Why We Might Be Failing Our Cities

There was a group of Bible college students passing through Orlando, and they asked to come to our church - City Beautiful Church - to spend some time talking about what we do and how and why we do it. I spent time with them after our Sunday night gathering asking and answering questions.

One of the students raised her hand to ask a question, “What is the five year vision for your church?”

It was a simple question and one that I think most leaders have considered. But when she asked that question, a picture popped into my imagination. It wasn’t a picture of the buildings or people of our church. It wasn’t thoughts about programs or ideas or what our worship gatherings might look like. It was a mental picture of the skyline of the City of Orlando. It looked different than it does now. There were other, taller buildings, and each of those buildings represented specific things : industries, governmental initiatives, organizations, arts and cultural communities. And there was something important about the physical structures as well. They represented infrastructure growth and community thriving.

All of this flooded in over the course of an instant, and out came my answer: 

“When the Church thinks about the future, we mustn’t only dream about our local church. We must dream of our city.”

I’ve thought a lot about this over the last two years since that question, and it’s led me to deeper understanding about the way the Church sees itself and how that affects our relationship to the people and places around us. Over the next 2 weeks I want to share with you what I have learned, and how it's changing how I view the Church's potential within cities. 

God’s vision is for people groups in specific locations all around the world.

This was the mission and vision for the “Promised Land.” It wasn’t about entitlement. God’s intention for moving the Hebrews from Egypt to the Promised Land was to establish an example for what it looks like for people, surrendered to God, to inhabit a physical space. It was a revival of the picture of stewardship he presented in Eden – to cultivate a space from a place of divine wisdom.

We have a glimpse of this leadership from a place of divine wisdom in King Solomon. When God appeared to Solomon in a dream and asked him, “What do you want from me?” Solomon had the wisdom to respond well. He said, “You’ve tasked me with a mission in leading these people that is beyond the scope of my limited human understanding. Fill me with your wisdom so that I may lead well.”

Solomon’s request, vision and subsequent wisdom were all tied to his understanding of his role in the context of people and place. And his desire for wisdom extended beyond the spiritual governance of people. Solomon was known for his wisdom in even the most seemingly mundane ways. World leaders spoke of and came to see the wisdom with which he ruled a nation but also the wisdom with which he set his table and clothed his servants.

God’s words to Abraham point to this divine plan from the beginning. In Genesis 12, God says to Abraham, “I will make you into a great nation… and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” This wasn’t a picture of nation building so that Israel would conquer and rule the world. It was a picture of what it looks like for a city or nation to be a conduit for blessing. In leading the people to the Promised Land, God wanted to set up a model of what it looked like to thrive in the context of divine community.

What God once wanted to establish as a promised land, he has now instilled in a people of promise.

The work of Christ in reconciling us to God has now commissioned us as ambassadors of reconciliation. In line with Christ’s prayer of “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” we now know that God desires to use the reconciled to manifest the realities of heaven on earth here and now – wherever each of us finds ourselves.

God has bestowed his common grace on the whole world. The words of Jesus are recorded in Matthew 5, “He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” God – in his kindness – is inviting the world into a new level of internal and external peace through the work of Christ. And that work of reconciliation isn’t only for individuals but for communities, cities and nations. But where have we gone wrong?

 

*Editorial Note* This is Part One of a two-part series, check in next wednesday for Part Two of "Why We Might Be Failing Our Cities."