UPDATE: Jared Wilson takes off on this topic.
I’m not dogging any churches here. I love my brothers and sisters in the suburbs. But this is a question that needs to be discussed. No blame, but thoughtful consideration. If you want to rant, go away.
I drove around Lexington yesterday, looking at suburban church after suburban church after suburban church after suburban church…..
I know Lexington pretty well. It has a major downtown/inner city area. Universities. Lots of businesses. Lots of housing of different kinds. Plenty of ethnics (Hispanics, especially) and minorities down there. Plenty of young people in the city. Lots of poverty and the resulting problems.
There are some churches in the inner city, but they are mostly Catholics, older, endowed, old money mainline congregations and Pentecostals who are happy to reach out to non-white, non-suburban people.
The big facilities, the new facilities, the nice facilities, the attractive facilities and church-run recreation centers….and the evangelical people to go with them, are out on the by-passes and four lanes, on very expensive property and in very expensive facilities.. From the real estate signs I see, more are moving there all the time. It’s like Jesus told us to go to the suburbs.
I know some churches are doing ministries in the inner city, but I’m sorry folks. If you drive around this very typical Bible belt city, it looks like evangelicals are, in the main, a lot of upper middle class white people who don’t have any plans to do church planting or front-line congregational ministry in the inner city or the urban core. Thank God for the Keller types and Driscoll types who have a vision for the city and go into the city with that vision, but the evidence is pretty strong that most evangelical churches with a sense of their future want the greener pastures of the suburbs and the people who live there.
Putting your congregation in the urban core and reaching out to the community around you? No. Clearly, church growth is economically driven, and pretty obviously race driven. Store fronts? Mercy ministries? Sure. But where are the evangelicals going? And why?
Why aren’t evangelicals- those of us who claim to “get” the Great Commission and to believe in personal evangelism and “entrepreneurial” church planting- why aren’t we seriously starting congregations in the inner city and the urban centers? Why are we ignoring the obvious call to the poor, the multi-ethnic community, to poverty, diversity and urban Christianity? (Which is, y’know, kindof Biblical.)
Why aren’t we doing inner city/urban core church planting?
The Internet Monk Archives 
This is interesting web place. I like it.
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Nice page!!
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I only read through the first… 8 million of the posts so forgive me if this has been said already. The whole money excuse is LAME.
Magically really poor folks can live there but middle class folks can’t? That doesn’t seem a bit odd to anyone else? If we go as missionaries to an unreached area, do we commute in? (I’m laughing) ‘Africa was just to below me so I fly in from France to do my mission work.’ Bizarre.
Let’s not forget who’s money it is that we hold in our own pockets. Ours?
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I have a hard time understanding how a storefront church can be turned down over the tax exempt issue. Legally that is. But then again town and county councils do a lot of “illegal” things all the time till they get called on it.
Now building new is different as you get into all kinds of issues with parking, water drainage, and other zoning that doesn’t specifically apply to a church. But blocking it over tax exempt status?
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My wife is involved with her church quite a bit, and at least a small part of the problem in many areas is that the churches are exempt from property taxes. This is undesirable to many local politicians, and the zoning boards will usually vote down church applications, even the small storefront variety. Our town will not approve any expansions/new churches at all because of this. The town that I live in on this contract has more fortune tellers, palmists than churches, because these people pay local taxes.
Some years back I was considering funding a small ministry in a small upstate NY city with a large prison and ex-con population. There was a pastor ready to go, we had a reasonable landlord, but the city turned us down cold. The development agency person told me that she would rather the place stayed empty, since they would still get a little property tax. That was around 2003, and it is still empty.
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The suburbs dovetail nicely with the church growth phenomenon – what better way to grow than to build your edifice right where the population is growing. But there’s trouble a-brewing for that model. The suburb fixation is an indication of a wider problem with evangelicalism that you’ve explored here Michael, mostly on the political side. Evangelicalism as a whole has uncritically joined with the cultural trends of the last 30 years and continues to follow them – so that as those sociological/political trends pass away, so will evangelicalism. You’ve already postulated on the detrimental effect of marrying the evangelical movement to conservative political causes. As those politics diminish, evangelicalism as we know it will follow. Same goes for suburbs. If you’re familiar with economist Richard Florida, he theorizes that the suburbs are headed for a long decline as educated classes move away from the long drives, boring development and unsustainable lifestyles of the suburbs to the vibrancy of an urban core. (See the March issue of Atlantic Monthly)
In this fashion, men like Driscoll and Keller are on to something…
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That’s a lot of baptist churches you’ve got there! Just the KBC ones would be approaching the number of churches (all denoms added up) for the equivalent population of Australia. The Bible belt indeed!
After studying & writing about where Christians live in my city, I got thinking about where we should be living, and started writing an article “Where then shall we live” (link above), and ended up moving house before I finished it :).
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All Baptists are not KBC. Less than half. Esp in inner city where African American churches are located, few are KBC.
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I got the locations of churches from the KBC website. For some of them the street address may not be on the website. I just checked and found that only about half of them (1200) found their correct location, a quarter were placed on their town (they only had a PO Box address) and a quarter weren’t placed (mostly had a C/O in their address).
And that’s only the baptist chuches. So it’s quite an incomplete set, but gives some indication of where the churches are.
And I have no local knowledge – I’ve rarely been outside of South Australia.
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“Baptist” churches. I missed that. But if you Google:
baptist churches in lexington ky
you still get more than you show.
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“Then south of the circle road (and indeed all around) there are lots more.”
Well first it’s “New Circle Road”. A name, not a description. Although it had been there for years when I moved there in 74. 🙂
Second that blank area is where a lot of the burbs spread out after WWII. Much of it the university employed middle class. My 25 year old memories say there are (were?) churches there. Maybe Google just doesn’t know about them or they closed down. In general your church list of pins seems very short in the count based on my old memories.
To be honest I never thought of an “urban” area when I lived there. Downtown was something you could easily walk from end to end. But my memory was the poorer suburban areas seemed to be from about the middle of town out radiating out between 12:00 and 2:00 on the clock face.
Maybe these areas need to be planting into the southeast. 🙂
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Locations of baptist churches in Lexington on Google Maps:
http://home.exetel.com.au/eric5014/mappage/map.htm?ssma=ky-churches&goto=40503,ky&z=11
There are plenty of churches at the core of the city and to the W & E, but to the south is a bare patch. Then south of the circle road (and indeed all around) there are lots more.
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sorry, Imonk, I forgot big brother google is watching.
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iMonk, you are so dead on with these observations. I work as a hospice chaplain and go to many homes in city neighborhoods. I sometimes almost laugh out loud thinking what the reaction would be for some of my good suburban brothers and sisters if they were to enter some of the places I go to and experience some of the situations I deal with.
For most evangelicals I know, “missions,” especially in the down-to-earth, close-to-home sense that you’re talking about, is mostly something someone else does.
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On the flip side many of those folks in their 70s have a long string of “requirements†you must have to attend. From dress, to kids behaviour, to the assigned seating (this has been my pew for 60 years), etc… — Ky Boy but not now
My writing partner is the burned-out pastor of one of these small rural churches. (One of the “larger” ones, membership around 100.) He has had run-ins with the local Church Ladies on all of the above.
You have to wonder if the elderly congregations in many of these churches wouldn’t rather let the church die than admit it was time for another generation to take charge. And this is not hypothetical. — Ky boy but not now
They would. My writing partner also guest-pastors a dying church of about 12 elderly members (with no friends or social contacts on the outside) who like it that way and will sabotage anyone who tries to change things.
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Could we take “sex offender” specific comments off blog? Thanks. Don’t need that google hit.
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Tom, I didn’t say it was easy. There are three categories of sex offender. As strong as i believe in the Power of the Spirit to change a heart, somebody with a history of little kid abuse is going to have an escort at all times, and I hope we never get into that. I would rather do 1 on 1. Other guys, thank God, the ones we minister to, are like those you describe, one guy has a case from his wife, who was older than he, but it was still a sex crime. In Pa. we say 14 will get you 20, and it is true.
No con [including women] is allowed to minister to children, or be alone with a child. Then again I have no record and I am never alone with any child or woman. Just makes sense.
My point is what gives us the right to stop someone from hearing the Word? I am not talking membership, I am talking fellowship. Take reasonable security steps, assign a guy a “buddie”
if you need to, but who needs Christ more than these people? [I know, me.]
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willoh-
how is the megan’s list section handled? Its a very controversial topic- what is a sex offender where you live (in Florida, a 19 year old guy who gets his 15 year old girlfriend pregnant is legally the same as a 60 year old man who rapes an 8 year old), but alot of churches here are terrified to death to deal with anyone who is a “Sex offender” no matter how absurd the designation is- I know a guy (the 19 year old) who had that tag planted on him, and several evangelical churches threatened to call the police if he ever appeared on the property (he went and filled out a visitor form, and apparently they checked the form against the sex offender list). He eventually found a place at an inner-city Vietnamese church where they were willing to listen to what actually happened (and it helped that in their culture its common for 19-20 year old men to marry 14-15 year old girls (in Vietnam, not in the US). And of course my parents are old enough to remember when that was common here as well….
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Oops. “rather die” should have been “rather have the church die”. But then again I suspect some would feel either is OK.
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Headless Unicorn Guy
” .. you are NEVER out of sight of a steeple. Of course, most of those churches have maybe two dozen members tops, the youngest being in their Seventies…
Lotsa little churches all around there, most of them dying. And there’s always somebody (usually an urbanite with kids eager to get away from the big bad city) who piously claims they’ve been Burdened by God to Plant yet another Church…”
On the flip side many of those folks in their 70s have a long string of “requirements” you must have to attend. From dress, to kids behaviour, to the assigned seating (this has been my pew for 60 years), etc…
You have to wonder if the elderly congregations in many of these churches wouldn’t rather die than admit it was time for another generation to take charge. And this is not hypothetical. My dad got to experience it in our own family with my grandfather complaining about the youngsters in the church not doing things right. Said youngsters being in their 30s and 40s.
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the SBC NEPBA is planting churches in Scranton and in Wilkes-Barre, and has been of assistance in replants in Philadelphia. The Roman Catholics are closing 30 more churches, and already have about 20 up for sale. http://www.citizensvoice.com/articles/2009/02/01/news/wb_voice.20090201.a.pg
I feel like an alien today here at imonk.
Saving souls without caring for physical needs, I can’t think of a church not involved in a shelter or a food bank. Honest, I know a lot of churches, they all do Something!
Churches where xcons are not welcome? What bible do they use? I can’t think of a church I am in fellowship with that would reject a con. My church has a Megan’s List section.
And is someone saying there is still racial prejudice in a church? It is snowing up here. cold as damp dog, and I am still glad I live in the north , you fellows down south are in a mess.
Who stays in a racist, no food for poor folk, con rejecting church? Why? Start one that thinks right.
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I’m a little puzzled on the “too many churches.†I’d say a major problem with evangelicalism is we don’t have nearly enough small churches, and are too interested in having a few large ones. — IMonk
Take a look around rural South-Central Pennsylvania sometime. When I visit my writing partner in that area, you are NEVER out of sight of a steeple. Of course, most of those churches have maybe two dozen members tops, the youngest being in their Seventies…
Lotsa little churches all around there, most of them dying. And there’s always somebody (usually an urbanite with kids eager to get away from the big bad city) who piously claims they’ve been Burdened by God to Plant yet another Church…
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Michael mentioned issues in rural settings (applies to
the outer suburban ring too I believe)and it has to do
with competition between many community churches which, around these parts, is usually “sheep swapping” which means that people chase the latest successful church and when that’s not trendy anymore they look for the next one so you have this competition, of sorts, going on to see who can come up with the next trendy “thing” to get folks in.
Another thing I’ve heard from pastors in the area is that starting a new work is fine as long as it’s not in “our” (“my”) community and the reason being is that if the church really takes off then everyone want’s to go there which means that you loose memebers which, ultimately, equals less money to keep their ship afloat.
Case in point is a church in a neighor county that, when started, needed a sponsor church but the established churches in that county would not sponsor the new one because they feared it would take off and pull people away from their churches. A church I was attending in Knoxville at the time ended up being the sponsor for the plant which, btw, is doing well. Additionally though, these new churches are started
to reach, as one church put it, the people that were
“burnt out” on church – in other words a contemportary church for all those who, basically, don’t like traditional church – seems to be a trend down here…. so much for the idea of reaching the people who need it most. Most of these new churches are started in outer suburban and rural areas where it’s not necessarliy needed or at least not to the degree that the inner-city needs it.
Could go on and on about this but got to end at some point but the bottome line is that evans are fearful of the inner-city, have established lifestyles that they are unwilling to give up which means that they will not usually give much financially outside of mission work sponsored by the church they attend and more. Unfortunately, I must admit, I’m guily of the same many times much to my shame but this is an area that I need to work on and it’s not easy because I was brought up in church surroundings that enforced and re-enforced this mindset and it’s been incredibly difficult to overcome. Much work still to be done.
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I think the comment about how it is not very “sexy” to plant churches in certain areas is dead-on. I have noticed that it seems to be easier to get people to go on short-term mission trips to foreign countries where it is more exotic, than it is to get them to go to the other side of town and do much the same thing.
In the suburban area of my county where I live now, we seem to have numerous thriving evangelical churches, and this seems to be where most of the new church plants take place as well. But I grew up on the other side of town in a suburban area as well, but one that was definitely…”lower class” let’s say. My family always struggled to find a vibrant church in our area. Most of the churches were either static and status-quo, or if they did grow, they always seemed to fall apart after a few years. And the situation has not changed much to this day. People still wonder about the upper middle class churches and organizations that will go thousands of miles to Africa, but not 15 miles across town.
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The answer(s) is obvious. And most of the answers come down to money. Mainly, no one wants to sit next to the poor, or feel the guilt.
In downtown Wichita, KS, where I live, most of the churches have “moved on up” to the suburbs. One church, First Baptist, is determined to stay downtown, but has lost most of its members because they don’t want to walk the gauntlet of begging homeless.
As with Kentucky, most of the churches that are left downtown are Catholic and serve the Hispanics.
Actually, the home churches are doing more in the inner city because they usually don’t have the overhead.
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Follow all the numbers, davidbmc
Rural areas have the same problem. There’s almost no church planting here in Appalachia. Same ol’ same ‘ol. Not very sexy. The SBC/KBC has made some good efforts in some counties.
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follow the money
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I worked with inner city churches for several years in the 80’s and early 90’s. Local churches that are still hanging on usually have real turf issues. They are willing to see you help them, but it is very rare that you will see them partner to help another church succeed at their expense. Turf, control, legitimacy, history, all that complicated stuff. As I said, a church sponsoring a church plant has to have a real maturity about their investment and if they are in the same area, a real sacrificial, loving attitude about what success of another church may mean for them.
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My experience…I moved to Philadelphia last May and surfed around for a time before settling into a Brethren in Christ church that has really embraced the inner city church planting/community action call. They’ve planted 3 congregations now in south Philly, the Kensington/Port Richmond neighborhood, and one in Camden and the churches really try to get involved in the community through prison ministeries, cell groups, a thrift store, joining school reform groups, etc.
I think that a lot of churches don’t get involved in the inner cities due to fear, as other posters commented. When I told my great-aunt that I was living in Philadelphia, she grabbed her chest and said that she would be “praying extra hard for me.” A lot of people still think “Welcome to Philadelphia, now duck” is an accurate assessment of the city.
I’m not sure where I was going with that, but I love being a part of a church that is genuinely trying to be the light in Philly.
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Brian:
Just curious – Are you partnering with the existing churches in the inner city? How is it working out?
Our little bit of experience – The existing churches need money and bodies, in that order. They don’t want partners. They want people to sign on to what they are doing, give them money and do a job.
The problem is – the neighborhood has probably already rejected them. If you partner with them, you are rejected from day one by the neighborhood. What you’re really doing is giving the existing churches a little more time to keep doing the same things.
Since many of the people in many of the existing churches in the inner city do not live in the neighborhood, and are not reaching the neighborhood, do they really understand the needs of the community? If they do, why are they not responding to the community, and why is the community not responding to them?
Christian service in the inner city, in our opinion, means serving people. In the suburbs if you tell your neighbor, who has asked you what you do on Sunday mornings, that every Sunday morning is “Christian service†or “church serviceâ€, he’ll probably ask you where you go to church, especially if he is a church-attender.
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Why hardly any evangelical urban churches?
1) It’s diffficult to do, and maybe even dangerous.
2) It’s different in almost every way. It’s really a cross-cultural ministry for a lot of people.
3) It usually doesn’t have or attract the resources that a suburban church does, and perhaps never will.
Many commenters have talked about it being dangerous, or about fear. Fine. Not everyone is going to be called to this kind of incarnational ministry (and it should be incarnational). We know that. But some will — if the call is articulated and the spirit of God is at work. Some will. Problem is, almost no suburban evangelical churches are articulating that call.
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In Australian cities, the poorer people live in outer suburbs while the inner areas are rich.
The inner areas have the least Christians (particularly so in Sydney), while any bible belts are further out, usually in middle-class suburbs. In Adelaide there are lots of churches in the city centre, typically with members driving in from everywhere.
I’m a geography & stats nerd so I study this in detail (click my link).
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Brian:
I think that’s a good idea, but I think it also has some limitations. I’m more interested in new churches than anything else, and I’ll admit that my experience with some traditional African American denominations would discourage me from any partnership.
There are reasons that inner city churches are dying, and there are reasons that new churches can grow. There can be some partnerships, but I think those churches already there will be very resistant to the very changes that are most vital to a new church plant.
A new church plant needs a mature sponsoring church. Location isn’t as important as mature vision and a right philosophy of how to help a new church grow.
But I would never shut the door you are talking about.
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“church growth Darwinists”
I’m stealing that!!
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“No efforts to reach the community were ever done other than door knocking evangelism and VBS. Not discounting those, but even then, the color line was never broken and the church was surrounded by African-Americans.”
Why not go to the existing African-American Christians ministering to those communities and help them out?
If we can’t even develop community with actual black Christians who believe exactly the same things we do even down to tertiary and quarternary doctrines, reaching unchurched blacks seems kind of like a pipe dream, no?
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One reason might be that it’s terribly hard. Here’s an article on some young Catholic people trying to “make a difference” in Washington DC.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/16/AR2009011602401_pf.html
“She and her housemates have taken vows of poverty, obedience and chastity. They pray every morning and evening and attend Mass daily. In their rowhouse on T Street NW, they have no TV. No Internet. No alcohol inside the house. And no sex. Ever. What the young women lack in amenities, they make up for in sightings of rats and roaches.This is what it looks like to reject careerism and affluence in pursuit of spiritual fulfillment. This is what it looks like to become a modern-day radical.”
and
“Simple House calls its work “friendship evangelization,” and it’s messy and often frustrating. This is not like giving food to those dying of starvation. Gratitude is often elusive, and the problems the missionaries see — signs of child abuse and neglect, drug dealing, repeated stints in jail, even a girl refusing to attend a private high school that could help lift her out of poverty — don’t lend themselves to simple solutions. At times, to avoid losing their faith in the power of God to change lives, the missionaries debrief one another by asking: “Where did everyone see Christ today?”
Would a church gladly set itself down in the middle of this? Of course we *should,* but let’s not attribute our failure to do so *only* to racism and selfishness. It seems to take a thoroughly sacrificial life to do this, and most of us, certainly including myself, are not all that sacrificial. I like my TV, my car, my internet, my safe home, soft bed, good food. It’s just too hard, at least right now, to renounce them all for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven.
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“I agree with you that bringing suburban culture into the inner city isn’t the answer, but that’s bad church planting anyway. Supporting a church plant = missions = culture crossing with the Gospel.”
Why not partner with the existing churches in the inner city rather than going it alone? They’ll understand the needs of the community better than outsiders.
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I grew up in an inner city church. Big fundamentalist church with close to 1000 members at one point. Even as I was growing in the 60s, the members were driving from the first ring of suburbs. My family was one of the few that lived in the immediate neighborhood. Most people probably lived 1-3 miles away.
Today, I doubt if that church has 300 members who ever attend, and I’d guess that 95%+ drive from out in the country. 5-10 miles.
No efforts to reach the community were ever done other than door knocking evangelism and VBS. Not discounting those, but even then, the color line was never broken and the church was surrounded by African-Americans. Now the church is almost the only non-business structure for many blocks. Several surrounding churches are dead or almost dead.
The larger churches have almost all moved out into the county, pursuing the suburbs.
I just don’t get the “people” aspect of this. Who did Jesus send us to? Who did he see as sheep without a shepherd? Where are the influential churches in the NT? It’s so strange.
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We used to attend a downtown church, in an area of town that needed a lot of help. Not a single member of the church lived within a mile of the church. We took a survey and the vast majority lived more than a 10 minute drive away from the church.
We ostensibly welcomed the community, but the building was dark and locked evenings. People from the neighbourhood stood out like sore thumbs on Sunday mornings among the well-dressed suburbanites with Starbucks cups. The new pastor has decided to focus on getting students from the University down the block (who won’t be here long) instead of the houses full of people on the street. That’s one of the reasons we’re no longer attending.
Cultural outreach through emulation is so important now, but only so long as the culture we are reaching out to is cool. We’ll become artsy hipsters and shave our heads and wear soul patches to reach the artsy hipsters. We’ll run skateboard parks and extreme sport events and get tattoos to evangelize the skate crowd. But for some strange reason, no one wants to try to emulate the homeless, or the single moms, or the families living on support, or the kids with no parental influence.
By trying to reach the cool folks by emulating them, we have an excuse to have our toys and our clothes and our expensive hobbies. It’s a way to be consumeristic while telling ourselves that we’re actually doing God’s work. Working (really effectively working) in the inner city requires sacrifice of lifestyle and pride and coolness.
And who wants to do that when we can go to a church with a climbing wall and espressos in the lobby?
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I’m a little puzzled on the “too many churches.” I’d say a major problem with evangelicalism is we don’t have nearly enough small churches, and are too interested in having a few large ones. We’re church growth Darwinists.
ms
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There are too many churches in Lexington, including in the urban areas. The problem is not a lack of chruches. They are everywhere. I suppose the issue is- are they the right kind of churches? Are they God approved? I’ve often thought if 90% of churches closed their doors it would probably be a good thing.
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Brian,
>…Does Lexington not have an established inner-city minority community with its own church culture?
I did not say there are no churches in Lexington’s inner city.
I asked why evangelicals aren’t starting churches in the inner city.
I agree with you that bringing suburban culture into the inner city isn’t the answer, but that’s bad church planting anyway. Supporting a church plant = missions = culture crossing with the Gospel.
ms
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+Alan
I acknowledged in the article who was already there. I was asking why evangelicals only start churches in the suburbs and don’t start new churches in the inner city and urban core.
ms
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Quite possibly, one of the reasons we may not see as much inner city ministry is because in the day of global focus we have set our eyes upon the world where the people are more hungry for the gospel. — GsusGuy
Well, there’s been a long tradition in missionary-oriented Protestants to give foreign missions priority over local ones; the more “foreign”, the more prestigious. All those “Missionary to AFRICA” jokes started for a reason.
Me? I spend half my life in a subculture that’s as alien as anything you’ll find in Peace Child or End of the Spear, and it’s not only here in SoCal, it’s diffused all over America like some parallel universe that occasionally peeks through the Reality Barrier.
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The E. Free church has been doing inner city church plants for years, at least here in the Eastern District. Their outreach has been to minority communities more than to the folks who “look like us”. I’m not involved in any of them but I read about it in the denominational news mags we have at church.
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I think when I said “interluders” I meant “interlopers.”
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I told iMonk that my reply was much too long for a comment post. So, I wrote a blog post based on his question. You can read it at: http://www.orthocuban.com/2009/02/why-dont-we-reach-out-to-the-inner-city/ If you decide to reply, please post here since it is iMonk’s question (hmm or double post both here and there, GRIN).
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Brian definitely has a point. Lexington does very much have quite a few small local churches – traditionally black Baptist churches, Pentecostal and Charistmatic churches, AME churches, scattered throughout the very down, downtown area. There is now a Vineyard church very close to that area. So, “the Church” is there. In wonder do we mean a particular kind of church?
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“Cultural concentrations (forgive the use of the phrase, but I think it gets the meaning across – “Chinatownsâ€) are best served by an organization that is sensitive too and understands the people to whom it is reaching out. Rich suburban whites, no matter how hip or diverse they think are, will more times than not appear as patronizing and out of touch.”
Our mostly anglo-saxon descended group supports a pastor who works with InerVarsity in urban small colleges and he’s basically said that us “just showing up” would usually do more harm than good. For a long list of reasons. And I agree with him. It’s sad but true.
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I am left with some unanswered questions. The account of Lexington I read does not sound like what I am used to in an inner city. My experience is with cities in Texas and Louisiana.
From what I am accustomed to, the central neighborhoods with the urban professionals living in loft apartments are not the same neighborhoods as the ones with the minorities living in poverty. But Lexington is a lot smaller than Dallas or Houston, so those folks may be in closer proximity there.
Does Lexington not have an established inner-city minority community with its own church culture? I’m used to seeing black neighborhoods with black evangelical/Pentecostal/whatever churches, Latino neighborhoods with Latino churches, Asian neighborhoods with Asian churches, etc.
From my experience, in cities that do have such a thing, the absolute last thing lily-white suburban evangelical churches need to do is come riding their white horses up the freeway to do church planting and ministry in the inner city sight unseen. I’ve seen this do much more harm than good, because the white folks come up in their Tahoes thinking they know everything there is to know about running a church, and glory be now they’ve come to teach the unenlightened natives how to minister to their own neighborhoods, as if some LifeGatePoint Community Church that didn’t even exist before 2001 knows more about the block than the people who have lived and ministered to the community there for generations.
Worse, when these patronizing suburbanites get a chilly reception for their efforts, they grow indignant that these poor nonwhites could be so ungrateful towards their attempts to fulfill their “noblesse oblige,” and thereafter harden their racial attitudes.
In order for inner-city ministry not to be an utter failure from the outset, suburban evangelicals have to partner with existing urban churches, do very little talking and a lot of listening, and submit to the leadership of those who have been there and done that. Over time, this will establish credibility and trust in that community.
Two things then can happen (that I’ve noticed): one, it becomes possible for a handful of mission-minded folks to move into the neighborhood without being regarded with hostility as interluders or invaders. Two: some people from the inner city might venture out on the freeway on Sunday to check out this suburban church that neither ignores them nor patronizes them.
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In support of Navy Chaplain’s point:
We have five children and I was about to say that we never had to raise them in the inner city . . . but then I remembered that when they were small we did indeed raise some of them in downtown Cairo, Egypt . . . and that’s sort of a city . . . but different issues.
However, we did choose to live in the poorest downtown area of a town (not a city) here in the US once. We lived there for six years. We had a large lot, on which I, with my son’s help, built a skate park and a large tree house. Our place pulled in kids like moths to a porch light.
We were soon overwhelmed with needy kids, none with two parents and several who were living with grandma or in mom’s house alone while she had taken off on a trip with her latest boyfriend, or had gone out of sate on a drug run.
I remember coming home one night and counting 37 boys in our house, besides our 5 kids. The problem for that situation, while my wife was home during the day to supervise and liked that role, I had an hour commute each way to a demanding job. While we wanted to be a light to these kids, most experimenting with drugs and sex and a void of parenting, toward the end, they were starting to win some of the battles. My son Tyler was about to go over to the dark side and we saw the writing on the wall. So, for the sake of our kids, we felt like it was time to move.
But, if we had been a church in that town that we could have been part of, if I had been in full time ministry (as I was in Cairo) and had more time, I think we could have made it work. But I do have to respect those who live in those hard places (like Cairo and this that American town or inner city) and make it work. I also respect those who see the writing on the wall, and move for the sake of their own families. It has to be individualized.
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In my travels, I have come across churches that were in the suburbs that have church plants in places like South America, Russia, and Asia. Glancing at their prayer lists I found requests from missionaries around the world.
Quite possibly, one of the reasons we may not see as much inner city ministry is because in the day of global focus we have set our eyes upon the world where the people are more hungry for the gospel.
Our church is an inner city plant from a suburb church. I would have to confess that ministry has become more financial meaning those churches supplying the funds are looking for where they can get the most bang for their buck. And that bang can best be quantified by saved souls. Is it right? …
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Lucy, then DON’T stick out. I grew up in a solidly lower working class neighborhood in New Jersey. One of our neighbors was the vice president of a bank, and they had children. They didn’t have to live in that neighborhood, and we were never quite sure why they did. We had theories, but we never knew for sure. The thing about them was that they didn’t stick out. They had a modest house. Until their son got old enough to drive, they only had one family car, and it wasn’t significantly better than what everyone else had. They didn’t buy all the latest and greatest whatevers for the kids. They didn’t wear name brand stuff. As soon as their older son got old enough – he got a job – just like the rest of us did when we turned 16. The only reason we knew about the dad was because 1) we saw him when he left for work every day. He dressed like you’d expect for a bank v.p. in NYC to dress, 2) the oldest son told us what his father did for a living.
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Syncretism – Isn’t that the word? Combining the beliefs of the follower of Jesus with the religion of the empire, replete with a system of temples and paid priests – Doesn’t that pretty well describe what the Christian religion has become in America? Isn’t this mostly about “the money is in the suburbs, so follow the money”?
This reminds me of my old professor. When he moved to a new city, someone told him to check out a certain bank. He visited the bank, and then told several of us he wouldn’t do business there. It seems it was in a posh suburb. The lobby had marble floors and walls, with crystal chandeliers. The desks were expensive mahogany, and so on. He said it felt more country club than bank. He decided he did not want his money to go to help them pay for the crystal and marble. Instead, he found a simple local bank that invested in the community.
The very expensive buildings that American churches build on very expensive properties, in posh, expensive neighborhoods smell more of the religion of the empire, of the business of attracting big money, than they do of Jesus.
Center/inner city expressions of the Kingdom work. However, that doesn’t mean trying to transplant the suburban “model†to the center of the city. We know some of those groups. They bought and built out a piece of property, hired staffing and then drove from their home in the burbs to “go to churchâ€. When the neighbors made a mess in the street, the church folks called the police. When the church folks had a party, the did it in the fellowship room, not in the street. The neighborhood ignores them, even though their block-long building is beautiful. It might as well be Fort Knox.
It does take a special breed to minister in the city – those who love the Lord their God with all their heart, mind and strength, and their neighbors as themselves. When I was a kid, we called those folks Christians. Today, I call them followers of Jesus.
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I don’t see much church planting of any kind going on these days. Oh, there’s plenty of transplanting (mostly as a result of the aforementioned white flight), but is is rare to see a new plant these days that isn’t some kind of break-away. If anything, the mega-churches are consolidating the available places at which to worship the way Wal*Mart is gobbling up small retail businesses.
I think as far as the inner cities go, those of us that don’t spend any time there (short of the occasion doors-locked, windows-up dash through on the way to the downtown arena) are ill equipped to even begin to understand the needs in such a way as to provide a church that seeks to minister to that local congregation.
There’s more complexity to the makeup of inner cities besides poor African Americans, and rich single metrosexual urbanites living in loft apartments.
Cultural concentrations (forgive the use of the phrase, but I think it gets the meaning across – “Chinatowns”) are best served by an organization that is sensitive too and understands the people to whom it is reaching out. Rich suburban whites, no matter how hip or diverse they think are, will more times than not appear as patronizing and out of touch.
One of the lessons from the foreign mission field is that although American missionaries can help establish churches and train leaders, the real success comes when the indigenous church leaders take on the task.
Although I think our American fixation on self-reliance would probably prevent the idea from working, one approach might be to bring “reverse Missionaries” here from the foreign fields. A trained convert from say Saudi Arabia could be posted to Dearborn, Michigan where there is at least a common language, culture and context for interaction.
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I’m not so naive as to think money isn’t an issue, but I also wonder if it’s not because inner city ministry is tough.
My family had a friend that worked in the projects in New Orleans for years. The guy had a passion for ministering for kids without fathers, and he wore himself out daily working with these kids. The problem came when drugs and gangs sucked up so many of those kids at ages 11 and 12, and sometimes younger. That sort of thing is incredibly discouraging, and eventually, he moved on. This was a few years before Katrina, so that situation didn’t play into his decision to leave.
Having never been fully invested in that sort of ministry myself, I won’t heap blame on the guy for moving on. Inner city ministry is a real battlefield. You’re seeing a lot of very young people in some dire situations that people of a suburban background just don’t have a frame of reference for. A lot of us are scared to deal with that.
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The professor who taught my class on Ministry in an Urban setting always said, “The urban church is an island of irrelevancy in a sea of despair”. That’s always stuck with me.
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I have had many discussions with my church family about this issue. My church used to be located in Detroit and moved to the suburbs decades ago. I think that it was a mistake.
I often wonder if Jesus or Paul walked into my church or a homeless person if they would be treated with the same care and dignity as our Senior Pastor.
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Jim
“Yep. When we talk about “church growth†at my church, I point out that, shoot, if we become known as the church that welcomes ex-cons, we’ll have more folks than we know what to do with. I’m politely told that they’re not our target market. So, sad thing, I can’t recommend my church to prisoners.”
Are they willing to say where the ex-cons SHOULD go?
This sounds a lot like the business meeting at the Baptist church of my youth in the late sixties where it was discussed “what do we do if a black family shows up?”. Longest meeting I can remember. No decision was made. I do think it was the beginning of the end for the pastor’s time at the church. His position was basically why is there a question?
The more things change ….
“If anything, a suspect that many African Americans avoid Anglo churches because Anglos get too excited about having African-American co-congregants. It’s all a bit too much to take.”
Well they do raise their hands, clap when singing, and even speak out loud during the sermons. As an aunt of mine once complained. 😦
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I agree with both Navy Chaplain and Wolf Paul. A few years ago, a few couple in my church talked about how cool it would be to buy houses near our church (it’s in a tough urban area) and reach more of the surrounding community. Unfortunately, not enough of us were at the stage of life to do that. And like Navy Chaplain said, now that we all have kids, would we even do it? I have a friend who lived down the street from my church. She moved to the ‘burbs when her kids couldn’t even ride their bikes in the alley, the area had gotten so dangerous. I’m an at-home mom. I’d be terrified in a neighborhood like that – partly because I would stick out so badly, after a lifetime in the suburbs. Although it’s still something that my husband and I talk about and wish we had the guts to do.
I think there are a lot of factors going on, but one relates to the celibate calling that Wolf Paul mentioned (which I think is a very real issue with untapped potential). But I’m thinking of older folks whose kids are grown, who don’t need the “stuff” required by families, who could move in to urban areas and love the people. Maybe instead of older people being encouraged in their pursuit of the perfect golf course and snow bird retirement, the churches should be helping them – the ones who can finally be free from some of the cares of the world – to build the kingdom in the inner cities and urban areas. Pretty soon the baby boomers will outnumber those of us under 35. Makes sense to me to call them into service. Often they have more resources, more time, and hopefully more wisdom, than us young folks.
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I’ve felt the same way for years. 2o years ago I joined a small church in a warehouse district here, the church is part of a well-known network or “movement.” The first year, there was lots of talk about homeless ministry, youth ministry, reaching out to “emo” kids and the like. They soon moved out to the highway as a megachurch and filled up with people who live in gated communities, and all that talk ended. I’m now involved in an older PCUSA church in the city, easily accessible from downtown (or anywhere in the city by bus). We’re not an ultra-lib PCUSA — we’re open,evangelical, “confessing,” and struggling with barely 100 members. But this is the right place for me.
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For those who said that parking is a pragmatic issue: does this mean that most of the congregation are commuters from elsewhere? What % of your congregation relies on public transportation or lives within walking distance?
For anyone other than the homeless, Los Angeles’ inner city has – until the last decade – been almost entirely a commuter experience. Major areas were not previously zoned for long-term residential living.
We just got our first urban supermarket a couple of years ago, and it is a big success. The housing now being offered downtown is for gentrified loft dwellers who’ve gone for the whole Dwell/Wallpaper magazine lifestyle, so they aren’t interested in a suburban church culture.
Most of the churches in the core of the LA downtown (remember the iconic “Jesuis Saves” sign?) fled for the suburbs years ago, and Sunday finds the museum-and-sports crowd in the core. The evangelical presence is mainly mercy ministries (The Salvation Army, Rescue Mission, etc.) and storefront “Iglesia”.
One exception is Mosaic church, which meets in a nightclub downtown. It draws students from USC and FIDM, and twentysomethings who drive in from the suburbs (as does Erwin Macmanus).
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Michael,
What? Go back and check out your Bible. You missed that part in the Book of Hezekiah where Jesus said, “Go for the low-hanging fruit.”
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Yep. When we talk about “church growth” at my church, I point out that, shoot, if we become known as the church that welcomes ex-cons, we’ll have more folks than we know what to do with.
I’m politely told that they’re not our target market. So, sad thing, I can’t recommend my church to prisoners.
Our “outreach” is basically running a tony pre-k for upper middle class folks. To be sure, many of whom are unchurched, but almost all of our resources are spent on ministries and services to ourselves.
That being said, I don’t think it’s simply a matter of moving your church to the inner city. Fact is, just like suburbanites, urbanites tend to like worshipping in churches in which people look like them.
I think it was R.J. Neuhaus who frequently noted that the most segregated hour of the week is 11 a.m. on Sunday. I don’t think that it’s all a matter of transaction costs to commute to suburbs or white exclusion.
If anything, a suspect that many African Americans avoid Anglo churches because Anglos get too excited about having African-American co-congregants. It’s all a bit too much to take.
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Rich Mullins said:
Jesus said whatever you do to the least of these my brothers you’ve done it to me. And this is what I’ve come to think. That if I want to identify fully with Jesus Christ, who I claim to be my savior and Lord, the best way that I can do that is to identify with the poor. This I know will go against the teachings of all the popular evangelical preachers. But they’re just wrong. They’re not bad, they’re just wrong. Christianity is not about building an absolutely secure little niche in the world where you can live with your perfect little wife and your perfect little children in a beautiful little house where you have no gays or minority groups anywhere near you. Christianity is about learning to love like Jesus loved and Jesus loved the poor and Jesus loved the broken.
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Most suburban churches are made up almost entirely of people who were already churched, but got bored or otherwise disatisified where they were and went off in search of something else. There are very few new converts in these churches – only the kinds of people who feel the need to respond to the altar call every few months.
Once upon a time not so long ago, I worked for the Salvation Army. First of all, I am always astounded at the people who don’t realize the Salvation Army is a church/denomination. At one point, my boss told me that the reason you’ll never see a Salvation Army church with a steeple on it is because they didn’t want to be associated with the kinds of churches where if you had a real problem/need you’d be told, “We’ll pray for you.” They wanted people to know that the Salvation Army is a place where your physical as well as your spiritual needs could be met.
I thank God for my time at THAT Salvation Army (not all of them are so good). The employees from the Captain down LOVED the people we served through the shelter and the various outreaches, and lives were changed because of it. I think it is the first time that I really experienced God’s love as a tangible thing. I once asked my boss if anyone kept record of people who were helped by the Salvation Army who later joined. He said, “Where do you think we get our membership from?”
At the time, once of my friends was all caught up in the Brownsville here—err Revival. I really infuriated her by saying I didn’t think God wanted us chasing thrills and chills. That real revival meant carrying out the work He gave us to do, and I wondered if the Salvation Army and churches like them hadn’t been quietly carrying out the most successful evangelical outreach of the last 100+ years. She didn’t speak to me for awhile after that.
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Fear. I think more than anything, it’s fear. I’m working with a small group of people in a “sketchy” neighborhood in Rochester, NY in the planning stages of what we hope will be a church plant. We’ve been broken into once already. We have a 2 year old daughter. There’s nothing comfortable about this at all.
The fear, and some legitimate concerns are magnified when there’s kids involved. We will not be sending our daughter to the local public school, because they’re really just that bad. That means we have to also have the money to send her to a private school, which means we both have to work, which in turn means that our house is empty all day 4 days a week, which in turn means we’re more susceptible to break-ins.
We just got a German Shepherd.
Anyway, fear and discomfort. Someone suggested that maybe God is not calling suburban people into the cities, but urban people. But I think so many evangelicals don’t realize that they are who they are – middle to upper class whites – because of past and present racism: the white flight. The remedy is not that poor minorities need to work harder to be just like us (though hard work is absolutely essential; I’ll avoid getting into the perils of and damage caused by the welfare state for now); it’s that some of us need to humbly move back into the cities. And not just the trendy, artsy areas. (I emphasize “humbly,” because we have to avoid the mentality that only wealthy whites can solve the problem.)
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May I rant (with you)?
I’m a formerly rural guy—hate the ‘burbs, have a huge heart for the city. I’m an evangelical, albeit of a more emerging (definitely missional) flavor. I tried planting an “urban” missional church (center of a midwest city of 150,000) about three years back, and it was super tough. Several things have become very clear to me re: the difficulty of engaging evangelicals in urban planting:
1. They are results driven. They judge faithfulness on the basis of “fruitfulness”, and the fact is that trees only grow in good soil. The urban context is uncultivated soil (anyone read Tim Downs, Finding Common Ground?), and so not ready to grow trees, much less bear fruit. Evangelicals are not willing (often times hiding behind hyperCalvinistic theology) to invest in soil cultivation when they could go elsewhere and get quick “results.”
2. They are scared to death of postmodernity—utterly disoriented. The myriad problems posed by postmodernity are nauseatingly deep-rooted and complex (the exponentially growing rich-poor divide, the growing disconnectedness/independence of people, the superficial over-connectedness and busyness of people, deep-seated suspicion of absolutes and metanarratives). All the cards are stacked against evangelicals in the urban context. Several leaders have recognized the need to do something, they’ve tried, and failed, and given up.
3. They are unwilling to give up the American dream, which is an absolute necessity if one is going to successfully plant and nurture an urban missional church. Building community is necessary for survival, but it can only happen if people surrender their isolationist lifestyle in exchange for an interdependent, covenanted one.
4. They don’t see the big picture vision of why reaching cities is strategic to the advancement of the Kingdom. The apostles got the vision. We don’t. Evangelicals are following the boomers wherever they happen to migrate, because the boomers and older function on a Christendom paradigm. The young, urban professionals as well as ghetto dwellers do not. Cities are hostile territories for the gospel, not to mention evangelicals. So the risk is really high (not just financially).
I am holding out hope that there emerges from among the new wave of “younger evangelicals” (if not too many of them get sucked into the “neoReformed” vortex) a concerted, committed vision for and devotion to reaching cities for Christ. Count me among them.
Thanks for posting this.
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Peter+
“No money in it.”
Well, yes for the cynics.
But even if the church members are not cynics they have issues of money. It plain costs more to operate in urban centers than in the burbs. And so starting from scratch requires outside money for a while, sometimes a long while, before the congregation can be self supporting. Even starting small you need some amount of heat, light, plumbing, etc…
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Money – right. It depends on what you mean by “plant a church” – that has a range of meanings. I think there are probably at least a couple of new-ish “church plants” in downtown Lexington, but they’re all but invisible to someone driving around looking for churches. Big building, program churches aren’t going to be planted there because of money, as it has been said – money needed to start them and needed to keep them up, pay the bills. Unless you have a benefactor, it probably ain’t happnin’.
J. Michael Jones is probably talking about Communality. They’re still around as far as I know, with people living in at least a couple of houses in the downtown area. These are people who feel specifically called to do this with their lives. Not everyone is called to such specific work. There are probably other house-church type situations going on downtown too, but we can’t see them.
There is definitely a Catholic presence (is that part of “we”?) downtown, always has been. And nobody is shutting those churches down. They work together, those 3 downtown parishes, and it’s not all rich, white folk driving from the burbs. There is one predominately African American parish right in the thick of it down there, and another that reaches out to the large Latino population now in Lexington. Not to mention the several mission type deals there, bot Catholic and otherwise – that is the Church being present among the people there – maybe not “planting a church” but being there.
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Inner city ministry really seems like a challenge. I live in a smallish city, maybe 40,000 folks. Our small downtown is still home to the large steeple churches and they seem to do a good job in mercy ministries, we do have a salvation army church, and I have visited and had their pastor preach for my small rural congregation.
I was very impressed with their ministry.
But big city real deal urban ministry really only can be successful when a person lives amongst the people they are serving. And that requires (at least realisticly for me) either older folks with grown kids, or young folks without kids.
Right or wrong I wouldn’t want to put my children in that situation.
Sort of makes Paul’s thoughts on the benefits, (not mandate) that being single really is a good way to do ministry.
Having a family is a blessing from God, but it does complicate the issue.
My children will be grown and I will be able to retire as a school teacher at 51. My wife and I have already talked about doing some minstry either in a very remote poor rural section or in a true inner city setting.
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No money in it.
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One more thing…often this is what you get when an evangelical church tries to move into the inner-city:
Ybor City, in Tampa, is surrounded by extremely poor, crime-ridden neighborhoods. At night there is one street that is a major party street, with a dozen nightclubs and a couple of gay bars.
So you have a church started in that neighborhood which openly states the people they are trying to reach are: college students, urban professionals, and young families. That is not the demographic make-up of Ybor City….not by a long shot.
never mind the fact that anyone thinks that churches should even have a stated demographic……
God’s demographic….human beings.
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but i’m not cynical…really 😦
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cultural differences. choosing churches we like instead of attending those which are closest to us. white flight.
That’s why there aren’t as many inner-city churches.
Most evangelical leaders are not equipped to minister to the inner-city. They can’t relate. When they do try, often it’s done in a way that pities those who live in the inner-cities, rather than seeing them as equals….thus the many Mercy ministries, homeless ministries, etc.
They swoop in, do their thing, and then leave.
Churches/ministries can never really be effective in that way. They may temporarily help in crisis situations, but they aren’t there when someone needs a pastor to counsel them in a family crisis, or someone wanders into a church office unannounced looking for help, guidance.
You can’t build a Christian community if you don’t live in the community.
The mostly white-bread brand of evangelicalism will always have trouble with this. There is so much cultural baggage attached to evangelicalism that overthrowing it to get to the bare gospel is a mighty task, indeed.
Inner-city people are dealing with real problems while suburban evangelicals are hosting speakers dealing with YEC debates and $50 per person marriage seminars given by a stand-up comic.
How can they relate?
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Navy Chaplain:
Good thoughts. Are you aware that John Piper requires all his staff to live in the neighborhood of the church in downtown Minneapolis? (Or did.)
peace
ms
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space, space, space
I belong to an inner-city congregation. Space is always the issue. We are moving for the third time because we have outgrown our space again. Parking is always a problem. It is very expensive. You can not have mid-week gatherings because all the parking is taken with people who work downtown. My main concern is that we miss people who are considering joining us because when they finally decide to visit us, we are no longer in that location. We are still in the downtown area but there is no consistency. We also end up spending money and repeatedly using sweat-equity outfitting new space to meet our needs.
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My experience is somewhat different. I live in a distant exurb of Los Angeles. I used to have a job that required me to drive through some of the worst sections of LA. In areas like Compton, Watts, the Crenshaw district, and other South Central areas there are little Baptist and Pentecostal Holiness churches, sometimes on every block. In fact the sight of so many churches in some of the really bad areas has lead me to question why if there are so many churches it hasn’t had a greater effect in making these neighborhoods less dangerous and preserved them from decay. West of downtown, in the Wilshire district, there are a boatload of Korean and Hispanic churches. Around MacArthur Park you have street preachers with megaphones preaching(and often yelling) in both Spanish and English, while the drug dealers and prostitutes are flagging down cars on the same block. Further down Wilshire you have the great city churches and cathedrals belonging to the major denominations.
Ministry in hardcore urban areas takes a special breed of person, one who is resistant to the hopelessness and heartbreak of such a bleak area and disappointment of so many broken lives.
Other urban areas must be different, but out here there are all sorts of churches in the inner city.
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Michael, you’ve inspired me to start mapping the spatiality of church in Lexington – http://virtuphill.blogspot.com/2009/02/geographies-of-church.html
It’ll be interesting to see what the data looks like once the map is done.
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Oh, about urban ministry methods – I’m kinda drawn to the way that for instance the Potter Street Community (formerly known as The Simple Way) do – reaching out to the neighbourhood and trying to meet their needs. Build relationships, become friends, and live together as an organic community.
Urban lifestyle and what we call this postmodern world is really longing for REAL community. Churches are sometimes not the most attractive thing, they tend to be rather artificial, even cold. At least here.
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There’s a great thesis in this post for any Urban Geographers out there. . ..
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Most evangelicals don’t live in an urban setting. That seems to me the biggest reason we lack ministries & church plants in urban settings. I think that TALKING about inner city ministries is quite popular among evangelical churches, which is why you’re reading this post. Urban people have a tendency to avoid suburbanites, which makes starting a “ministry” in our usual way more than ridiculous. Commuting to work is fine. Commuting for ministry is exhausting. In Portland it’s cool to have an inner city ministry, so churches tryig to be cool latch onto the idea and start ministries that run well for about a month and then shut down.
What if suburban folks aren’t CALLED to urban areas? What if God wants to bring up urban leaders to lead people to Christ? What if God already is?
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as someone stated above, $.
i’m in Budapest (*rather* different situation we have here in Hungary), and we also have very few churches downtown. the only one that is available for young people of course is Calvary Hill, and that’s it. of course we have lots of churches in the city, but most of them are in the outer districts, and not many attend anyway…
many are pondering what to do… few people have the opportunity to actually do things.
and about newly planted churches – the problem with new churches is here that most of the time they just suck up young people from other churches, REAL mission is rarely done. there would be no point in opening anything if it would follow the same tendency.
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Commenting on what Navy Chaplain said:
Perhaps the Evangelical disdain for the celibate lifestyle handicaps us here, and perhaps that is what Paul was talking about in 1 Corinthians.
Chaplain, I don’t think your attitude makes you wrong, Paul said it is normal, but that is why he encourages those who are called to a celibate lifestyle to embrace it because it will free them for the work of the gospel. Evangelicals today tend to discourage and be suspicious of anyone who feels called to a celibate life.
I also believe that even mission-minded Evangelicals in the US tend to shortchange Home Missions in favor of Foreign Missions:
Short of dedicated, celibate workers who don’t need to worry about their families, the only ones who can successfully work in the urban core are people who live there already and would live there even if they were not preaching the gospel — in other words, they don’t have to struggle with the idea of sacrificing their family’s well-being for their ministry.
But in my experience the suburban churches who have the money would rather support some of their own people somewhere on an exotic mission field than support a stranger working in the inner city. For the same reason it is often easier to get $4000/mo to support a US missionary family somewhere on a foreign field than $1000/mo to support a national family on the same field.
And of course (someone mentioned this already) it is not politically correct for a white church to pay a black or hispanic pastor to minister to inner-city blacks or hispanics (I remember when living in Dallas, FBC under Criswell was criticized for sponsoring ministry among hispanics but having few hispanics in their congregation), so rather than risk being castigated for it we tend to ignore it altogether.
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I think it is really easy to get cynical when it comes to issues like this… it is easy to look at big churches and wonder why they’re spending their money like they are and what not. I think the important issue is that the people who do feel a special calling to the inner city are acting on that!
I do think that it is hard to see the churches in inner city areas because they look very different from our suburb churches. It isn’t easy to just knock over some buildings and build a church. People are forming house churches and renovating apartment buildings, and moving into old businesses to start churches in the inner city. It is just harder to see.
I just know that in my own heart it is easy to look down on others for going to a rich church in the suburbs… but that is just not right. We should all be working together as a body… perhaps they would be willing to share some of their money =)
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culture is not shaped in the suburbs which is why the evangelical flight there is leading to this coming collapse youve been on about.
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I miss Lexington! I lived in Wilmore for 4 years but hung out in Lex quite a bit. While I don’t trust the motives of those who feel “called to reach the yuppies,” I am also careful not to place too much pressure on people who are not equiped to reach people-groups they least resemble.
IMONK, you are an up front guy and one of the most honest Christians I know. So I’m going to be honest myself—I would not raise my kids most inner-cities for many obvious reasons. Before we had kids, my wife and I were in youth ministry in the inner-city. I loved those kids. Some are living for Christ today, many are not. I would not want the kids I have today to be around the kind of young adults I ministered to over 10 years ago. If that attitude makes me wrong–then I’ll be wrong :o)
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I think part of the reason for not planting churches in the city may also come from a lack of space. I attend an inner-city church plant that has already outgrown the building it purchased and renovated a few years ago. Parking is very limited. The neighborhood all around is built-up, so there is no room to lay out additional parking lots or build newer, larger facilities. It was already a headache to us to find property that would meet our current needs and enable us to stay in this area.
When you plant a church in the suburbs, you can generally plan ahead and secure enough acreage for future growth. More difficult to do that in the cities.
Our answer will probably lie in satellite campuses or planting newer congregations, but, no matter what direction we end up going in, it all costs $.
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Good question and some good answers so far. I don’t know if I can contribute any better insights than Ro at this late hour. But I do want to wonder about something.
I attended graduate school at UK for five years and participated in a Navigator training center there. Our Nav group was involved with one of those big, white, rich churches beyond the beltway (CM&A)(because our staff depended on their financial support). However, I clearly remember sneaking out to attend a small but thriving house church in inner-city Lexington. I attended because none else than Howard Synder himself was leading the discussion that morning (as a guest teacher). I got the chance to drink a coffee with him.
That house church seemed like a wonderful idea. If I remember right, the two chubby white boys (Asbury grads I think) had started the group and were surrounded by rich white folks, rich black folks, but also poor of each, homeless, young, old and the strange in an old brick house. It was a oddly-wonderful cross section of the city. I wonder what ever happened to it. I’ve often wished I had gone back. I may have learned some things that took me another decade to figure out.
However, I was young (23) and was warned by my Nav leader and our pastor not to go back because that wasn’t a real church . . . but a cult.
Somehow there is a lesson in that. But I’m too tired to figure it out right now.
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There are a number of reasons as to why not, here are some:
1. Risk. There is an inherent risk planting churches. Church leaders, and especially district leaders, are managers. They manage money, land, risk. They want to be able to back ventures they know have a proven track record (low risk). Thus, they will continually support what they know, suburban plants, rural plants, etc. Does that sound too cynical?
My observation has been everyone notes the doughnut syndrome (great in suburbs but empty in the core). We know we gotta hit urban areas, however, we do’nt know how and we’re too afraid to try a bunch of different models we’ve never tried before.
2. Leadership. The suburban white middle to upper class leader isn’t trained for the post-modern, lower to upper homeless to professional, etc., found in the cores.
Those who do fit into the urban culture generally do not fit into the suburban culture and are therefore unknown. Add unknown leader to unknown models and you get way too much risk (see #1).
The last thing we don’t need are suburban folks trying to plant in urban areas without any connection, or dare I saw an ‘urban ministry’.
I surmise that we have enough folks who already think a certain way in the suburbs, commute or live a life very much connected to an urban lifestyle, who would be very well suited and interested to be connected an urban expression.
Perhaps suburban churches are inept at planting in urban areas, perhaps the culture is mutually exclusive, or in the least we’ve made it so. Perhaps we require a grassroots movement of new leaders completely outside of the suburban evangelical sphere to proclaim a redemption message in what seems to be another land.
By the way, I don’t think we necessarily need to make hard distinctions based on geographic demographics alone….the urban core thinks a certain way, which may be more important than where they physically live.
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If you are planting by splitting off a chunk of the existing congregation then the plant will tend to resemble that chunk. For the most part. And if you have a diverse congregation and you split off a group of poorer, non-white, inner city dwellers, would that not smack of racism? Classism? (a word?)
I’ve seen one local example of what you’re asking for. A couple moved next to one of the worst public housing projects in the area and started a ministry. It grew into a pre-school, then a grade school, a thrift shop, and lots of other community outreach activities. It was a long hard slog. And I have to wonder if they had little kids (I think they were in their 40s when they started this), would they have done it. Now that they have retired the locals who took it over are really struggling.
So in a question to the floor, is splitting off 100 families to form a new church a “plant” or something else? What is a “plant”?
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We’re doing one right now.
It is made up of mostky white middle class people, but we are only 5 months old. Because we are helping other city service programs rather than just reinventing the wheel and we are not using any attractional methods for church growth, it is mostly the people who started the plant and some friends via word of mouth.
We want to grow, and think we will over time, but really don’t want that growth to get beyond where people can know each other.
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thank you so much for asking this question. how can we not look at these observations and see how obviously so much of church planting has become about where the money is? still–there are some efforts being done in some cities, they just look a lot less like traditional churches on the street corner. i just hope that many of these efforts to “go urban” don’t just stick to the trendy midtown areas, but really dive into the hardest neighborhoods. do we really believe that we are the light of the world? then why do we avoid the dark (crime-filled, poor, etc.) neighborhoods?
still, how many will read this and agree, yet sit comfortable in their homogenous congregations with the music they like and the best schools for their children? i’m not saying it’s easy, but at some point we can’t only look to others to solve these problems.
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You have to give up the ‘american dream’ of the big back yard and white picket fence to live in the city. I attend a church in Chicago, and it is almost impossible to keep families in the city. We are asking them to buy a condo in the city (and the traffic, uncleanliness, homelessness, school systems, etc that come with it) for the same amount that they could buy a much nicer, bigger, ‘safer’, house with a huge yard and the best school system in the area.
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Don’t you think it is because we have trivialized the gospel to focus on “saving souls” with little concern for people’s physical needs. And of course it is a lot easier to save the souls of people we feel comfortable around. Which means that we plant churches amongst people that look, talk and act like we do and of course who don’t struggle with the poverty and addiction issues that are so often prevalent in the inner city areas.
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Good thoughts. I share your concerns. Popular church growth strategies assume that you’re going to find the next “it” suburb with growing businesses and plant there. God bless those who truly believe they’re called to do that. I’m working on a church plant effort right now that will be in the urban core of a city. I don’t think this effort is better than suburban efforts but I agree with you – what about the cities?
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