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Why Christians Should Minister in the City   By Massimo Lorenzini     As a center of cultural influence, the city is without equal. As the city goes, the culture goes, therefore, as Christians we must reclaim a commitment to urban ministry. Cities are places where culture is developed through the influence of people who are working hard to excel. The constant pressure to stand out from one’s peers in a given vocation brings out the best and the worst in people. This makes cities both exciting as well as difficult places to live. With all the competition, lawyers, teachers, merchants, musicians, entrepreneurs, mechanics, and doctors are all challenged to do their very best.   Cities are places of refuge for immigrants, ethnic and religious minorities, the homeless, and those practicing deviant lifestyles. The density within cities is conducive to diversity. Dominant majorities often dislike cities, but the weak and powerless need them. Cities provide economic resources and opportunities and a place for minorities to be welcomed and established.   With the diversity and drive to excel in the city, citizens are confronted with new ways to think and their creativity and hard work is rewarded. All of this activity is the breeding ground of culture that eventually spans out to influence regions and even other cities.   If we want to see the transformation of culture, we will go to the cities. Those in the city who are converted through the preaching of the gospel, become salt and light their city and begin to see their values expressed in the culture. Many of these will likely be in or rise to the elite class in the city. But even if the elite of the city are unreached with the gospel, the gospel can still affect the culture. The ordinary citizens of the city tend to get their values reflected in the culture.   From a biblical and historical perspective we see that the city is central to the spread of Christianity. The Pax Romana of the ancient Roman Empire made travel and communication easier than it ever would be again until the 19th century. The missionary strategy of the early church was urban-centric. It was from the international hub of Antioch that Paul and Barnabas set out on their first missionary journey. They then concentrated their efforts on cities to the effect that when the church was established in one city, that church could then evangelize its surrounding areas.    In Acts 16 Paul received the Macedonian call and promptly set out to preach in Philippi, “the foremost city of that part of Macedonia” (v. 12). The gospel was taken to other cities like Athens, Corinth, Thessalonica, Ephesus, Rome, and many others.   Why do we take the gospel to the city? If you want to reach the most amounts of people and the most influential people, you go to the city. In the last 100 years, urbanization has skyrocketed. One hundred years ago fifteen percent of the world’s population lived in cities. Today it is over fifty percent.   The city is where the spiritual battles are won or lost. In the city, people are more open to new ideas than the more conservative rural people. Cities usually have a dominant language the can allow the gospel to more easily spread, but also have many minority ethnic groups that can in turn take the gospel in their own language back to their various nations. City dwellers typically have more cultural clout. A teacher in the small town can be won to Christ, but the teacher in the city can influence other teachers and impact the teaching profession.   Cities are not only trend-setters for culture, but often have many social problems as well. Once Christianity gains a foothold in a city, it can work to address the social ills. Not only that, but Christians who are active in their communities also begin to help create a new, redemptive culture with founding of schools, hospitals, orphanages, and homeless shelters. The presence of Christians in a city also helps to raise the standards of morality, offering a prophetic voice against the vices of a city. The city is also transformed as more and more citizens are impacted by the gospel and live according to biblical moral standards.   A biblical model for a Christian attitude toward the city can be found in Jeremiah 29. God used Nebuchadnezzar to judge Judah’s waywardness and, through Jeremiah, God instructed the exiled Jews in Babylon to at once avoid assimilating into Babylonian culture while avoiding isolation from it.   4 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: 5 Build houses and dwell in them; plant gardens and eat their fruit. 6 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. 7 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 (Jer 29:4-7, NKJV).   God’s will for the Jews was that, while remaining undefiled from the sins of Babylon, they would identify with their new home in such a way that their prosperity would be dependent upon the prosperity of Babylon.   It is not enough for the church to counter the values of the dominant culture. In the words of New York City pastor Tim Keller, “We must be a counter-culture for the common good.” We are to be radically distinct from the surrounding culture, and out of our distinct identity we are to work for the “peace of the city” knowing that “in its peace [we] will have peace.”   Augustine wrote about the city of God and the city of man. He urged Christians not to identify too closely with the city of man as it is fallen and susceptible to destruction as Rome was. The city of God is that new community of the redeemed who will forever dwell in the city “whose builder and maker is God” (Heb 11:10). This is the city God is seeking to populate with people “out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation” (Rev 5:9) and will culminate in the New Jerusalem of Revelation 21 and 22.   The church on earth is the city within the city. We do not place our security in the city of man, but in the city of God. The city of man can be broken and destroyed. The city of God cannot suffer harm. The church in the city seeks the good of the city. The church blesses and prospers the city.   Jonah was sent to preach to the city of Nineveh, “that great city” (Jonah 3:2), because God loves the city. God loves the city because that’s where the greatest concentration of his most cherished of His creatures live—people. Too often, modern Christians resemble Jonah’s attitude. They may not explicitly say they hate the people in the city as Jonah did, but their actions show that the effect is the same when they do all they can to avoid contact with the city, much less love the city and minister to the city. New churches pop up in suburbia like weeds, while urban churches are left to die a slow and certain death. As God’s people, we are called and empowered to do better than that.   The gospel gives us security and a hope that transcends this world. Knowing we are accepted and loved in Christ, frees us from the fear of man and allows us to serve others who may misunderstand us or even reject us. The best way to love the city of man, is to find your identity in the city of God. When you are freed from the psychological entanglements of the city by the hope of the gospel, then you are in a position to love the city and help lift it up. The only way to help someone out of the quicksand is to stand outside of it.   If we seek our identity and security in the city of man, we become dependent on it. If we seek our identity and security in the city of God, by His grace, we are empowered to bless and serve the city. It takes great faith and love to work for the good of the city and our identity in the gospel alone can propel us forward in this otherwise impossible task. Let us forsake the fleeting mirage of security in this fallen world and labor for that eternal city, the New Jerusalem, that it might be populated with those redeemed by God through our faithful service. To God be the glory.

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