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Urban ministry and the Kingdom of God
Laurie
Green
Part
1: Telling the Urban story
The
British urban context and the place of the Christian Church in that story
In the city today you find an array of people. Behind the glitzy façade and the togetherness of the ‘designer city’ lurks the spectre of poverty and fragmentation.
It is difficult to describe the brokenness of some urban areas. Poor people live in too small poor houses. Divergent cultures begin to clash and the homeless poor and asylum seekers are put into local B&B-accommodation.
While there are a lot of problems in the city, the author experiences also a deep hidden sense of God’s presence in the place. The challenge for the church is how to help it to be expressed. We don’t find just horror at our doorsteps, but also wonderful friendships.
The figure of Jesus resonates strongly with people in the harshest of urban environments. They know what it means to be born in a stable, and they are impressed by one who works to remove injustice.
Life in the city is not about old rotten housing. There are also new building put up. It is a mixture of everything. The keyword is ‘partnership’. Does the church have a strategy of how dealing with this urban challenge?
2
Telling the urban story
The
biblical city
How views the bible the urban story?
The bible has a very ambivalent feeling towards the city. The urban setting is the place where the issues of all society are focused, where the poor suffer, where there is injustice. And yet in God’s economy there is always hope. God is pained by the city, but also delight in her. Which moves us to continue the search for urban justice and community despite the enormous challenge.
What
is urban?
It is difficult to say nowadays what is urban and what is rural.
All cities are different, yet they have some things in common:
All cities bring people together, concentrating and intensifying problems
All cities must be open to change, if not they die.
There is globalisation in all cities. Sign of this are the same stores everywhere.
And yet, each city has its own history. Therefore, its story must be told from different perspectives: economic, history, sociology, geography, theology, and politics.
Until 1550AD: rural society (99%).
Around 1550AD: Coastal cities were built (for international mercantilism).
18th century: Industrial revolution, colonialism (for raw materials). Companies
Last two decades: New technologies + powerful economic forces è companies tried to make the world into a big village (+ conformity all to Western stereotypes).
Last years, there is the re-emergence of tribalism, nationalism, anti-capitalist ideologies and anti-Western religious radicalism. These tensions are mostly felt in urban centres around the world.
The
ever-changing city
If a city doesn’t respond to the ever-changing times, it will die. So, too, must the urban missioners find appropriate theological keys for the new urban challenges.
Seeing
the big picture
Cities are getting bigger worldwide. Some
people try to come to
3
The story of Urban
Many urban missioners have gone before us. Green describes a whole lot of people who lived and worked in the city, as parish priest, but more even as workmen in companies.
Green recalls that ones a preacher, Stephen Vernay called: ‘to search for a positive vision of the city of the future’. Any realistic urban theology has to take account of both the international context, and of what the disciplines of urban studies have to teach us.
The
new urban theological practitioners
Green explain the whole story of their struggle for the recognition of Urban mission within the Church of England and the collaboration with other Christian churches.
Even in the 1990s, despite years of hard
work on the part of urban theologians the
Learning
from our mission story
A lot has been accomplished. Many Christians have played big roles in the formal and informal networks of the community. We learned from our clergy that living in the community is the only way to prove your commitment, gain the trust of your community and learn from it.
But there also unresolved issues. There are questions of power. “Some of the projects and government partnership is power-grabbing, and have kept control out of the hands of those whom Christ wanted to empower (sometimes it is hard to hand over the power to others).”
There also have been power struggles between urban mission styles (e.g. the evangelicals and the liberal Christians). There was the question of who should become a community leader, etc. Another issue is about the understanding of the nature of the mission. What is the Good News for the people of the city?
Another difficulty is the word ‘urban mission’. Do we work only towards the poor, or also to the non-poor?
A last issue is ‘praxis’. Is it only work on the streets, or does it also refer to the Jesus-story? The Belgian priest Joseph Cardijn, gave many tools of doing theology in an integrated and praxis-centred manner.
Part
2: The urban challenge today
An
analysis of our present predicament and its significance for us
4
The New urban challenge
In this part we look how fast the city has changed. It seems that it has changed more in the last 10 years than normally it does in several generations. Yet the church is still looking at the needs of former generation.
A new
urban scene
In 1985, the Cold Warn was still going on. We never heard of globalisation. Migration patterns have changed the colours of our cities. Urban renewal programmes have demolished and rebuilt housing estates. Private sector investment has turned old wharves into fashionable new leisure centres. There are new shopping centres.
There is a big increase in the use of alcohol and drugs. There is also a big increase in fear for violence.
There has evolved a new understanding of the concept city. It used to be seen in the first place as a mechanism, and then as an organism with each part functioning in balance with the next. Nowadays it is rather seen as a contested space with many individuals and groups, all fighting their corner.
There is also a lot of study around the issue of power. Leonie Sandercock, an Australian professor of planning, objects the way architects and planners moved in on cities without a thought about the people who live there. Neighbourhoods are all about community relationships, and they get easily destroyed.
Other urbanologists explain how cities
worldwide are linked in a global network, and there is a sort of hierarchy
between them. The major rich cities have very intimate connections with one
another, controlling between them the major financial transactions of the
world. Many cities, particular in
Globalisation
Globalisation is not a new phenomenon. If
we just think of the
Nowadays the world has become like one big village through its communication network. Technology makes it possible to produce things anywhere in the world.
Since the Cold War is over, politicians have become more aware of their role of enticing private investments. This all went hand in hand with the global economical game. Nowadays 90% of the international transactions are financial. Only 10% are in the form of industrial capital.
Globalisation has created remarkable
benefits for our society. There is an increasing international knowledge about
good governance, justice, environment, etc. It brought about new inventions.
But there is also the down side of globalisation. Big companies govern the
world. There is an ever-growing competition between cities and countries for
the investments of the companies. Local communities and cultures are being
destroyed (e.g. Cotswoods in
New
features of urban experience
Maybe the most obvious impact is upon the built environment. Globalisation is forcing its architecture upon the world, with shop-fronts, riverside and downtown high-rise developments that look the same all-over the world.
At the other hand, many places are left
aside by the developers, and crumble away by the lack of investment. There are
also cities where whole neighbourhoods are knocked down, and rebuild with whole
shopping centres (
Another consequence of globalisation is that wealthier people build big walls among their houses. They are really isolated. But many universities are also built in the way that the students are segregated from one another. Residents of gentrified quarters, gated communities, ethnic enclaves, outer estates, etc. can become very isolated from other groups. As people are afraid to leave their communities, stay only with their friends or faith groups, how will we ever to get to know one another?
This modern segregation makes it even easier to make decisions about other communities even without seeing their suffering.
Is it not a contradiction that globalisation segregates us from one another, but at the same time bring people from around the world close together? The church can play a role bridging communities to one another.
5
Urban meanings
Now we can draw some conclusions about what this global change means in the actual live and experience of people. How do we think, feel, worship and pray in an urbanising world? What are our priorities? What do we believe about the places we inhabit? Where do we believe it may all be leading? What are the urban meanings?
Living
urban lives
Urban change: nothing is assured
Nowadays life changes so fast. Lifelong commitments no longer count, whereas flexibility and mobility are essential for survival. This is so for work situations, as well as for the habitat and relational level.
Young people can join and leave a congregation, but the elderly make the life of the church, which is not designed to convince younger people.
The constant change has also dangers. Where people used to know one another, now people don’t know each other anymore. You can never be sure of who you meet. Some people may be dangerous ones.
Finding an urban identity
The language, the dress, the driving style, the clubbing, even the latté coffee, all become part of the new urban theatre of surfaces which serves the new consumer economics. The global market is controlling your urban lifestyle and helping to model your identity. A fast-moving urban world requires each person to negotiate a whole range of real or virtual identities. Each urban identity offers a kind of belonging in a frightening world, and has its own expectations.
Urban relationships and meetings
Cities are a
moving dynamic of interrelationships.
Urban spaces are tough spaces
The aggressive competition of the market is also felt in young people’s lives. They live more individualistic and life is about one selves. Some youth even don’t know basics anymore such as speech and toilet training. Some people cannot take the pressure and go on medication, alcohol or drugs. Crime is also on the rise.
Urban consumption
A ‘24/7’ lifestyle, relentless work-pressure, e-mail overload, and the enormous busy-ness in life depletes the quality of life for millions. Question about urban sustainability is whether a city can remain stable when it produces inequality among poor and better-off people. The rich are afraid of the poor and hide away behind big walls, and the poor are angry because the city has been taken away from them.
Urban power: freedom or control?
Globalisation seems to increase our choices and freedom. Yet if one has no money choices are still very few. And at the end do only the ‘strong’ ones profit of the system. Most people are kept ‘down’ by the system. The church will have to work hard to educate people for freedom.
Celebrating
the urban
Despite all the problems the city gives, it also offers a lot to be grateful for: employment, wealth creation, housing, architecture, artistic achievement, the supportive services, cosmopolitanism and energy. The city can be full of vitality, experiment and invention, be outward looking, expansive, industrious, and open to the world at large, offering hope for the future. And people there really know how to party.
Finding
ways to respond
How can we respond as Church? The Church has a long tradition of help and care for people in need. Many Christians changed people’s lives for the better and gave them new hope and supportive comfort. And this blessed the helping people in return.
But although compassion, care and loving service are wonderful qualities, they are attributes, which we, thankfully, share with all humanity. Yet there is something our Christian faith can add. We have Good News to tell. We can help to realise people that there is an alternative to globalisation. An Italian philosopher, who was imprisoned by Mussolini, put it this way: “Culture is an arena of struggle and contest, in which we have to engage in order to prove that there is an alternative to oppression”.
When we walk around in a city, we come to ‘read’ it. If we know it and realise the powers, which control and dominate our thinking and our way of life, we can rise above them and become conscious of the alternative.
We have to find ways of helping people to ask important questions of their society, to move from what they know of the surrounding culture to a point where they become conscious of that there could be an other, better way for society to behave. And the best teacher for it is Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus constantly encounters people and opens up their awareness so radically that it demands of them a complete turn-around and a reformulation of the social processes that govern their relationships with society.
Part
3: The Jesus challenge (Reflections in the light of the Kingdom)
6
Jesus, His mission and His praxis
Let’s move to the third element of what is to do theology, the theological reflection. Jesus has given us ways how we can undertake this theological critique. Jesus uses parables to make us look and understand but then expects us to change our ways, repent and believe in the gospel. Jesus creates a disciple community in which the new life culture is one of being together under God’s love and forgiveness. With him it’s as if this new society under God has actually begun. It’s not just ‘me meeting Jesus’ but all the ground rules for society are made to change.
Jesus
and the Kingdom
Jesus taught that this new society under God would entail significant changes in how we see and experience everything. Jesus uses the word ‘Kingdom’ intentionally in order to subvert it, deconstruct it and redefine it. At every turn of his ministry Jesus points at the Kingdom. Jesus never describes this kingdom precisely, but tells stories of what it is like and in which we have to take part.
In all that Jesus us teaches about the
Jesus makes an option for the poor, knowing that in this way the rich too can be saved from injustice in which they are trapped. Our fight is not just against rich individuals holding on to power and privilege, but against complex global and urban processes which incline them to do so. We are all in the same dilemma together, and together we must seek for liberation and forgiveness of all.
Urban ministry along the poor will also assist us as church to fight against the church’s greatest temptation, which is to consider itself a community of insiders who have all the answers.
Also Jesus experienced the limitation of time and space, but his local actions participate in his universal kingdom. He was acting and thinking both locally and globally.
Culture
and context
It is important to have a look at culture. Every person is brought up in a certain culture, a framework of thinking and conceiving which allows us to register the world around us in manageable ways, and which gives us a certain identity. There are many different cultures. Therefore, if one asks himself “who am I”, he also has to ask: ”Where am I (from) ”. This framework can be changed and that is what Jesus intended to do.
Globalisation is also a ‘culture carrier’ who wants to set our framework. It doesn’t write on a white paper. Each city, each neighbourhood has its own history and identity. When we read the city, it is important to read both the dominant global culture and its own local life. In order to build this new Kingdom and to bring about this profound cultural change, Jesus begins to engage in a courageous ministry of transformation in words and deeds and he inspires us to do the same. Jesus promised us his Spirit to strengthen us. He also calls us to repentance. Repentance is not ‘saying sorry’. It means ‘having an alternative mind’.
Part
4: People in
Responding
with a Kingdom-based ministry and mission
It’s important to remember where we’re coming from and whose we are. It’s good to realise also that we cannot do it alone.
Knowing
‘whose’ we are
As we start working in an urban area it’s good to know what we stand for and whose they are. The only way to do this is to put us daily in God’s present.
When we pray for people or meditate on things in our urban environment, we begin no longer to see them from our own perspective, but from God’s perspective. The call to radical Kingdom of God awareness asks o us that we look beyond the outward appearance to see the underlying causes and cultures, which have to be addressed, so that God’s will may be done.
There
to serve
People who want to help can be very overpowering. Sometimes the help we want to give is not the help people need or want. Often people themselves have a lot of skills. Our task is just to empower people. We are called to stand at the foot of the cross and observe the Christ undertaking his powerful work, not barge in and make it all happen our way.
We
don’t work alone
There are many groups, organisations and associations working in the field and who wants to work together with us. Collaboration is a great thing and helps us open up our world. We live and learn when we work together.
The
community as priestly
The ‘whole community’ celebrates, not only
the priest. By celebrating the Eucharist, we take the bread (bring ourselves,
with our background and our stories), we bless the bread (we thank God for all
we received and bless it), we break the bread (we break open our stories and
keep them in the light of the gospel) and we share the bread (We bring our new
experience into our new live). So we build up the
The
community as prophet
A community can only become prophetic after it has become priestly. We can only speak after we have listened.
Events or people can frighten a prophet. He is not a hero, but acknowledges that some situations make him scared.
Though prophetic people are often people who believe in the goodness of God and of life, they also can get low. They also need some time off.
Prophetic people have the great gift of imagination. When one thing doesn’t work anymore, they search for new things.
Prophets ask critical questions. We must seek to adopt a ‘critical solidarity’ in our prophetic work, not holding ourselves up as some pure guiding light, but as equally under the scrutiny of the word we proclaim.
The
street juggler
Important for people in leadership is that they are not afraid to make their hands dirty. They must be able to collaborate with others. One person cannot do the whole of the work alone. Most people who do it get burned out after a while.
9
Moving into urban mission
In all we do throughout the processes of
urban mission we must hold the
But if yes, it means being Church, and that must start with prayer and worship.
Worshipping
together
The church that take care with its worship,
and with how people share in it, find that good, appropriate liturgy can be a
springboard to insightful reflection and action for the groups and individuals
who experience it. It is a place where we see the
Engaged
listening
Before we can start doing something, we have to come to know the neighbourhood. Therefore we have to do a social analysis. Some of the ways of doing this are:
Via newspapers, internet (www.statistics.gov.uk/neighbourhood)
Find out what are strengths and needs of a community
Who are the key players in the community
Historical, geographical, social, economic, cultural and religious factors
Visiting other Churches/ groups/ organisations
Find out how people look at our church
Listen carefully to what people tell/not tell you
It is also necessary to build up relations with other people/ groups/ religions/ organisations. One does not work and live alone in a neighbourhood. Be as inclusive as possible. The community is but one part of a global complex dynamic.
When one work and lives in a community one has to choose the partners he will work with. It is never an easy decision one has to make, but perhaps going in with open eyes, determined not to be treated as cheap service providers, but as critical partners offers us the hope of doing our best rather than doing nothing.
It is important than to bring this all together in prayer, relating what we do with the gospel story.
The
vision emerges
A sense of awe is the root of vision. It’s important that a group finds a vision that it can really call its own, for out of that vision, action will emerge.
Faithful
action
Actions do not mean especially the setting up of big schemes and projects. Whether projects are small or not if it is geared to the Kingdom principles, it will be a tremendous empowering experience.
If we are about to work as Christians, our work must be underpinned by theological reflection. Urban people want to know what we stand for. The Church understands the five marks of mission to include evangelism and caring for the needy, caring for creation, addressing unjust structures of society and nurturing Christian disciples. For fruitful action, these all have to be taken into account.
Celebrating
the Kingdom
Kingdom action should begin and end with praise, awe and the celebration of God. Celebratory worship is a thanksgiving for the opportunities and empowerment.
10
Wider horizons
We can work at a local level, but we have to keep our eyes open to the bigger world. We can work from our own contextual theological point of view. Yet there are many theological points of views. Let’s listen to one another.
As Jesus approached big issues, so also must we. Therefore a multilevel approach is ideal. In this the fourfold theological model of ‘listening to the stories, analysing the data, reflection on that in the light of the gospel, and actively responding in mission’ can be followed.
Before the society will listen to the church, it has to loose it arrogance and start listening and giving chances to the people.
Plan of Book
Part 1: Telling the Urban story (The British urban context and the place of the Christian Church in that story)
2
Telling the urban story
The biblical city
What is urban?
The ever-changing city
Seeing the big picture
3
The story of Urban
The new urban theological practitioners
Learning from our mission story
Part 2: The urban challenge today (An analysis of our present predicament and its significance for us)
4
The New urban challenge
A new urban scene
Globalisation
New features of urban experience
5
Urban meanings
Living urban lives
Finding ways to respond
Part 3: The Jesus challenge (Reflections in the light of the Kingdom)
6
Jesus, His mission and His praxis
Jesus and the Kingdom
Culture and context
Part
4: People in
8
Street-level ministry
Knowing ‘whose’ we are
There to serve
We don’t work alone
The community as priestly
The community as prophet
The street juggler
9
Moving into urban mission
Worshipping together
Engaged listening
The vision emerges
Faithful action
Celebrating the Kingdom
10
Wider horizons