To_Bethlehem-a_church_in_the-city.pdf

To Bethlehem Baptist Church . . . a church in the city,

The human future is an urban future. In one of the greatest social shifts of all human history, over half of all living humans now inhabit cities. Driven by population shifts, immigration, and human reproduction, massive new cities are springing up all over the globe. Will the church rise to this challenge?

The answer to that question will largely determine the future of Christian ministry and missions. At the same time, this is not the first time that the Christian church has found itself faced with the challenge of the city.

A quick look at the New Testament will reveal that first-century Christianity was, by and large, concentrated in the cities of the Roman Empire. These earliest churches were established in cities like Antioch, Ephesus, Corinth, Thessalonica, and, of course, both Jerusalem and Rome. The churches established in these strategic cities became the launching pads for missions and church planting.

Similarly, the Reformation of the church in the sixteenth century was an urban movement, emerging in the cities of Switzerland and Germany. The cities were host to the emerging universities of the Middle Ages and to the flowering culture of the Renaissance. The cities were where the Industrial Revolution happened and where churches pioneered new forms of ministry in the great nineteenth-century cities of London, Birmingham, Chicago, and New York.

The current issue of Foreign Policy, one of the most influential journals of global news and opinion, features a must-read collection of articles and research that documents this transformation. The Christian church had better pay close attention to this new and exploding global reality.

The numbers driven by this new wave of urbanization are staggering. Richard Dobbs, director of the McKinsey Global Institute, paints a truly shocking picture of the global future. Fully 70% of all Chinese will live in cities of more than 1 million people by the year 2025.

By 2030, China alone will count at least 220 cities with populations exceeding 1 million. At the same time, India will have 68 cities of similar population size. Together, India and China will add over 600 million city dwellers within the next 20 years—about the same populations of the United States and Brazil added together.

China will have to add at least 40 billion square meters of living space within the next two decades. Traffic jams in India may point to five-hour daily commutes as the norm. By 2025, China is likely to have 880 million daily commuters in its cities.

The interests of Foreign Policy lean mainly to international business, governments, and international relations, but Christians reading this fascinating issue of the journal will think immediately of the missiological and evangelistic implications of this mega-shift in human populations.

There is reason for concern. The cities were the strategic platforms for ministry and missions in the first century, but the last century and more has been a time of retreat in terms of Christian impact in many of the world’s great cities. The twentieth century was, in terms of Western cities, a period of radical secularization. While Harvard theologian Harvey Cox’s 1965 blockbuster The Secular City was controversial, its title was not.

I am so thankful for the example set by Bethlehem Baptist Church. You are a church in a great city—a great meeting place of ethnicities, cultures, and worldviews. But you are not only in the city, you are for the city. You are a gracious and caring congregation that loves your city, serves your city, and bears witness to the gospel of Jesus in your own city ... and then in the world beyond.

The urban future is where the majority of young people are to be found, along with business and political leaders and the so-called “cultural creatives.” But the city is also a place where the elderly, the infirm, the poor, and the abandoned are found. All of these very different people share one thing in common—they desperately need to hear the gospel of Jesus and to come to know the Good News of salvation in Jesus.

Thank you for the example you set for all of us as you minister in the great city of Minneapolis. May your ministry inspire other congregations to remain in the city and for the city.

Foreign Policy says that the world now faces a “global inflection point” on the question of the city. Clearly, the church faces the same challenge. The difference is that the church’s concern is eternal, and not merely temporal, and that means that our challenge is all the more urgent.

I look forward to being with you soon at Bethlehem Baptist Church—and in the city of Minneapolis.

Faithfully,

R. Albert Mohler Jr.
The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

After speaking at the Desiring God National Conference, Al Mohler will be speaking on Sunday, October 3, 7:00pm, at the Downtown Campus, for the Bethlehem College and Seminary Inaugural Convocation. All are welcome.