protect them. Instead of trusting in the Word, they trust in their gun. Fast money and the right friends become the way you earn your protection, but it always comes up short and leads to even less protection.
3. “Your way is better than God’s way.”
Genesis 11:4 –“Then they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.’”
The Tower of Babel represents man’s rebellious heart, one that wants to be God. God had directly commanded man to be fruitful and multiply to fill the earth with God’s glory. Man decided to do the opposite, attempting to build themselves up to God and stay in one place. They wanted the earth to be filled with their own glory.
The inner city is jam-packed with people who want to do life their own way. Some of it is their fault, but much of it is a result of what is they see around them. The people with the best lives never seem to follow the rules so the wrong way is glorified. Feelings and idolatry become the center of all decisions. Even if there are people with the seed of hope around, without a strong local church body to move into action with, these voices get drowned out by the violence.
4. “Find your own path to spirituality.”
2 Timothy 4:3-4 – “For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.”
The hood is spiritual. You rarely see atheists walking around. Just because people are spiritual does not mean they have found their way to the God of Scripture. Their minds and streets are flooded with beliefs rooted in African spiritualism, Hebrew Israelites, the Nation of Islam, and other Black religious identity cults that move in to prey on the weak and wounded. These groups affirm their identity! Instead of “blackness” meaning poverty, brokenness, and inferiority, now “blackness” can mean power and dignity.
Without any urban theologians around, who is there to push back? Who is there praying and spreading the good news of Jesus Christ? Who is there doing apologetics against these identity cults?
5. “Urban churches can’t care about theology.”
Ephesians 2: 8-14 – “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands— remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.”
There was once a time in America when black people were not allowed to go to seminaries to be trained and equipped with the gospel. What a difficult truth to swallow! People who called on the name of Jesus, the same Lord who tore that dividing wall of hostility, told other people that because of their skin color they could not be equipped. This is important because it put black people who loved Jesus in a place where they could only do their best with what they had. Slavery put blacks behind in reading and writing, so traditional blacks grew strong in oral communication when it came to the gospel.
White evangelicalism today will often criticize the black church for its liberal theology and unbiblical churches but usually will not raise their hand to play a role in these problems. White evangelicals have been able to stand on sound doctrine, from having pastors equipped to teach and preach God’s word. The black church just made it work by the grace of God. Yet, by God’s grace, there was a time when the black church thrived in communities. After changes during the civil rights movement, some of the brightest minds that used to be restricted to black neighborhoods were able to take their resources and live in white communities. As a result, the black neighborhoods and churches they left behind began to suffer.
6. “The past is better than the present ever could be.”
Isaiah 43:18-19 – “Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it. I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.”
Throughout slavery and racism, the black church clung to its victory in Christ. The black church became a pillar in the black community. Maybe in the outside world no one cared about you, but when you came to the church, the title of “pastor” or “deacon” meant something. You put on your Sunday to be ensured that you did have value. All of this changed after the civil rights movement. In his book Disintegration, Eugene Peterson writes, “Those residents – the ones who couldn’t or wouldn’t move out of the older neighborhood – tended to be less educated and affluent than those who took advantage of new possibilities that racial integration offered.” Before the civil rights movement, black neighborhoods had both the poor and doctors living in one place with strong socioeconomically diverse churches. Once people could and did move out, the black community was stripped of its wealthiest and most gifted people. The urban context was essentially abandoned by anyone who had a better opportunity.
The local church did not adjust well. They kept looking back to how things used to be. They talked about how the black church used to be a pillar in the black community, not realizing that what it meant to be black now looked different. Once the prestige of the black church was gone, the lack of a solid theological foundation began to show. While church was once a place people went for security, now churches began to lean more towards emotions rather than standing on the Word of God. At the same time, the wealth and health prosperity gospel began to creep into churches. Instead of wanting to see more churches in the urban context, these churches grew more territorial. They saw any new churches as a threat to the few congregants they had left. Many churches eventually had to close their doors.
7. “Pastors don’t care about the city.”
Revelation 2: 3-5 – “I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name’s sake, and you have not grown weary. But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.”
I met a woman who started a soul food spot in Des Moines a few years ago. After chopping it up with her, I invited her to church, and her response was “Are you going to tell the truth?” I was shocked by this question! I told her I would tell the truth, and she said, “Alright, we will see. You pastors are just pimps.” She grew up on the south side of Chicago where though pastors should have been reaching people in their neighborhoods with the gospel, they were preying on their communities instead. They were wolves in sheep’s clothing who looked to get as much money from the people as possible. The reputations of pastors and churches have left many in the black community with deep distrust of both churches and pastors. Many churches have lost their true love of Jesus and went off into false doctrines.
The Reality
Matthew 28: 18-20 – “And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
Consider all of the lies flooding the urban context listed above and you come to the conclusion that church planting in the urban context is really hard. Church planting in general is already hard. The enemy hates nothing more than knowing that people are bringing the gospel to a new place to see disciples be made. There is already a lot of resistance and spiritual warfare surrounding planting.
Planting in the inner city often isn’t effective with the standard American church planting process. Most church plants are expected to plant and be self-sustaining within two or three years. This works well in the suburbs, but how is that possible in a place where many are living in poverty? People may come to church but many don’t have the income to help the church become self-sustaining. People living in the inner city live different realities than people in the suburbs and so planter families from the suburbs either don’t know how or don’t want to live in the midst of this new reality. You end up with no new churches coming into these neighborhoods at all. Yet, the Great Commission calls us to make disciples of all nations. All nations includes all neighborhoods. These neighborhoods need to be flooded with urban theologians who are equipped to combat these lies through discipleship and missional living for the sake of the Gospel.
