Cultivating Reflection and Response · 2020. 2. 24. · Cultivating Reflection and Response 4 Photo...

Resonance: A Theological Journal

Volume 2.3 | The City

www.TheologicalResonance.com

Table of Contents 7 Learning to Love a Neighborhood Colby & Karen Henley

11 Faithful in Exile: Seeking Shalom in Our Cities Fr. Chris Schutte

18 The City: Arena of Tragedy and Hope

Dr. Michael McNichols

23 Cities of Church Past: Hearing from our History Ryan Castillo

31 City Church Unity: A Daunting Goal Worthy of Effort

Pastor David Drum

38 The Creative City: How the Church and City Shape

Each Other Zach Yentzer

Production Team Micah Lunsford, Managing Editor

Rachel Richardson, Associate Editor

Theological Advisory Council Rev. Christopher De Haan, Vineyard Christian Community

Fr. Peter Forbes, Joy Faith Anglican Church

Rev. Dr. Peter Seiferth, Northminster Presbyterian Church

Rev. Gary Stokes, Vineyard City Church

Contributing Photographers Shawn Smith, Shirin McArthur, Luke, Bill Morrow, Benson Kua, Ebyabe, and

Quang Vu Truong.

Resonance: A Theological Journal is published to cultivate theological

reflection and response among evangelicals who are committed to

ecumenical generosity, historic orthodoxy, and growing closer to God.

The editorial content of Resonance reflects the opinions of the various

authors and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the

views of Splintered Light Press.

© 2016 by Splintered Light Press. Produced in limited quantities.

Cultivating Reflection and Response 2

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3 Resonance: A Theological Journal


Letter from the Editor

Photo (left) by Luke | Magdalen Tower, Oxford

Dear Reader, In this volume of Resonance, I invite you to consider the signifi-cance of the city for the people of God. The city is a symbol of human creativity, culture, and the best of civilization. It is also a symbol for depravity, poverty, and human corruption. In either light, the city stands as an important symbol and a very signifi-cant, concrete reality within which human life is both valued and destroyed on a daily basis. Throughout the scriptural narrative, we find God caring about cities and regularly engaging them. The significance of the city of Jerusalem, for instance, can hardly be overstated in biblical theology. Moreover, in our current time, more than half of the world’s population live in urban areas. It is clear that the city is a key context within which human life and God’s action coin-cide on a daily basis all over the world. In the pages ahead, we will explore the theological ramifications of the city as a context for human life and Christian discipleship. I hope that the various perspectives offered in the following ar-ticles captivate your interest and encourage you to think more deeply about the unique opportunities of life lived in the city. May the Holy Spirit awaken in each of us a new love for our ur-ban neighbors and reveal to us the manifold ways that He is al-ready at work in the places we live. Your servant in Christ, Micah Lunsford Managing Editor

Micah Lunsford loves theological reflection and is constantly looking for

an opportunity to start a theological conversation...

preferably over good food and drink. He holds a B.A. in

Classics from the University of Arizona and an M.A. in

Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary. God’s

steadfast love and overflowing generosity continually

astonish him and he is particularly thankful for the gift

of his wife Sydney.

Our Sponsors

visit online at www.sapctucson.org

visit online at arizonadistrict.org

visit online at ministryresourcesinstitute.org

The Sponsors listed above are commit-ted to building a community of practic-ing theologians engaged in substantive reflection about the character of God and the incarnate response of Christian discipleship. They believe in the mis-sion of Resonance to encourage, equip, and inspire contemplative believers as they seek to love God with their whole heart, soul and mind in the diverse places that He has called them. They are invested in the growth of this com-munity and seek to foster significant conversations between leaders within the Body of Christ. To learn more about Sponsorship and how you can join in this mission, visit us online at TheologicalResonance.com/Sponsorship

visit online at 4tucson.com


God is our refuge and strength,

a very present help in trouble.

Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change,

though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea;

though its waters roar and foam,

though the mountains tremble with its tumult. Selah

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,

the holy habitation of the Most High.

God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved;

God will help it when the morning dawns.

The nations are in an uproar, the kingdoms totter;

he utters his voice, the earth melts.

The Lord of hosts is with us;

the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah

Come, behold the works of the Lord;

see what desolations he has brought on the earth.

He makes wars cease to the end of the earth;

he breaks the bow, and shatters the spear;

he burns the shields with fire.

“Be still, and know that I am God!

I am exalted among the nations,

I am exalted in the earth.”

The Lord of hosts is with us;

the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah

Psalm 46 NRSV


In 2009, my wife Karen and I were living quite comfortably in the outer suburbs of Tucson, Arizona. Our home was relatively new, “customized” as part of a subdivision development, complete with an ever mindful Homeowners Associ-ation to keep the weeds and non-beige house paint in control. We were empty nesters by then. Watching our daughter mature into an adult and get married, we often talked about how fast life was moving. We agreed that if we were not intentional in how we spent our time, we would look up and 10 years would be gone with little spiritual fruit to show for it. As leaders on the missions team at Mountain View Baptist Church for several years, we had been on short-term missions trips. For a time, we even considered serving overseas for an extended period but never saw a clear path forward with that option. We did, however, begin to sense a growing call to move to the downtown area of Tucson. Looking back at it now, I think the seeds of that call-ing were planted more than a decade before, but that story is for a different time. Instead, I want to share what we expected life in our new location to look like, the reality we encountered, some of the lessons learned, ways we have seen God at work over the past 7 years, and our current understanding of our role in this city. On December 28, 2009, we moved into our new home, a 1930 bungalow a few blocks south of the University of Arizona in the Rincon Heights Neighborhood. We came with the blessing of our church but had no formal commission or min-istry role. I was still working in environmental consulting and Karen had re-cently returned to school. With no formal ministry connections, we simply wanted to be present in the city center and see what God had for us next. What-ever God had planned, we were certain we were here to “bring them Jesus” and to “save the city” – something I cringe at when I think about it now. Not be-cause those are not good or desirable things, but because we thought Jesus was not already here and that the city needed us to save them. We spent the first year in our new neighborhood just trying to get our bearings in what felt at times like a foreign land despite only being 15 miles from our previous home. We met numerous neighbors, attended a couple of Neighbor-hood Association meetings, and generally tried to get a feel for our new urban setting. There are 100 plus stories from that first year alone, but the most im-portant event was God leading us to a man of peace (see Luke 10:6) in our neighborhood. This man (we will call him Mike) and his wife have become dear friends. They have lived in the neighborhood for over 30 years. They have watched it transform from a relatively stable residential area with a mix of white and blue-collar families and university students to one under constant pressure. The demolition of historic homes and their conversion into mini-dorms for the university and the flight of homeowners seemingly threaten at every turn.

Learning to Love a Neighborhood

Colby & Karen Henley Colby Henley holds an M.S.

in Wildlife Ecology from the

University of Arizona and

worked for almost 20 years as

an environmental consultant

before recently joining Living

Streets Alliance, a pedestrian,

cycling, and transit advocacy

organization. Karen Henley

holds a Master of Christian

Ministry from Wayland Bap-

tist University and is the

Programs and Projects Coor-

dinator with 4Tucson, an

ecumenical, non-profit minis-

try. They attend Vineyard

Christian Community in

Tucson and love sharing din-

ner with friends on their pa-

tio, exploring the city by bike,

and most of all, spending

time with their three grand-

children.


Mike served as an informal advisor, or liaison, be-tween us and this place that he knows so intimate-ly. He shared the history and stories of this neigh-borhood and those who lived here. It is clear that many of the long-term residents, the remnant, re-spect Mike’s opinion and follow his lead on im-portant issues. It was with Mike that we first discussed the idea of starting a house church in our home. He gave us sound advice and offered his encouragement as we invited neighbors to a weekly Sunday evening meal and discussion about Jesus. We even bought ad space in the downtown arts/lifestyle maga-zine. By almost every standard, our house church was a complete flop but not before we hosted some truly unique people in our home. None of our neighbors, unique or otherwise, came to our gathering more than a couple times. But through that adventure, at least everyone knew we were the Jesus people in the neighbor-hood. And it quickly became clear that few were interested in what we had to say about our faith or our God. So we figured we could show them Jesus by our good works. The only problem was that our new neighbors were some of the most caring, service-minded, volunteering people I have ever met. They had decades of experience serving the community, starting community gar-dens, working with schools and charities, fighting

to preserve the historic neighborhood, and the like. There was no way we could “out good” them. The lessons we learned from those first two years were mostly about surrendering our vision and plans and trusting God to do His will. We strug-gled with what felt like the failure of our efforts, with doubts of whether God had indeed called us to this place, and with feeling isolated. But we fi-nally came to peace with the fact that God may call us to sow into this place and people, and we may never see the spiritual fruit of that labor. And we had to be OK with that and trust the Holy Spirit to work in ways we may not always recog-nize. We discovered first-hand that the Christian faith is not about safety, but rather it is a faith of risk. We found that being missionaries to our neighbor-hood meant that some of the common Christian rallying cries (e.g. reach the city for Christ) were easy to say in the abstract, but were messy when lived out face-to-face with our neighbors. Living here with intentionality has made the particulars of our faith more real. Over the ensuing five years, we have come to em-brace the concept of a parish, and that pouring ourselves into and tying our fortunes to this spe-cific, defined place and people called Rincon

Photo by Shirin McArthur | Tucson, AZ


Heights, is a privilege with great blessings. Before moving here, eighty percent or more of our friends and social contacts were Christians, and we had to go out of our way to create opportuni-ties to engage with non-Christians. Our new reali-ty is that the vast majority of our friends and so-cial contacts are non-Christians whom we encoun-ter naturally as part of the regular routines of life in our neighborhood. We have come to cherish these random encounters, as a chance to just be present with our friends, with no other agenda. This is something I have seen referred to as “the glorious mundane.” We have come to recognize God at work in our neighborhood, often in subtle ways, such as the neighbor asking us to pray for ill family members, or the woman who was vociferously against our house church now bringing cookies and sitting in our living room for a neighborhood meeting. We also now have a much fuller appreciation of how God has been at work in Tucson’s urban core long before we arrived, through faithful Christians serving and praying, and churches that held on as neighborhood anchors for decades despite oppor-tunities to flee to the suburbs. God has also hum-bled us by revealing Himself to us in people and denominations that we would not have previous-ly expected or perhaps been willing to acknowledge, and we are much more comfortable entering into this mystery with God. So after almost seven years, we have a new under-standing of how we believe we are to live as mis-sionaries in our neighborhood while admitting that it is under constant revision. Because of its location near the University, Rincon Heights has long been a place that welcomes and values a wide variety of world views. This relativism, with its edict that all views are equally valid, is often held up as the highest principle. In this atmos-phere, Christianity has to compete for a hearing. Leading with the proclamation of Christian truths rarely gains traction. Our neighbors have to see and experience something different in us. They cannot be rationally convinced or argued into faith in Jesus, but rather persuaded through how we live. They have to see the beauty of Christ, of His love. I like the way Pastor Brian Zahnd said it:

If the church in America is to recover any rele-vance, it won’t be through a public emphasis

on the true (though there is a place for Chris-tian apologetics), and it won’t be through a public emphasis on the good (though there is a place for Christian ethics), but through a pub-lic emphasis on the long-neglected third prime virtue — the beautiful. What we desperately need is a renaissance of Christian aesthetics. In a post-Christian culture adverse to truth claims and suspicious of assertions to a superi-or morality, it is still the prerogative and charm of beauty to win hearts. If we can be so formed in Christ that we begin to live beauti-ful lives, we will gain a new hearing; if not, we deserve to be ignored. Why is the life of Jesus universally considered beautiful? Because of his mercy, his welcom-ing demeanor, his tenderness toward the weak, his generous forgiveness of sinners. When the church carries the grace, the mercy, the unconditional love, the radical forgiveness that characterizes Christ, that’s when she bears the beauty that belongs to the bride of Christ.

This is not a return to our efforts to “out good” our neighbors, and we certainly do not yet fully embody this ideal. But we hope that through our being present with our neighbors, striving along-side them in daily life, and living a life of beauty in Christ to the best of our ability, we may gain the credibility and the standing to proclaim His love to them through both word and deed. As we look forward and consider how we see are calling now, we see three primary roles. In our ministry to our neighborhood, we are to simply be present and to focus on hospitality, ex-tending an open invitation to those looking for a friendly face and listening ear. We can also cover our neighborhood in prayer and be observant of where God might be moving. In our ministry to our city, we can seek its shalom, its renewal, flourishing, and prosperity. This may be primarily through prayer, but also through partnering in action with others. We can seek op-portunities to honor its culture and history, foster the rebirth of neglected spaces, and encourage the building of community. In our ministry to our brothers and sisters in


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Christ, we are to pray for God to send more workers and to come along side and be encouragers to the pioneers moving into the urban core, buying homes, raising fami-lies, and committing to love their place well. We are to become the people of peace and to share our experiences, connections, and resources. On a closing note, I want to offer a personal observation to the Church in Tucson (i.e. the citywide body of believ-ers) for consideration. In our time living in the city center, we have maintained friendships from our “former” sub-urban life, and these two places often feel like two differ-ent worlds. It appears that residents of our city have se-lectively sorted into affinity groups. I think many non-Christians have intentionally consolidated into urban neighborhoods in an effort to find what they believe is tolerance and to escape what may feel like judgmental communities. While at the same time, I think many Chris-tians have avoided urban areas which they may feel have embraced God-less lifestyles or schools that do not teach Christian morality. This is not a critique of either group, as we all naturally gravitate to those who share our values or backgrounds. But we as Christians have the unique responsibility to engage with those outside of our tribe. And I wonder if some of our (my) loss of cultural influence and standing is because we (I) have retreated into a safe Christian bub-ble. At the risk of sounding more knowledgeable than I am, I would like to suggest that we must be intentional in re-mixing ourselves with those different from us. I think that one of the best ways to do that is to live among each other, grappling respectfully with each other’s view-points and worldviews. I think this more intimate interac-tion is one way we can remind ourselves to see each other as fellow humans made in the image of God and loved by Him.

Photo by Bill Morrow | Tucson, AZ

Further Reading

The New Parish: How Neighborhood Churches Are Transform-ing Mission, Discipleship and Community by Paul Sparks, Tim

Soerens, and Dwight J. Friesen

Staying is the New Going: Choosing to Love Where God Places You by Alan Briggs

Blueprints for a Just City by Sean Benesh

Missional: Joining God in the Neighborhood by Alan J. Roxburgh

Tradecraft for the Church on Mission by Caleb Crider, Larry McCrary, Rodney Calfee, and Wade Stephens


As a teenager, one of my favorite Bible verses was Jeremiah 29:11—“’For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future’”(NIV). What a wonderful verse! God actually has a plan for me, and that plan is good, full of prosperity and hope. As the years went by, however, two things happened: first, I learned to read the Bible in context, seeking first to understand the meaning of texts as they were originally intended; second, I realized that life for Christians often, if not al-ways, includes quite a bit of suffering and loss—which seems a far cry from our conception of ‘prosperity.’ Some might think that approaching Jeremiah 29:11 in context, while knowing the reality of suffering and loss, might make it seem less applicable to life today. Far from it! Jeremiah’s words yield even greater meaning for us today, given the context of the circumstances in which he was writing. Jeremiah was writing to the residents of Jerusalem at the turn of the sixth centu-ry BC. They had disobeyed God’s commandments, falling far short of God’s intention for them: to carry His blessing to the nations (Genesis 12:3). Jeremiah, often known as the weeping prophet, consistently called the people to repent, lest they be judged by God. The people, however, rejected Jeremiah’s pleas, and the leaders opted instead for prophets who told them what they wanted to hear. They also believed that, because the temple—the location of God’s manifest presence—was in Jerusalem, that God surely would spare them. Jeremiah, however, continued to speak of God’s imminent judgment, predicting the destruction of Jerusalem and their exile in Babylon. Yet even as Jeremiah speaks judgment, he also speaks hope. This is where Jeremiah 29:11 comes into the story. Jeremiah is speaking to a group of people on the verge of judgment and exile, yet, even as these come, he leaves them with a word of hope. Since God’s power and love are strong, the end of the story is neither judgment nor exile, but hope. Some may think that a message to a people on the verge of exile could not ap-ply to us. For we are not exiles, are we? Yet when we pause to consider the gos-pel we find that we are on an exodus of sorts. We are on a journey from the “patterns of this world” to becoming “transformed by the renewing of [our] mind[s] (Rom. 12:2). Indeed the New Testament writers see the death and resurrection of Jesus as a kind of New Exodus. On the Mount of Transfiguration for example, Jesus speaks with Moses and Elijah about the “exodus” that he was about to accom-plish in Jerusalem (Luke 9:31). Liturgically, each Sunday at the Eucharist we proclaim, in Paul’s words, that “Christ, our Passover, is sacrificed for us!” (1 Cor. 5:7). And each year at the Easter Vigil, we chant the words of the Exultet: “This is the night when you brought our fathers, the children of Israel, out of bondage in Egypt. …This is the night, when Christ broke the bonds of death

Faithful in Exile Seeking Shalom in Our Cities

Fr. Chris Schutte is Pastor of Christ Church

Anglican in Phoenix, Arizo-

na. He is a native Arizonan

and studied history and clas-

sics at the University of Ari-

zona and holds an M.Div.

from Gordon-Conwell Theo-

logical Seminary. He’s mar-

ried to Tracy and has three

fun and crazy children. He

loves wandering around in

the woods and playing in the

ocean – and he’s way too in-

volved in University of Ari-

zona sports. Find Chris on

Twitter at @chrismschutte.


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and hell, and rose victorious from the grave.” If, then, the death and resurrection of Jesus led us out of bondage into freedom, why talk of exile? While the motif of ‘exodus’ is clear in the New Testament, the abiding reality of ‘exile’ is present, as well. Writing some 600 years after Jeremiah, a generation after the death and resurrection of Je-sus, Peter, in his first epistle, identifies his readers as “the exiles of the dispersion” (1 Pet. 1:1). Fuller Seminary president, Mark Labberton, in his book The Dangerous Act of Worship, observes that the Exodus paradigm has been strong throughout American history, but that, instead, exile might be the most appropriate framework by which to un-derstand and experience our life today. He writes: “If we think we live in exodus, life is all about get-ting to the promised land we think we deserve and desire. On the other hand, if we think we live in exile, then life’s agenda is all about living dis-tinctly where we are and determining whether our home in God or in ‘Babylon’ will influence us most.”1 The Christian life, then, should inevitably be something like the experience of exile. In the res-urrection of Jesus, and through the ministry of the Holy Spirit, we get glimpses of God’s kingdom—the “first fruits,” in Paul’s language (Rom. 8:23). However, until the day on which God’s kingdom comes “on earth as in heaven” (Mt. 6:10), we are not quite home; as sin, evil, and death run ram-pant around us, we experience life as exiles who long for our true home. Psalm 137, then, becomes a song of the church: “By the rivers of Babylon we sat down and wept, when we remembered you, O Zion.”2 While we continue to grow in our knowledge and experience of Jesus and His kingdom what should our posture be toward our Babylon, the land of our exile? This question is incredibly relevant to-day, as so many Christians in America are increas-ingly aware of the cultural reality of exile. As a result, some suggest complete withdrawal from mainstream culture, while others advocate dou-bling-down, seeking to “take back” power and influence through confrontation. Might the Bible

give us guidance on this crucial question? Living as Exiles I believe that Jeremiah 29 actually gives us im-portant insight for those who seek to live faithful-ly as exiles today. In Jeremiah 29:7, just before God promises “hope and a future,” the prophet writes: “seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its be-half, for in its welfare you will find your wel-fare” (NRSV). Importantly, the word translated “welfare” is the Hebrew word “shalom”; equally importantly, the word translated “prosper” by the NIV in Jeremiah 29:11 is also “shalom.” Most of us, hearing the word shalom, think of a common greeting, or of the word “peace.” According to theologian Cor-nelius Plantinga, however, in his wonderful book Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be, shalom means “universal flourishing, wholeness, and delight—a rich state of affairs in which natural needs are sat-isfied and natural gifts fruitfully employed, a state of affairs that inspires joyful wonder as its Creator and Savior opens doors and welcomes the crea-tures in whom he delights.”3 “Shalom” is simply, “the way things ought to be.” How, then, “ought it to be?” That is the crucial question. There are many passages in Scripture we could look at to catch glimpses of God’s inten-tion for His creation, but I’d like to focus on “shalom” as described by the prophet Isaiah, and as it is shown in the ministry of Jesus. In creation, we find the first two humans in per-fect harmony with God, with one another, and with God’s non-human creation, “and it was very good” (Gen. 1:31). Since sin entered the world all three of these relationships have been broken. In the midst of this brokenness, however, God raises up prophets to articulate a vision of His future and the harmony that should exist. Walter Brueggemann describes the prophet as “the one who, by use of these tools of hope, contradicts the presumed world of the kings, showing both that that presumed world does not square with the


facts and that we have been taught a lie and have believed it because the people with the hardware and the printing press told us it was that way.”4 One such prophet, Isaiah, speaks of reconciliation between the one God and the nations, as well as the reconciliation of diverse peoples:

In days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it. Many peoples shall come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, nei-ther shall they learn war any more. (Isa. 2:2-4)

Isaiah envisions here relationships being made right among God’s human creation and he does not stop there but continues to describe reconcilia-tion in the non-human creation as well, by saying:

The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling togeth-er, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den. They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the wa-ters cover the sea. (Isa. 11:6-9)

Turning to Jesus’ ministry, we find “God’s future in the past” to borrow a phrase from N.T. Wright. Jesus articulates His own mission in the words of Isaiah 61, saying:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. (Luke 4:18-19)

Jesus then enacts shalom through healing broken bodies, setting people free from the bondage of evil, announcing forgiveness of sin, feeding the hungry in both body and soul, and restoring the outcasts to both God and neighbor. This is the pic-ture of shalom. Seeking Shalom in Exile As Christians we are called to seek the shalom of the city of our exile (Jer. 29:7). We have a vision of shalom that is beautiful and compelling, and we have the gift of the Spirit, who empowers us to serve. We see the lack of shalom all around us—in fami-lies, schools, businesses, politics, art, and the spir-itual lives of our neighbors. There is poverty, in-justice, racial tension, and a disregard for life. Seeking shalom, then, requires an active presence in all of these spheres, demonstrating in and through our redeemed and Spirit-empowered lives—individually and corporately—glimpses of the way things are supposed to be. Labberton writes that, “in exile we have to put down roots, plant gardens, build schools, read the newspaper, vote, advocate, serve and engage our world in countless ways.”5 To seek shalom is neither to re-treat, nor to “take back” power through confronta-tion. I believe that we can learn a bit about what it might look like to seek shalom from Daniel, a resi-dent of Jerusalem who was taken to Babylon to serve in the court of King Nebuchadnezzar during the exile. Set during the Babylonian exile, the bib-lical book of Daniel is divided into two sections: the stories of Daniel in chapters one through six; and the visions of Daniel in chapters seven through twelve. Among the many observations we might make about Daniel’s life in exile, I’d like to focus on three. First, in chapter one, we see that Daniel is fully immersed in Babylonian society. He is educated in


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Daniel, then, becomes a model for exiles by serv-ing Babylon while refusing to compromise his identity as one of God’s people. In a chapter on Daniel in Bruegemann’s Introduction to the Old Tes-tament, the author observes that, “As U.S. society grows more deathly . . . and as the church in the United States grows more marginal in that society, these narratives may have peculiar resonance for the practice of faith.”6 He goes on to suggest that “Christians, like these ancient Jews, cannot simply collude with the state,” yet neither can they “retreat into a safe sectarian mode of life, but must be present to public reality.” There is another important incident in Daniel’s life showing how he did just that. In chapter four, af-ter Daniel has demonstrated wisdom by interpret-ing the king’s dream, he boldly says, “Therefore, O king, may my counsel be acceptable to you: atone for your sins with righteousness, and your iniquities with mercy to the oppressed, so that your prosperity may be prolonged” (Dan 4:27). In other words, because Daniel was present at the king’s court, and since he trusted God to the point of being willing to suffer, he was able to counsel the king to seek shalom in Babylon. Daniel had deep faith that his God was strong and wise, and believed that, after exile, there was a future with God. As Christians, we can have this same faith in God’s future, with an even greater foundation of hope. Importantly, after the com-mand to the exiles to seek shalom in Jeremiah 29:4-7, and then the promise of hope in verse 11, chap-ter 31 is a song of return from exile, followed by the promise of a New Covenant. The language of new covenant pulls us forward to the Last Supper, when Jesus takes the cup, looks at his disciples, and says, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remem-brance of me” (1 Cor. 11:25). As we remember Christ who sacrificed himself for our redemption, and as we navigate a period of exile before joining him in our heavenly home, it is important that we share Jeremiah’s focus. In his commentary on Jeremiah, Brueggemann describes chapter 29 as “pastoral care,” which is “expressed around two convictions: (a) there must be a realis-tic and intentional embrace of the Exile as a place where Jews must now be and where God has summoned them to obedience (29:5-7), and (b)

the “literature and language of the Chalde-ans” (Dan 1:4), and is even given a Chaldean name, ‘Belteshazzar’ (Dan 1:7). Daniel served as a “wise man” in King Nebuchadnezzar’s court; however, Daniel refused to eat the king’s food, because doing so would violate the dietary re-strictions laid down in the Jewish Law. Thus, while Daniel participated in the life of the king’s court, offering him counsel, he remained unwill-ing to compromise his identity as a Jew. Second, Daniel asserts the authority of his God while serving the Babylonian king in chapter two. Here, the king has a dream that none of the wise men can interpret. As a result, the king orders that all the wise men be put to death. Daniel, however, responds with “prudence and discretion” (Dan 2:14), and asks for permission to see the king about his dream, believing that his God can pro-vide the correct interpretation. Here, too, Daniel participates in service to the king while remaining distinct in his beliefs. Finally, in chapter six, the king (now Darius the Mede) puts Daniel in a position of prominence, but many of his colleagues become jealous and begin to look for a way to discredit Daniel. Know-ing that Daniel is a faithful Jew, they convince Da-rius to pass a decree prohibiting prayer to anyone or anything other than the king himself. We read that, “Although Daniel knew that the document had been signed, he continued to go to his house, which had windows in its upper room open to-ward Jerusalem, and to get down on his knees three times a day to pray to his God and praise him, just as he had done previously” (Dan 6:10). Again, Daniel continues to serve in the court of a pagan king, yet refuses to compromise his Jewish identity, at the core of which is loyalty to the God of Israel. In all three of these examples, Daniel serves the king, yet puts himself at great personal risk in his refusal to compromise his beliefs. Underlying Daniel’s refusal to compromise is a deep faith in God’s power. Daniel believed that God was able to make him physically strong apart from the king’s food, he believed that God was able to give him wisdom to interpret the king’s dream when others could not, and, finally, Daniel believed that prayer and praise to God were so important that he willingly put his life at risk to do both.


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Endnotes

1. Mark Labberton, The Dangerous Act of Worship

(Downers Grove: IVP Books, 2007), 144.

2. The Book of Common Prayer (New York: Church Pub-

lishing, 1979), 792.

3. Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be:

A Breviary of Sin (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 10.

4. Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination

(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), 64

5. Labberton, 144.

6. Walter Bruegemann, Introduction to the Old Testament

(Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2003), 353.

7. Walter Brueggemann, A Commentary on Jeremiah

(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 255 (italics in origi-

nal).

8. Ibid., 258.

Further Reading

Surprised by Hope by N.T. Wright

The Dangerous Act of Worship by Mark Labberton

Transforming Mission by David J. Bosch

The Gospel in a Pluralist Society by Lesslie Newbigin

there is a long-term hope for return and restoration that can be affirmed and accepted (vv. 10-14).”7 Christians in America today would do well to re-ceive care like Jeremiah’s. We live in exile, and, like the Jews in Babylon, we have a missional re-sponsibility where we are. Knowing this responsi-bility, as Brueggemann notes, “prevents the exilic community from withdrawing into its own safe, sectarian existence, and gives it work to do and responsibility for the larger community.”8 Yet, because of the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, we have hope that even now God is renewing His good, yet horribly marred, creation. This hopeful obedience manifests in cru-ciform acts of service, which includes a willing-ness to endure suffering. As Paul writes to the Ro-mans, “we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Rom. 5:3-5). Because we have experienced the love of God in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, our own sufferings for his sake lead us to the hope of resurrection, the hope of shalom. Jeremiah 29:11, then, reminds us that, in midst of exile, there is hope. As Christians, looking back to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, we know what that hope looks like, we know what that sha-lom means. Now, in the power of the Spirit, and in the name of Jesus, we are called, in word and deed, to bring that hope, that shalom, to this, the city of our exile.


Dr. Michael McNichols serves as Director of Fuller

Theological Seminary’s re-

gional campus in Irvine, Cal-

ifornia, and also as Affiliate

Assistant Professor of Inter-

cultural Studies. He received

a Bachelor’s degree from

Point Loma Nazarene Uni-

versity, a Master of Science

in Education from California

State University, Fullerton, a

Master of Arts in Theology

from Fuller Theological Semi-

nary, and a Doctor of Minis-

try from George Fox Evan-

gelical Seminary. Michael

and his wife, Emily, reside in

southern California, close to

their two daughters and their

families.

The city is alive. It is alive in that it is inhabited by individuals who occupy space and move through time. It is alive because those individuals comprise a massive, integrated and active whole that makes the city more of an organism than a location.1 The city expands and contracts, it pulsates with gains and loss-es; it vibrates with the energy of production and destruction. At various times the city claims to seek the welfare of its inhabitants. At all times it seeks to sus-tain itself because the city is imagined to be eternal, giving meaning and pur-pose to the lives of those who live and die within its boundaries. When Jesus lamented over Jerusalem, He spoke of the city as a living, respon-sive thing that commits murder and yet is also a guardian to the children of God:

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you, desolate. (Matt. 23:37-38b, NRSV)

It was that desolate house where Jesus spent His last days, from His entrance as Israel’s long-awaited Messiah to His suffering and bleeding within the city walls. His pain came at the hands of those who pushed and pulled the levers of power that electrified the city so that it could do its destructive best. All along there had been people who sought to kill Jesus—since He opposed the domi-nant narrative preferred by those who ran the towns and villages where He ministered. But it was the power center of Jerusalem that united its forces to si-lence Jesus—the One who summoned the city to fall on its face in repentant worship before God.

And yet, it was the city that was Jesus’ context for ministry. His famous mes-sage that we call the Sermon on the Mount places Jesus in a rural area in Gali-lee, but Matthew makes sure we understand that the people were all tethered to their respective cities, saying: “And great crowds followed him from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and from beyond the Jordan” (Matt. 4:25). The people of the gospels were not wandering nomads but rather citizens of com-munities, closely identified with the constructs of villages, towns, and cities. Yes, the city was the arena for tragedy and danger, but it was also the place where Jesus brought hope, love, healing, and the announcement that God’s kingdom was at hand. This tension threads its way throughout the scriptural narrative as the rival plans of God and humankind clash in and for the city.

The story begins with the first eleven chapters of Genesis tracing humanity’s journey from the barely imaginable, unhindered presence of God, to a series of moves by the broken people of the world to set things right. After their expul-sion from the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve have children, but instead of the next generation improving the situation of their parents, murder is invented and violence tattoos its bloody reality on the skin of all future generations. Per-

The City Arena of Tragedy and Hope


haps it is no surprise then that Cain, the one guilty of this first killing, is credited with the establish-ment of the first city.

The great flood from which only Noah and his family are saved would soon wash away Cain’s city. And although one might think that such an opportunity to start fresh would delay the next wrong turn, enmity is immediately created among the flood’s survivors when Noah curses one of his sons.

Noah’s descendants establish the next great cities of antiquity, but the most significant city in the story is Babel, where human ingenuity and new technology come together to produce an Iron Age skyscraper. The city’s architects desire to “make a name” for the city (Gen 11:4) and the tower is the perfect symbol to demonstrate their greatness. That endeavor fails desperately, however, and hu-mankind's attempts to set all things right appear to be mired in that failed creature we call the city.

Chapter twelve of Genesis, however, takes a turn. Things in the world will, indeed, be set right, but God, not humankind, will be the one to accom-plish this work. In God’s design, it will be through one man—a wandering nomad named Abram—and his descendants that He will bring blessing, and that blessing will be extended to all the fami-lies of the earth. Here we discover from the scrip-tural narrative that God’s desires and purposes for the earth will not be demonstrated by a city; they will be enacted by a people (Gen. 12:1-3).

This people rode a national rollercoaster for many years, finding leaders in prophets, priests, and kings. They were repeatedly called to the inten-tions and purposes of God but inevitably fell back into a form of life that valued international com-petition over obedience, and idolatry over faith-fulness. Eventually, civil war within the nation resulted in a divided north and south, each with capital cities looking around in all directions for the next assault on their existence.

The assaults did come. The north fell first, fol-lowed soon by the devastation of the south. The people were deported, now exiles in nations that absorbed them into their own cities whose appe-tites for conquest were insatiable.

Yet even without its inhabitants, the city—Jerusalem—continued to be seen as a living crea-ture who had lost her children as well as her faith-less lovers:

How lonely sits the city that once was full of people!

How like a widow she has become, she that was great among the nations!

She that was a princess among the provinces has become a vassal.

She weeps bitterly in the night, with tears on her cheeks; among all her lovers she has no one to comfort her; all her friends have dealt treacherously with her, they have become her enemies. (Lam. 1:1-2)

The city, at least in the imaginations of its inhabit-ants, has a life of its own.

It is common for people to claim to love their cit-ies, their states, and even their nations. We fly flags and sing songs that elevate our declared sen-timent of love to a level that sometimes approxi-mates worship. A closer examination of this claim on love, however, reveals a flaw in the nature of that love. There are political leaders we do not


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love; there are places within the nation that we dislike and would not visit again; there are cities and states that we’ve never experienced, populat-ed by people we have never met. Yet, we claim that there is something bigger, something more significant than the individual people and places existing within the borders of this entity we love. It was all here before we were born and will con-tinue to exist after we die. Compared to our lim-ited human lives, the place defined by our borders seems to be eternal. We continue to love our city, our state, and our nation. It is likely we love the things that have formed and shaped us, from family and friends to geography and local culture. We know that the city is a source of lodging, employment, govern-ance and entertainment. We also know that it is infected by poverty, crime, and injustice. It is a force with sides that are both dark and light.

The city, with its social, political, and economic magnetism, lives on, struggling—as all living things do—to sustain its life.

In Jesus’ day, the people of Israel, though under-standing themselves to be the people of God, were still a people in exile. The families that were swal-lowed up generations ago into the lands of their

conquerors were now citizens of those nations. Like their kinfolk in Israel, however, they contin-ued to identify with the city of their longing, even while recognizing that to live in that organism was to live under the boot heel of Rome. Never-theless, the city of Jerusalem drew the hearts of the people to its center, where the Temple remind-ed them of the hope that their God will one day rescue them from their enemies.

Jesus, too, seemed to long for this great city. He wept over it, invaded it with demonstrations of God’s love, and offered it glimpses of what God ultimately intended for the whole of creation. His love and longing for the city was different, how-ever, and threatened the dominant narratives of both the civic and religious power structures en-trenched in the city. The civic power, the Romans, required full control that came from the power to conquer and destroy; the religious power, the Jews, required obedience to their interpretations of the Mosaic Law. When these factions of the city perceived that their dominance and control were at risk, they acted. Fear fueled the machinery of injustice and Jesus was swallowed by the ancient gulag embedded in the bowels of the city of the people of God.

Yet the city, having accomplished its work of con-demnation, would not soil its own streets with the blood of its victims. Jesus was exiled to a place


outside the city gates where His life could drain safely into the dark earth where the blood of those who had been executed before him thickened the ground at the foot of his cross. The city turned its back and allowed its occupying force to dispose of this unwanted intruder. Jesus was unjustly killed, but not inside the city.2

The author of the book of Hebrews reflects theo-logically on Jesus’ death, likening it to the burning of the bodies of animals given to ritual sacrifice, saying:

For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest as a sacrifice for sin are burned outside the camp. Therefore Jesus also suffered outside the city gate in order to sanctify the people by his own blood. Let us then go to him outside the camp and bear the abuse he endured. For here we have no lasting city, but we are look-ing for the city that is to come. (Heb. 13:11-14)

Those who condemned Jesus saw to it that such messy, deadly business would not interfere with the schemes of the city. The wild, uncivilized lands outside the city walls would do for that work. The theology of the religious leaders sup-ported those actions; after all, criminals, even those dying so that the people might not perish (John 11:45-53), deserved to suffer their end out-side of the place where the living dwelled.

But we are called to follow Jesus even when that journey takes us outside the city gates and to the place where He died. We are called to that place, not because the city is to be despised, but because of the anticipation of the city that is yet to come. Jerusalem, in all its glory, is but a shadow of the city that God will bring when he draws all things to Himself (Rev. 21:1-5). All that is wrong with the earthly city will be put right at the touch of God, just as Jesus put right the lives of broken people while He roamed in and out of the city.

Standing with Jesus in the place of his suffering and death causes us to look back at the city and recognize it for what it is. It will not do to idealize it or deny its flaws—to do so would be to recreate the city out of a wishful dream. For all of its bro-

ken promises, failures and horrors, the city re-mains the place where all the families of the earth make their pilgrimage. Regardless of his banish-ment from the city, Jesus, through believers led by the Spirit, continues to meet the people within its walls.

The disciples remained in Jerusalem after the events of Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension. They waiting, they prayed, they patched together their circle so that they could once again accurate-ly call themselves The Twelve (Acts 1:12-26). What they did not anticipate was that God’s work in and through Jesus was not over. God will return to the city and pour out His Spirit—the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead (Rom. 8:9-11)—and the very people accused by Peter as being complicit in the killing of Jesus will be invited to turn their lives to God, be forgiven of their sins, and be filled with the Holy Spirit. Many responded, and they were baptized in the name of Jesus, marked forev-er by the name of the one so recently discarded by the city (Acts 2).

Jerusalem reacted to this new invasion, and Jesus’ followers soon found themselves facing the same deadly possibilities that cast Jesus outside the city walls. Jerusalem’s counterparts—Antioch, Thessa-lonica, Ephesus, and Rome—also moved to shake off these intruders, like dogs trying to rid them-selves of fleas. Even when these Jesus-shaped in-vaders were taken outside the city and slaugh-tered, drops of their blood seemed to germinate and produce more faithful ones who followed the Spirit of Jesus back into the drama, complexity, and danger of the city.3

Followers of Jesus today continue to struggle with the city. We are citizens of our cities, and we find, at least in places like the United States, that we are offered a seat at the table of political and social determination as long as we engage as a powerful, but cooperative, voting block rather than as pro-phetic voices calling people to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with God (Micah 6:8). It is when we disrupt the dominant narrative of how those in power say things must


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be that we become the dissenters the city begins to push into the dark wilderness beyond its gates.

The people of God are a people lacking geograph-ic specificity. We are a people in exile, regardless of the city, state, or nation that we call home. We follow Jesus into the city when we open our eyes and ears to what He is doing and saying because the city remains His—and our—context for minis-try. We also follow Jesus outside the city gates when He is once again dragged there by those who find his presence disruptive to their dominat-ing power. With Jesus, we see the city’s wounds and sins, standing in solidarity with it even while we point toward the One who has shared our flesh and blood, and has liberated us from the fear of death (Heb. 2:14-15), even death at the hands of the city.

In the midst of the city’s sins and self-adoration we catch glimpses of its attempts to be just, right-eous, and beautiful. We stand in that city as exiles, recognizing that we stand in the presence of the Spirit of Christ, who continues to return to the city, despite being banished and condemned. As we reach out to participate in God’s great work of reconciliation, where even the trespasses of the city will ultimately not be counted against it (2 Cor. 5:16-19), we realize the city’s best features serve to activate our longing for the city that is yet to come. It is in that longing that we find hope for ourselves and for the city over which Jesus weeps.

Further Reading

Believing in the Future: Toward a Missiology of Western Culture by David J. Bosch

The Meaning of the City by Jacques Ellul

Resident Aliens by Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon.

The Gospel in a Pluralist Society by Lesslie Newbigin

__________________________________

Endnotes

1. Bonhoeffer characterized the life of a community as its

objective spirit which emerges as a result of social rela-

tionships within the community, saying: “If the equilibri-

um between social and personal being is to be main-

tained, what meaning does the community acquire as a

metaphysical unity in relation to the individual? We

maintain that the community can be understood as a

collective person, with the same structure as the individ-

ual person.” John de Gruchy, ed., Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

Witness to Jesus Christ (Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 1991),

53.

2. Jacques Ellul views the execution of Jesus outside the

boundaries of the city as a removal of Jerusalem’s sacred

status among the nations: “. . . It is true that Jesus made

Jerusalem ‘profane,’ but not in the sense understood by

the Jews. So little did they understand Christ’s work that

he was sent to die outside the walls so that the presence

of his dead body might not defile the holy city. The only

hitch was that she was no longer holy—her profanation

had already been carried out. She had already become a

city like all the rest.” Jacques Ellul, The Meaning of the

City (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1970), 139.

3. As the early church father Tertullian declared to his de-

tractors: “The oftener we are mown down by you, the

more in number we grow; the blood of Christians is

seed.” Tertullian, “Apologetic,” in Latin Christianity: Its

Founder, Tertullian, A. Cleveland Coxe, Ed. (Peabody,

MA, Hendrickson Publishing, 1995), 55.


A historical exploration of the city and its significance to the Church is a chal-lenging endeavor. The Church spans two thousand years of history. If one takes the Church as the next incarnation of the People of God after Israel, as this au-thor does, then the real historical roots of the Church lie many centuries farther back from the events in the Book of Acts. Comparing what a city looked like to the ancient Israelites and what a city looks like to the Church today is a little like comparing wild-growing maize to canned corn on your grocery store shelf. Yes, they are both technically “corn,” but their differences seem greater than their similarities. Nevertheless, as different as the cities of the Church’s past may look from the cities of the Church’s present, this author would contend that the cities of the Church’s past have something to teach us today. In an una-bashed imitation of the book of Revelations, what follows is a series of historical biopsies. We will examine a number of different cities that have played, (and in some cases, still do play), a significant role in the history of the Church. We will ask what lessons might be learned from those cities that might instruct us in our shared responsibility as the Church of today. The first city we shall examine is Jerusalem. As pertains to the People of God, the city of Jerusalem makes its first appearance in the Old Testament book of Joshua. After journeying forty years in the wilderness, the People of God have begun to take possession of the Promised Land under the courageous leader-ship of Joshua. The People of God so soundly defeated Jericho and Ai that the people of Gibeon rightfully feared for their lives, and so, deceived the Israelites into a treaty that would preserve the Gibeonites' lives (Josh. 9:3-27). When that treaty was struck, the Amorite king (parallel to a modern-day mayor) of Jerusa-lem aligned himself with four other local kings to besiege Gibeon and thus at-tempt to stem the tide of the Israelites' growing foothold in the Promised Land (Josh. 10:1-5). The Lord gave the Israelites victory over these five Amorite kings and even made the sun stand still in the sky to allow the Israelites more time to pursue their defeated enemies (Josh. 10:12-14). Joshua eventually put to death the five kings who had risen against Gibeon and against Israel (Josh. 10:26), so-lidifying Israel's possession of the city of Jerusalem. Based on the biblical testimony, Jerusalem became the seat of Israel's power during the reign of King David. David comes to power after the suicide of Saul in 1 Samuel 31. He is anointed king by the people of Israel in 2 Samuel 5 but is residing at Hebron at the time, a city a few miles south of Jerusalem. The reign of David is summed up as follows: "David was thirty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned forty years. At Hebron, he reigned over Judah seven years and six months, and at Jerusalem, he reigned over all Israel and Judah thirty-three years." (2 Sam. 5:4-5). It would seem that David deliberately moved the seat of his reign to Jerusalem, which would fit well with his military cam-paign against the Jebusites later in 2 Samuel 5. Some time after, David brings the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem (2 Samuel 6), and the arrival feels much like a homecoming, complete with David dancing in his linen ephod (2 Sam. 6:14). David’s son Solomon would be the one to build the Temple in Jerusalem (1 Kings 6), solidifying Jerusalem as the spiritual center of Israel.

Lessons from the Past Cities and their Legacy for the Church Today

Ryan Castillo has been a follower of Christ since 2000, when he accept-ed Christ as a sophomore in high school. Since that time, Ryan has consistently served in the local church, especially in musical worship as a pia-nist, guitarist, and vocalist. Ryan graduated from Bethel Seminary San Diego with a Master of Divinity, cum laude. As an aspiring Hebrew Bible scholar, Ryan was awarded the Academic Achievement award in Old Testament studies amongst his graduating class. Upon graduation, he was also in-ducted into the Yodh Chap-ter of Eta Beta Rho, the Na-tional Honor Society of the National Association of Pro-fessors of Hebrew. He lives and works in San Diego, CA with his wife Laura and son Simon.


Of course, so much more took place in the city of Jerusalem that bears recounting as pertains to the history of the People of God. It was besieged by Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, sending the last rem-nant of Judah into exile. Jerusalem was the setting of Jesus’ trial and crucifixion. It was in Jerusalem that the Holy Spirit was first given to the follow-ers of Jesus, an event that marks the birth of the Church. However, the early beginnings of Jerusa-lem are highlighted to make a point: every city has a story. The story of each city has a beginning. The story of Jerusalem as a home for the People of God began when Joshua and the Israelites began to overtake the Promised Land, but that conquest was not perfect. As the book of Judges tells us, “But the people of Benjamin did not drive out the Jebusites who lived in Jerusalem, so the Jebusites have lived with the people of Benjamin in Jerusa-lem to this day.” (Judges 1:21) This might seem like mercy, but stood in direct contrast to the clear command given to Moses to “consume” all the peoples of the Promised Land (Deut. 7:16), a com-mand extended to Joshua’s leadership of Israel after Moses’s death (Josh. 1:7). There is little sur-prise that the Israelites are tempted away to serve and worship other gods after the Lord has said to them, “Your eye shall not pity them, neither shall you serve their gods, for that would be a snare to you.” (Deut. 7:16b) The beginnings of the city of Jerusalem foretold the fate of the city of Jerusalem. Filled with a mixture of worshipers of Yahweh and pagan foreigners, Jerusalem became the site of illicit worship, resulting in exile. Yet, with the Ark of the Covenant dwelling there in the Temple of Solomon, Jerusalem also held, and still holds, lasting significance for the People of God even today. Jerusalem has its roots, and we can read about them in the Bible. What are the roots and history of your city? Do you know them? Who lived there fifty, a hundred, two hundred years ago? Just like the city of Jerusalem, your city has a story that should not be overlooked. What might you learn about the cultural threads that run through your city if you learned a little about its beginnings? How might you better understand the ethnic trends, the economic concerns, the social norms of

your city if you knew its story? How much more equipped might you be to serve the people in your congregation if you knew something about the story of the city in which you all live? Far too many Western evangelical churches operate with a base level ignorance about their shared history. Growing out of a culture that over-emphasizes immediate gratification, coupled with the ecclesi-astical tendency to split off and start a new church when something happens you don’t like, a sense of historical detachment has become the norm in far too many churches. The truth is your city, (and your church, for that matter), has a story that mat-ters greatly for the shape and identity of the pre-sent.

The city of Alexandria is located in northern Egypt, at the mouth of the Nile River and right on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Named for the conqueror Alexander the Great, the city became a seat of learning in the ancient Roman world. The Museum at Alexandria was, along with the Acad-emy of Athens, the place to be taught in its time. As an institution, however, the Museum at Alex-andria was devoted to the teaching of ancient pa-gan wisdom. That didn’t change with the arrival of Christ, or with the advent of the Church. Rather than the ancient Hebrew Scriptures or the writ-ings of the apostles, the works of the great ancient philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were held in highest esteem. At first blush, it might seem that such writings and teachings would be, at best, unhelpful to the Christian cause, or at worst, directly antithetical. And yet, out of the intellectually pagan setting of Alexan-dria came three of the greatest Christian minds of the early Church: Clement, Origen, and Athana-sius. The scope of the present article does not permit adequate treatment of these three men and so their contributions can only be inadequately sum-marized. Clement received much of his teaching in Alexandria. As a Christian, he was dismayed at the reputation Christianity had in his day: a su-perstitious religion suited only for the anti-


a compelling witness with a lasting effect. May we be so faithful in our own time.

The Roman Empire in the West fell in AD 476. This marked the end of an era of united infrastruc-ture and stability. The unity and relative safety afforded by Rome dissipated when the last emper-or was deposed. What had been the Roman Em-pire was divided up into separate kingdoms. In this time, the Medieval Period, the presence of the Church across these separate kingdoms would lend an enduring sense of continuity, especially through the leadership of the papacy. Such papal leadership afforded believers assurance that God was still in control, their place with Him was se-cure and that His Church would endure at a time when the entire political system they had known was crumbling around them. The influence that the Papal Office exercised was felt palpably across the many kingdoms of Europe. What this shift in power also signified for the Papal Office was an invitation into the political arena. The exercise of political power by the Papal Office probably began with the good intention to care for the people within the Church. The opportunity of political power in the Church, however, quickly became twisted into a love of that power and con-trol for its own sake. The pomp, the luxury, the acclaim afforded by so powerful a position in soci-ety presents a temptation that would be hard for any person to resist. Thus when the political states of Europe began to rise, the Papal Office began to rely on those political powers to further their own agenda. Often, this was with the expectation that the Papal Office would return the favor to that same political power. Such was the case when the papacy was moved in 1309 from Rome to the town of Avignon on the borders of France. This move took place during the time of Pope Clement V. It is clear that during the papacy’s time in Avignon, there was greater concern for the papacy’s own power and control than the care of the people. The papacy became intertwined with the French state, which alienated it from the peo-ple of England, who were at war with France. Complex ecclesiastical taxes were put in place to pay for wars waged simply to increase papal con-trol in Italy. The Pope, Clement VI, lived in una-

intellectual and ignorant of the world. In his writ-ings, he sought to highlight the intellectual nature of true faith by showing how the best of the classi-cal pagan philosophers’ truths could also be found in the Scriptures. Origen was a student of Clem-ent’s, and his work followed much of the same pattern. He pointed out that the truth of the phi-losophers was rooted in God Himself, the one Source of all truth. Origen’s literary production was massive, including his systematic theology De principiis and the Hexapla, a parallel compilation of six versions of the Old Testament. Origen em-braced what he saw as the value of classical phi-losophy and brought increased intellectual rigor to Christian theology. Athanasius was a thinker, like Clement and Origen many years before him, but applied himself especially to the defense of the Nicene Creed. Written especially as a rejection of the Arian heresy that Jesus was not fully God, the Nicene Creed became and remains a bench-mark of orthodoxy across denominational lines. Athanasius defended the truth of Jesus’s divinity and the affirmation of it in the Nicene Creed at a time when the Christian world was deeply divid-ed over this issue. His faithful work in defending Jesus’s divinity, further vindicated by his deeply devotional life, served to preserve what we would consider core tenants of the faith today. Each of these men, Clement, Origen, and Athana-sius, contributed in their time to the intellectual integrity of the faith. They raised the bar for those who would come after them by truly endeavoring to love God with their whole mind. They were not content to let Christianity wallow in anti-intellectualism. The Church of today is accused of anti-intellectualism, as well. Orthodoxy is dis-missed outright in academic circles as under-nuanced at best, willfully ignorant at worst. What if there were brave followers of Christ like these ancient Alexandrian theologians who waded into academic circles at all levels? Could we not affirm the truth that is found across the myriad disci-plines of study while also asserting that all truth finds its source in the One True God? What if Christians found themselves in the social sciences, the neurological sciences, the biological sciences, and were able to point out, “God is here, too?” From the example of Clement, Origen, and Atha-nasius we know that the work of those who en-deavor to love God with his or her whole mind is

Photo by Benson Kua | Ruins of the Roman Forum


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illegal immigrants. Two hundred years from now, such names will hardly be worthy of footnotes in a textbook. The Christian, who steps into the polit-ical arena, if only as a voter, would do well to keep his or her eyes not only on the immediate issues but also on eternity. The Papal Office in Avignon sacrificed integrity for immediate gains. It became embroiled in the political squabbles of its time and neglected the great call to care for God’s People. Be careful in the political arena. Do not forget that every aspect of our lives, including our political concerns, are meant to serve God’s purposes and not the other way around.

As the year 1735 was drawing to a close, John Wesley was on a ship bound for the New World colony of Georgia. He had been invited there by Governor James Oglethorpe to serve as pastor in the town of Savannah. He was an ordained Angli-can priest and a descendant of Anglican priests on both sides of his family. He had attended Oxford in his formative years, notably leading the now famous “holy club” that had been founded by his brother Charles and friends. The members of that gathering were often mocked for their piety, but John Wesley was indelibly formed by it. It is little surprise then that when he arrived in Savannah, Georgia, Wesley expected those whom he led in his congregation to conduct themselves spiritually with the same fervor and devotion as he had wit-nessed in his Oxford holy club. This was not the case and a rift developed between Wesley and his congregants. Then came John Wesley’s failure that resulted in his subsequent return to England. He had courted a young woman named Sophia Hop-key who eventually spurned his advances and married another man. Wesley, perhaps out of jeal-ousy, deemed the woman as frivolous and having slipped in her faith. He refused to serve her com-munion in worship, which was a serious offense since he himself considered the sacrament of com-munion to be at the heart of Christian worship. He was sued for defamation and returned to England after serving just two years in Georgia. Confused and dejected, he began to question his own salva-tion and considered ceasing his preaching minis-try. How must John Wesley have remembered the city of Savannah, Georgia? There is nothing inherently

bashed luxury and his courts were marked by nepotism as close friends and family were elected to important offices over those more qualified. In addition, many important ecclesiastical posts across Europe were deliberately left vacant so that any income generated from church offerings in those areas would be sent directly to Avignon. If an ecclesiastical post were filled it would often be sold to the highest bidder. Needless to say, the Church’s concern for power, prestige and wealth came to replace its concern for the people in many parts of Europe during this time. The intersection of politics and religion is a touchy subject, to say the least. Opinions about the degree to which they should overlap are as varied as the people who hold them. From the example of the city of Avignon and the Papal Office fully en-trench and corrupted by political concerns it would seem that the Church should never become involved in politics. After all the historical nick-name for the papacy’s time in Avignon is the “Babylonian Captivity of the Church.” To say simply that the Church should never get involved in politics, however, may be overly simplistic. The Papal Office was not immediately corrupted upon its arrival in Avignon. It was a gradual process that involved a series of small and seemingly in-significant concessions made over many years. There is a real danger from the allure of political power but there is also good that can be done when the Church engages in the life of society in-cluding its political processes. Learning from the example of Avignon, however, it is clear that great care must be taken by any who would also step into the political arena as a follower of Christ. It is not enough to simply align with one particular political party over the other. Compromise and corruption do not limit them-selves to a single party. Furthermore, the political system lends itself to a preoccupation with the immediate but a Christian cannot afford to take so narrow a view of time and the potential historical significance of their actions. God does not work just in the span of an election season. He works over decades, centuries, and millennia. Certainly, the issues we face today matter; however, in fifty years, the debate over gay marriage will likely not be of great concern. A hundred years from now, people will hardly remember Hillary Clinton’s stance on abortion or Donald Trump’s plan for


something even greater than you could have imagined? John Wesley’s failure proved to be the seeds for his future leadership of an entirely new movement. You may not be called to start a new denomination, but you are called not to let your own failures derail the ministry God has given you.

We have examined four different cities and their respective significance for the history of the Church. They have not all been bright, cheery histories, but each stands to teach us something. Every person, every church, every city has its story. Knowing that story can actual-ly aid you in the task of service. The Church needs ministers who will engage the world in-tellectually and give glory to the God of all truth. Politics and religion should only be mixed with great care. One’s political involve-ment must always serve God first and foremost. Failure is not meant to derail us; rather, God can use our own failure to do things that even we haven’t yet imagined. In your city, you are cre-ating a legacy. The way your city will be re-membered and the significance your church can have in that city are directly affected by your choices. Look around you. History is being made right now all around you. What do you want that history to look like? Learn from the examples of the past and seek God’s guidance as you engage the present and shape the future of your city.

wrong with Savannah, but for Wesley, one must imagine that it long held a place in his memory as one of failure and disappointment. Is it possible John Wesley wished that he had stayed in Eng-land and never traveled to the New World in the first place? And yet it was through this failure that the seeds of his great success in future ministry were planted. On the voyage that brought him to Savannah, Wesley’s boat faced a storm serious enough to throw the crew into a panic had it not been for the calm of a few Moravians on the ship. As a result, Wesley questioned one of the Moravi-an brothers for advice for his ministry upon arriv-ing in Savannah. The man challenged Wesley’s personal, experiential knowledge of his own sal-vation and became a key conversation that would prove haunting for Wesley. Remembering this in-teraction, Wesley sought out the Moravians upon his return to England after his great failure. He was advised not to abandon his ministry of preaching and it was shortly thereafter that Wes-ley had his now famous Aldersgate experience when he felt his heart “strangely warmed;” an ex-perience that gave him assurance of his own sal-vation. From there, Wesley’s ministry grew into a large movement within the Anglican Church as he sought to awaken a new spiritual fervor within the Church. In the life of John Wesley, the city of Savannah represented failure. It was a failure so great and complete that he contemplated leaving the minis-try. If he had done so, where would the world be today? What would have become of the Methodist movement, holiness churches, or the Azusa Street revival if John Wesley abandoned the ministry because of his failure? What would have hap-pened if he had not failed and instead stayed in Savannah as pastor for the rest of his life? Is it pos-sible that Wesley’s failure in Savannah was instru-mental, maybe even essential, to his own future in serving God? No one goes into the ministry to fail. No one hopes to have mediocre success. Failure and disappointment are simply a given fact of life in a fallen world. From Wesley, however, we can learn that failure itself should never be allowed to derail us. What is that painful failure that you faced? Where is your great shame located? A certain church? A certain individual? A certain city? Isn’t it possible that God actually wants to use your failure to do

For Further Reading

Historical Theology: An Introduction to Christian Thought by Gregg R. Allison

The Story of Christianity (Volumes 1 and 2)

by Justo L. Gonzalez

Readings in the History of Christian Theology (Volumes 1 and 2) by William C. Placer


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What church do you belong to? (Assuming you are connected to a local congre-gation at all, that is.) If you are, that would make you the exception in my hometown of Tucson, Arizona, where nine out of ten people do not attend a lo-cal congregation on a given Sunday, let alone self-identify as “belonging” to one. “My faith is a private thing” is most likely the majority opinion in our country. If you are the exception, and a name came to mind, I am guessing it was the name of a congregation—First Lutheran, Christ Methodist, Hope Congregation-al, or something similar. If not, it is probably because the title of the article tipped you off. When it comes to congregations, we seem exceptionally “communal” if we affil-iate with a local congregation as a follower of Christ. To align with a local con-gregation is a good step in the right direction, but it is not nearly so broad-minded as the New Testament demands. As Americans, we are often unaware of the individualism so rampant in our culture, but so very foreign to the New Testament. The Church as a City Church When most of us read “you” in the New Testament, we think individually, as in a single person. In reality the New Testament writers, when referring to a ‘church,’ meant the fellowship of believers in the city. Similarly, a high percent-age of the biblical “you’s” are plural, not singular. So it is not: “You, Dave, are the light of the world.” But it is instead: “You, the collection of believers in your city, are.” My assertions do not make it so, however, so let us look a little clos-er.1 City church in Revelation The book of Revelation is written as a letter to seven churches in the province of Asia (Rev. 1:4). What do all those seven churches have in common? They were not just local congregations; Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea were all cities. These were not towns along the mis-sionary byway, either. Ephesus, the first church mentioned in the list, had a population of 250,000, making it the second largest city in the world at the time. Parallels today in terms of relative size would be Seoul, South Korea, and Mexi-co City, Mexico. In addition, remember that Christians didn’t have their own church buildings until the fourth century. They met in houses, so the size of a congregation was limited to the size of the house. Ephesus, therefore, would have had many “church gatherings,” yet John wrote Revelation to “the church in Ephesus” (Rev. 2:1 NIV) and to “the church” in six other locations. City church in Romans Romans is different from the other New Testament epistles written by Paul, be-cause it was written to a church he had not personally established and had nev-er visited before. For this reason, at the close of the letter, Paul went to great

City Church Unity A Daunting Goal Worthy of Effort

Pastor David Drum is a Tucson native, with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Arizo-na (Go Cats!) and an M.Div. from Trinity Lutheran Semi-nary. He served as the solo/lead pastor of Community of Hope Lutheran Church from 1990-2011. In 2011, he started as the full time Church Do-main Director for 4Tucson, helping churches and pastors throughout Tucson work more closely together. David has been married to his beau-tiful wife Valerie for 28 years, and they have 4 chil-dren. David has served as the president for Tucson As-sociation of Evangelicals and Tucson Ministry Fellowship, on the national Board of Trustees and Board of Minis-try for Lutheran Congrega-tions in Mission for Christ, and as the founder/leader for the Evangelical Renewal Dis-trict of LCMC. In July of 2013 he authored the book, Jesus’ Surprising Strategy, a practi-cal look at Christian unity for the sake of city transfor-mation.


lengths to establish points of contact. Just reading through Romans 16, we get a great peek into first century church demographics. Romans 16 refers to a number of groups specifically, including: “the church in Cenchrea,” a port near Corinth, a city whose population was 200,000 (v. 1); “all the churches of the Gentiles” (v. 4); “the church that meets at [Priscilla’s and Aquila’s] house” (v. 6); the households of Aristobulus and Narcissus, which were both probably the basis of churches (vv. 10-11). After addressing each group, Paul fin-ishes on a further note of unity, saying: “I urge you, brothers to watch out for those who cause divisions…” (Rom. 16:17a). City church in Acts In Luke’s book of Acts, Jesus sends the apostles out into the world, but notably their starting point is to be the city of Jerusalem. Luke’s version of the Great Commission (in Matthew 28) says this: “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Where does the commission start? In Jerusalem: the city. From an individualistic standpoint, we would expect our witnessing to start within our personal spheres of influence. While I am not arguing against the power of friendship evangelism, it is noteworthy that Acts 1:8 does not start from an individualistic perspective. Instead, it is an account of a city church, witnessing to all the people in a city. Here, too, the “you,” is plural. Even Jesus’ evangelism analogy of fishing in Matthew 4:19 (“From now on, you will fish for people”) is not the individual experience of taking the tackle box and fishing pole out to the lake. In that time, they fished with nets and it was a group effort. City Church in 1 Corinthians While the books of Revelation, Acts, and Romans all paint a picture of the city as the basic building block of the church, it is even easier to see in 1 Co-rinthians, the letter in which Paul’s analogy of the church as a body receives its most complete devel-opment. At the end of the book, we find a list of greetings similar to (though less extensive than)

the one at the end of Romans. Paul finished the book, saying: “The churches in the province of Asia send you greetings. Aquila and Priscilla greet you warmly in the Lord, and so does the church that meets at their house” (1 Cor. 16:19). Once again, we see that house churches were the norm and there were many of them. Were these house churches always unified? No. In fact, a lack of unity within the city church was one of the main reasons Paul wrote to the Corinthians. “I appeal to you, brothers,” Paul wrote, “in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfect-ly united in mind and thought” (1 Cor. 1:10). Read that passage twice: first thinking of a single, local congregation, then again in the mindset of all the congregations in the area like Paul intended. No-tice the difference in perspective? He continues:

My brothers, some from Chloe’s household [one congregation in Corinth] have informed me that there are quarrels among you [the various congregations in the city]. What I mean is this: One of you says, ‘I follow Paul’; another, ‘I follow Apollos’; another, ‘I follow Cephas’; still another, ‘I follow Christ.’” (1 Cor. 1:11-12)

Here, we have witness to divisiveness that Paul condemns. Ecclesiastes 1:9 says, “There is nothing new under the sun,” and that is certainly true here. To contemporize the passage: “One congre-gation says, ‘We follow Luther;’ another, “We fol-low Calvin;’ still another, ‘We follow Wimber;’ and another, ‘We don’t believe in all that denomi-national stuff. We just follow Christ!’” It could be rewritten any number of ways and hold true. For instance, some may say: “We’re part of the His-panic pastors association” and list various ethnic groups that make up the city; or “We’re purpose driven and follow Warren;” while others might teach against such perspectives. “We’re subur-ban,” “We’re urban,” “We’re rural,” “We’re tradi-tional,” “We’re contemporary,” “We’re emerg-ing.” There is practically no end to the identifiable divisions.


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But before Paul speaks against their divisiveness, he commends them for being “enriched in every way” and “not lacking any spiritual gift” (1 Cor. 1:5, 7). Again, these assertions are true of the whole church in Corinth collectively, but not of any individual house church. Paul is writing to the city church—the letter is addressed “to the church [singular] in Corinth,” meaning every indi-vidual congregation in Corinth was to see them-selves as part of the one Christian church in the city. Really Plural 1 Corinthians 12:12-27 is the Apostle Paul’s famil-iar analogy of the Church as a body with many parts. One part cannot decide that any part is ir-relevant, including itself. 1 Corinthians 12:27 states: “Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.” Most English transla-tions say something similar. Individualistic West-erners will assume that Paul is making a radical, counter-cultural claim that all of us as individuals are part of a multi-faceted, multi-dimensional body. That in and of itself would be a massive shift toward New Testament Christianity if taken seriously. However, while highly encouraged, the idea of individuals becoming part of an intentional com-munity with many parts, does not go nearly far enough. There is no singular word in 1 Corinthi-ans 12:27. The first “you,” as expected, is plural. The phrase “each one of you” does not appear in the Greek at all, and if it did, it would be referring to “each of you house churches,” not each one of you individuals. A more literal rendering would be, “You (plural) are a body of Christ, and mem-bers in part.” Even the list of spiritual gifts that follow can be understood as communal and not individual—some “congregations” excel at serv-ing, some at teaching, some at healing, and so on. No congregation excels at everything. We need one another. When one part suffers, even if we are not aware of it, the whole body suffers. Profound Principles for City Church Unity While the principles behind the 1 Corinthians 12 model are many, each with profound implica-tions, there are three key ones for City Church

unity. The first is this: If you are connected to the same head, you are in the same body. This truth helps expands our sense of the limits of Christian unity. From the original Greek, “ecumenical” literally means “one house,” and for this reason, various rooms within the same house would be referred to as “ecumenical.” “Interfaith,” on the other hand, re-fers to different houses. Thus, unity among Chris-tian denominations would be “ecumenical,” while unity among different religions (such as Christian-ity, Judaism, and Islam) would be “interfaith.”2 The second principle is that the body has built in strengths and limitations. The human body is de-signed with specialized parts, each built to carry out different functions with excellence. Inherent to the design, though, is that alongside built-in strengths come built-in weaknesses. No part of the human body is designed to do everything. No part of the body is the whole body. Contrary to popular belief, these shortcomings are not due to sin, or lack of leadership, training, or time, but are rather due to design! That is how Jesus built His body. The key, then, is mutual submission to one another out of reverence for Christ (Eph. 5:21). And for that to be possible, the various parts of the body have to be in enough communication with one another to build strong relationships. The biggest challenge to Christian unity in a City Church is rarely animosity; it is usually isolation. Last, we need to develop unified relationships in order to overcome blind spots. Ignorance is not bliss. Igno-rance hurts not only each of us individually, but also all of those around us. What we do not know can create conflict, hurt, and offense, and break the bonds of Christian unity—or it can prevent that unity from ever developing in the first place. Intentionally building relationships with those outside our own sphere of influence is perhaps the very best way for blind spots to be revealed. Four years ago a group of African-American pas-tors and Anglo pastors began meeting on a monthly basis during the presidential election sea-son in order to talk politics. Talk about blind spots being revealed! Not only have we all lived to tell about it, but these relationships have also grown into beautiful friendships that are now extending into our congregations as well. The cost of blind


spots is not only huge problems that go un-addressed, but also beautiful blessings that go un-experienced. Unity in a Multi-Layered Body Building on the concept of built-in strengths and limitations, consider for a moment the various ap-plications of this City Church body imagery. In each of the following categories, every part will bring something unique to the table, but it will also be lacking strengths that can only be found in the other parts: Denomination Networks, often built around a particular

strength/perspective Ethnicity Generation Geography, both micro (which part of the city)

and macro (which part of the world) Spiritual gifting Style or culture Focal points and passions (such as social jus-

tice, worship, discipleship, and children’s min-istry)

Each part has strengths, and each has weaknesses. When balanced together the result is a healthy and whole body. And while I have focused on the plural nature of City Church unity, the individual does play a key role, too. The visible, citywide unity Jesus prayed for in John 17 becomes more developed and all-encompassing when individuals’ differences are intentionally sought after as well. For instance, people have most of their professional training and spheres of influence in a particular domain: like business, government, education, social ser-vices, healthcare, church, media/arts, or sports. Each perspective brings something particular to the challenge at hand; and each needs the others’ perspectives to become more complete. Likewise, personality profiles and make-ups (like Myers-Briggs and DISC) play a huge role in the lenses we use to view the world. While individually helpful to the whole, a single vantage point will yield a much more sheltered, narrow view than multiple vantage points. Maturity

If we are not investing in greater unity, we are guaranteeing greater immaturity. This is not only my firmly held belief born out of the last five years’ experience of working full time to see Jesus’ prayer in John 17 answered in my city; it is also straight out of Scripture. Ephesians 4 is another mountain-peak chapter on Christian unity. Space does not allow a complete exegesis of the chapter, so I will simply start in the middle and work out-ward in both directions. Here, Paul writes:

So Christ himself gave the apos-tles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his peo-ple for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. (Eph. 4:11-13)

Maturity grows out of unity. Lack of unity breeds immaturity. Isolation prevents us from ever at-taining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. How many leaders diligently work to grow their congregations and people to greater maturity, while leaving out perhaps the key ele-ment: unity with those different from themselves? We have teams and committees and staff positions for all kinds of things in the congregation that we deem important, but how many do we have for citywide Christian unity? Working out from the center, the next verses paint a compelling picture of what Christian maturity looks like:

Then we will no longer be in-fants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as


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each part does its work. (Eph. 4:14-16)

The second half of the chapter could be a primer in Christian community (see Eph. 4:17-32). Every marriage, small group, congregation, and citywide effort would be enriched simply by tak-ing seriously the wisdom contained therein. The beginning of the chapter states that this whole pathway of unity leading to maturity is not op-tional, but is simply “living a life worthy of the calling you have received” (Eph. 4:1). The key is an attitude of humility (Eph. 4:2). Humility is cen-tral to Christian unity, and a key characteristic of maturity. I find it fascinating that influential lead-ers and coaches like Bill Hybels from the church world and Patrick Lencioni from the business world both identify humility as the key ingredient to growth and maturity. Before the great hymn of unity in Ephesians 4:4-6, we read, “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace” (v. 3). City Church unity certainly is a daunting goal. Just like in marriage, the closer we get to one another and the deeper our relationships grow, the more no-ticeable our differences become, too. Both mar-riages and City Church unity require sustained, non-negotiable effort. But the outcome is worthy of the goal, not only for ourselves, but for every-one who interacts with us.

For Further Reading:

Jesus’ Surprising Strategy: A Mandate and a Means for City Transformation by David Drum

Church Unique: How Missional Leaders Cast Vision, Capture Culture, and Create

Movement by Will Mancini

To Transform a City: Whole Church, Whole Gos-pel, Whole City by Eric Swanson and

Sam Williams

__________________________________

Endnotes

1. Note: the first half of this article is largely drawn from

my book, Jesus’ Surprising Strategy, chapter two.

2. As a caveat to this, however, I have recently learned that

in Latino cultures, “ecumenical” and “interfaith” are

synonyms.


Zach Yentzer Zach is the Curator of 100

Creative Cities, an online

learning network designed to

help churches and leaders

creatively engage Young Pro-

fessionals and Creatives in

the church and the city. For

more on Zach and 100 Crea-

tive Cities, visit

www.100creativecities.com.

“What is man that You take thought of him, and the son of man that You care for him?” (Ps. 8:4 NASB)

In the church, we often end up in this same place as the psalmist David, won-dering in awe at a Creator that would stoop so low to associate with humanity. Broken, incomplete, inadequate, imperfect, wretched, sinful, these are words we use over and over to both recognize our limitations and His capacity. But then we stop there. David continues: “Yet you have made him a little lower than God, and You crown him with glory and majesty! You make him to rule over the works of your hands; You have put all things under his feet” (Ps. 8:5-6). In just a few verses, David forms the full picture of what it means to be human: at once flawed and fallen short, but also endowed with creativity, the ability to innovate, design, and solve in a way that points us just a little closer to the world that will be but is not yet fully here. If there is a swirling microcosm of this tension, it is the city. Over the past couple years I have gained an incredible passion for the city, and especially mine, Tucson. An unanswered question a couple years ago put me on a journey to discover what makes great cities tick, and whether there is some-thing valuable for the church in that. I still do not have a lot of answers, but I do have one big hunch. If we as the church only see the city as a broken place and overlook its beautiful potential, we will miss an opportunity to define and design the next 50-100 years of faith in culture. I know that is a big statement, but let me try to back it up by answering these three questions:

1. Why care about the city? 2. What is happening in the city? 3. What can the church do in the city?

The first question will set up the big idea for why the city represents a shifting world and an exciting frontier for the church. The second question will frame why the city works and highlights the raw potential that a city has as a place that convenes people and ideas for the creative act of innovating better ways of living in this ever-changing world. The third and last part will bring the two together, discovering how the church can engage the city and the creative ways she already is! Who Cares? In 2014, 55% of the world’s population lived in cities. By 2050, that number is

The Creative City How the Church and the City Shape Each Other


than ever as a replacement. Alas, extremist Is-lam (as well as evangelical Christianity and Or-thodox Judaism in the West) may make perfect sense for our age.2

That last part requires a bit of a caveat. Kaplan is grouping what he feels are three similar extreme strains of three of the major global religions, while simultaneously not validating extremity, only not-ing that its spread makes sense given the kind of world urbanization presented to us. While we could spend time arguing about what is and is not “extreme,” it is what he hints at under the surface that I believe opens a new window into the potential of the church and the city. Communi-ties of faith, whether “extreme” or not, may be one of the few social structures capable of managing the diversity and social upheaval of a world becoming more city-focused. Much more than an unfortunate coexistence then, the church working in the city could be the vital element that either works for the good of all or fails at the expense of everyone. What’s Happening In The City? A New York Times Magazine article written in 2010, A Physicist Solves The City, describes the find-ings of a physicist, Geoffrey West, who turned his craft towards researching cities and what makes them work. Cities, he states, “facilitate human inter-actions, as people crammed into a few square miles exchange ideas and start collaborations…Cities are all about the people, not the infrastructure.”3

expected to be closer to 70%, with much of the growth happening in the “developing world.”1 The nations are flocking to cities for work, study, and a better life. The places they are moving into are wrestling with the pressures of the “different.” People and places that look the same, believe the same, and think the same will have to figure out how to live and work in a diverse melting pot. In a 2013 article titled Augustine’s World, Robert Kaplan, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, suggests that this urbanizing world is not too different from the one St. Augus-tine lived in. As natural and man-made structures struggle to keep up with heterogeneity and human movement, systems like economics, government, and social services become less capable. Centralized authority can’t keep up, giving way to bottom-up agents of change (whether good or bad). This hap-pens in both new urbanization movements and es-tablished cities. Where is the hope in that? Kaplan points to something that I think has impli-cations the world over:

In The City of God, St. Augustine revealed that it is the devout — those in search of grace — who have no reason to fear the future. And as the tribes of old now slowly come undone in the unstoppable meat grinder of developing-world urbanization, religion will be more necessary

Photo by Shawn Smith | Columbus, OH


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that bring people and ideas together for maturity. Investment Last, but not least, is the investment of human and financial resources into people and their ideas in the city. For Creative Cities, it is not enough to just provide a space where peoples’ ideas can connect and bubble up, and it is not enough to have just mentorship to guide them along the way, either. At the end of the pipeline, Creative Cities put gasoline on the fire by materially supporting innovative ide-as that can improve the way things are for the bet-ter of all. Like The Psalmist, it is here the church can find it-self perplexed over the human struggle that is the city in the first part, but also awed and encouraged by its God-given talent and opportunity and ability in the second. So where do we go from here? What Can The Church Do In The City? Almost cliché now in church and missional envi-ronments is the famous command from God in Jere-miah 29:7 to “seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your wel-fare.” But granting that the concept is understood, how does the church practically engage the city to foster shalom and holistic prosperity? It turns out the answer is tucked away in a little book near the back of the Bible, Titus. My pastor in Tucson once described it as an instruction manual from an older leader to a younger church planter that shows how to run a vibrant church. And, would you know, I found it matches the exact DNA of a Creative City that we have just outlined. Here is a look, with some stories and ideas from my city and a few others to close us out. Incubation

“Our people must also learn to engage in good deeds to meet pressing needs, so that they will not be unfruitful” (Titus 3:14). Over the last two years in Tucson, we have seen a return of Millennials of faith into the city, especially

That is, of course a simplistic depiction of the city. West continues to develop his point and uses the imagery of a cliff to elaborate. The story of humani-ty is a constant teetering along the cliff of exhaus-tion and follows a cyclical pattern: something new is discovered that makes things better, that solution is eventually exhausted, and this drives another in-novation designed to replenish the “old” one. It is in the city that this pattern is both fulfilled and ac-celerated over time. In West’s words, the potential and creativity of the city is the solution to the prob-lems of the city. Another Psalm 8 balance of flawed yet full of promise and opportunity! Earlier in this article I mentioned an unanswered question that drove my curiosity about the city. “What is the DNA of a city that is transforming people, who then in turn innovate and transform in and for the city?” Are there commonalities between cities that are not just surviving this cycle, but excel-ling within it? Over the past couple years of watching, document-ing, and observing, three characteristics emerge as a preliminary answer to that question. These charac-teristics define what we’ll call a “Creative City” and they are: incubation, mentorship, and investment. Incubation Creative Cities provide community space that con-venes people and ideas together. Edward Glaeser, an economist at Harvard University, writes in his book Triumph of the City “all successful cities do have something in common. To thrive, cities must attract smart people and enable them to work col-laboratively.”4 Bringing people together is at the core of the healthy city whether that happens in a coffee shop, a collaborative office space, or a willing church. Mentorship Creative Cities are home to a core of champions, people who love their city and invest into it and its people. This includes what is often called relational, or reverse, mentorship, where the generations take time to listen and learn from each other, the elder to the younger with experience and wisdom, and the younger to the elder with optimism and insight into current trends. Creative Cities are intentional about setting up structures of mentorship and learning


Tucson if there was a model he knew of in the church for bringing the generations intentionally together for constructive conversation around is-sues of importance. I desired to find a place where elders listened to those younger and vice versa. He said he did not and so we set out to create a cross-city group that would include at least four generations of passionate Christ-followers for the purpose of discussing issues of theology, leader-ship, politics, sociology, and more from a genera-tional perspective. The experience has been a beau-tiful one and has engaged our city on many differ-ent levels with humility and respect for each other. Another example of mentorship in action comes from one of my friends who is the Director of Lead-ership Development at Hope Unlimited in Monro-via, California. Her church wanted to raise and launch Millennials into fruitful ministry and asked her to design a leadership accelerator, called 20/20, to provide a holistic leadership development expe-rience. In this program a group of next generation leaders are given spiritual and professional mentor-ship, and the ability to design an organization or idea that solves a community need. Training on de-veloping and pitching the idea is part of the pack-age as well. These are innovative means of expanding what the church does to engage the rhythms and systems of Creative Cities across the generations and it is excit-ing to see their impact. Investment “Diligently help Zenas the lawyer and Apollos on their way so that nothing is lacking for them” (Titus 3:13). Another exciting development starting to happen in several parts of the country are churches examining the ways in which they can invest, not just in the work of the church as an institution, but also in their people and projects that impact the greater society. A notable example of this is The Center for Faith and Work, an outgrowth of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, New York. Their goal is to examine the many different ways that are not just church/ministry-centric, that Gospel move-

to its urban core. They are planting churches, launching positive social media campaigns, pop-up artisans markets, new business ventures, re-committing to specific neighborhoods, living more locally, and much more. These are trends that are happening not just here, but across the country, reenergizing urban cores as places where people and ideas are colliding on a moment-by-moment basis. My wife and I were blessed earlier this year to move into Tucson’s downtown, committing our-selves to this exciting shift for the long haul! Another initiative that a few of us started in Tuc-son, was to bring church and parachurch organiza-tions from all over the city together in the heart of the city to cowork. Coworking is a recent global movement of shared office space where profession-als across similar and sometimes different fields share the same physical, open office, to increase connections, productivity, and collaboration. The results have been extraordinary. This effort, which we have called “City Connect,” launched over a year ago and has been an exciting experiment in how a coworking space can convene and launch people and ideas from the faith commu-nity into our city. It often seems that we are one of the few examples of this in the country, and we look forward to the opportunity to keep experi-menting and hopefully be a resource for other faith communities who want to actively engage the city from its very heart. Mentorship

Older men are to be temperate, dignified, sensi-ble, sound in faith, in love, in perseverance. Old-er women likewise are to be reverent in their behavior, not malicious gossips nor enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good, so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands, so that the word of God will not be dishonored. Likewise urge the young men to be sensible; in all things show yourself to be an example of good deeds, with purity in doctrine, digni-fied, sound in speech which is beyond reproach, so that the opponent will be put to shame, hav-ing nothing bad to say about us (Titus 2:1-8).5

A few years ago I asked an older mentor of mine in


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you face in your unique place.

2. From the pulpit forward, be intentional about making your church a place where the generations are in close contact. Be a platform for pairing the young entrepreneur with the experienced businessperson, the student in nursing school with the doctor, the young artist with the older artisan. This is how great things are borne, and when they are borne in your church your city will celebrate. Younger generations especially are desperately looking for older mentors and figures with experience to glean from.

3. Invest in your people, the greatest force your church has. If someone has a great idea in your church to create Gospel-good, are there the people and small financing availa-ble to kickstart it?

May the church in the city, be such that Proverbs 11:10 rings true: “When it goes well with the right-eous, the city rejoices.”

ment can happen in a city. Their focus is centered around entrepreneurship and vocation, how the creation of things and calling impact communities. They provide entrepreneurship courses and have funding nights where they fund Gospel-focused for-profit and non-profit initiatives, funneling re-sources straight to the creators and innovators that need it to move forward. This reflects a growing movement, fueled by the next two young genera-tions, to remove the sacred and secular divide and reconnect faith and work in order to inspire voca-tions that create shalom and share the Good News. On the West Coast, Fellowship Monrovia is another example that stands out. Their Fellowship Grant is described this way:

Fellowship Monrovia is committed to seeing new initiatives spring from our members that serve our communities. In that spirit, we award several grants for the calendar year which will empower people in our church body to launch new Fellowship Monrovia GIVE initiatives to declare the Gospel in both word and deed in our city. The Fellowship Grant’s primary pur-pose is to support those at Fellowship Monrovia who are seeking to launch and lead new strate-gic initiatives that mobilize the body of Christ at Fellowship to love, serve and engage our neigh-borhoods, communities and our city for the glo-ry of God.6

So What? Maybe this was a slightly different article than the one you thought you might read about the church and the city. I hope, however, that you walk away with an excitement for the beautiful relationship that can be the church and the city both now and into the future. Finally, I hope you are encouraged by just a few of the opportunities that the church has to be a creative force in the midst of the city. Here are some last takeaways that might be of val-ue for you and your church context.

1. See your church not just as a place of wor-ship on Sunday, but a gathering point Mon-day through Saturday. Seek to make it a place where Creatives and Professionals from all the sectors of society can gather, exegete their community, and come up with God-inspired solutions to the challenges

__________________________________

Endnotes

1. “World’s population increasingly urban with more than

half living in urban areas,” last modified July 10, 2014,

accessed August 20, 2016, https://www.un.org/

development/desa/en/news/population/world-

urbanization-prospects.html

2. Robert Kaplan, “Augustine’s World,” Foreign Policy, De-

cember 3, 2013.

3. Jonah Lehrer, “A Physicist Solves The City,” The New York

Times Magazine, December 17, 2010.

4. Edward Glaeser, Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest In-

vention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and

Happier (Penguin Books, 2011), 223.

5. Please Note: this passage is controversial across the Body

of Christ, and this article will not try and figure it all out!

The emphasis here is on the intergenerational mentorship

encouraged by Paul.

6. “About,” The Fellowship Grant, accessed August 21, 2016.

http://madeforfellowship.com/the-fellowship-grant/.


Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and

the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I

saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven

from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I

heard a loud voice from the throne saying,

“See, the home of God is among mortals.

He will dwell with them;

they will be his peoples,

and God himself will be with them;

he will wipe every tear from their eyes.

Death will be no more;

mourning and crying and pain will be no more,

for the first things have passed away.”

Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the

seven last plagues came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the

bride, the wife of the Lamb.” And in the spirit he carried me away

to a great, high mountain and showed me the holy city Jerusalem

coming down out of heaven from God. It has the glory of God and a

radiance like a very rare jewel, like jasper, clear as crystal. It has a

great, high wall with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels,

and on the gates are inscribed the names of the twelve tribes of the

Israelites; on the east three gates, on the north three gates, on the

south three gates, and on the west three gates. And the wall of the

city has twelve foundations, and on them are the twelve names of

the twelve apostles of the Lamb.

I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Al-

mighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to

shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the

Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth

will bring their glory into it. Its gates will never be shut by day—and

there will be no night there. People will bring into it the glory and

the honor of the nations. But nothing unclean will enter it, nor any-

one who practices abomination or falsehood, but only those who

are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

Revelations 21:1-4, 9-14, 22-27 NRSV

Photo by Quang Vu Truong


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