Megatrend 18: Urban ministries
by Justin D. Long
Two hundred years ago, the world was almost entirely a rural planet. Since then, massive urbanization has occurred. We now have a planet of megacities. Also, sadly, we have a planet of slums.
The first megacity was Peking, which crossed the 1 million population line in 1770. London (6.5 million) and New York (6.2 million) crossed the supercity line (5 million) in 1900. New York became the world's first supergiant in 1935. By 1975, the world's largest city was Tokyo.
This explosion of urbanization will not stop any time soon. By AD 2050, the number of urbanites will rise to 7 billion (80% of the planet's total population), with 900 megacities, 220 supercities, and 80 supergiants. By 2100, there will be 9 billion urbanites and 15,000 metropolises with over 100,000 residents each.
Christianity has gone through ups and downs in the cities. In 1800, 69% of all city-dwellers were non-Christians. Thanks in part to a massive evangelization effort during the 1800s (due in part to large scale urban team evangelization of the kind that began in 1857 with Moody, Spurgeon, et alia), the proportion of non-Christans had fallen to 31% by 1900. Now Christianity is on the decline again. By 1980, 54% (a majority) of all urban dwellers were non-Christians. By 2000 that number will reach 56% despite current trends; on to 60% by 2025 and 62% by 2050.
Non-Christian and Christian megacities fares only marginally better. A Christian megacity is a city with a population of more than 1 million, of which more than half are Christians). There were 15 Christian and 5 non-Christian megacities in 1900. By 1985 it was 121 Christian and 155 non-Christian; by 2000 it will be 202 to 231; 2025, 342 to 310; and 2050, 510 to 390.
Working in a megacity has its good points and its bad. It is easier to evangelize the residents of a megacity en masse than it is to evangelize rural residents in the same fashion. City-wide mass campaigns can be held in many cities. Radio and television broadcasting can prove very effective tools among urbanites. So can videos and films, the JESUS film being a primary example. In some cities, street evangelism teams and church outreach programs are tremendous efforts if directed strategically. Discipleship groups, "seeker groups," Bible correspondence courses, literature distribution campaigns--all are made easier in a city, where there is access by telephone and mail to the resideents. Further, evangelistic efforts targeted strategically in a major city can affect no only the majority people group, but many minority groups as well, as less fortunate people move to cities to find work.
Still, as noted there are bad points. It is easier to track, monitor, restrict, oppress and persecute Christians and Christian evangelizers in cities. In some areas the cost of living and working is far higher in the city than in the rural areas. In the case of military hostilities (such as those in Afghanistan), cities (and the Christians in them) can be primary targets. And in the case of military hostilities, cities are primary targets.
The needs of megacities are many. As poor rural families move to the cities in search of work, low-income housing, shantytowns, and slums crop up as they are unable to pay for better housing. Inner-city crime is a noted problem in cities all over the world. Disease can spread faster, even to epidemic scale, in some cities that lack sufficient sanitation. And the greatest need of all is the gospel, as the ratio of non-Christians to Christians continues to climb.
But the big question remains, how do we prioritize our ministry? It can be done most effectively by separating all cities, no matter their needs, into the categories of being RESOURCES or PROBLEMS for world evangelization. Some cities are clearly resources, in that they have a large indigenous church, are bases for urban ministry teams, and have the manpower and materiel to reach themselves and their surrounding areas. Others are clearly problems, lacking both. As in all cases of world evangelization, we need to let the indigenous church handle its own evangelization in RESOURCE cities, and instead tackle the tough task of bringing cross-cultural mission efforts to bear on PROBLEM cities instead.
In order to avert the trend toward non-Christian and anti-Christian megacities, supercities and supergiants, more resources must be devoted toward urban ministries and urban evangelization. These resources must be dedicated to these cities, not "do-it-in-your-spare-time" tasks.
Suggestions
- Mass outreach projects These projects aim at huge demographic populations and would center around mass media, broadcasting (especially television), literature, audiovisuals (especially video), research, surveys, and the global outlook. This latter means knowing the entire world situation, the global picture. Such projects would specialize in techniques relevant to urban dwellers.
- Megacity missionaries. Projects cannot be properly done on the side by missionaries or church workers who have already been assigned to different projects, such as relief or 'evangelism that results in churches.' These projects should have their own missionaries allocated to them, the projects being clearly understood to be their main or even sole priority. We might even term them "megamissionaries," meaning missionaries specifically trained, set aside and commissioned for full-time work in megacity ministries. "Megacities demand megaministries, and megaministries demand megamissionaries."
- Full partnership with local churches is essential in this outreach. Whether in developing countries, or in Western countries, or in Socilaist/Communist countries, local churches must fully involve their own resources as well as those from overseas. Local leadership for such outreach projects should also be expected and encouraged as the norm.
- Twinning cities. We must motivate cities which serve as resources for world mission to promote and mobilize the evangelization of target cities. We can do this by a process of "twinning" cities or "matching up" cities. This is already being done in the secular realm, and to some extent in the Christian realm. Thus, Atlanta, or London, or Manila, or Mexico City, or Nairobi, with their formidable Christian and evangelistic resources of all kinds, could each be encouraged to deliberately form a relationship with a clearly unreached or unevangelized city in the worl (like Tehran, Beijing, Riyadh, or Algiers).
