3. We must be a biblical community. This leads to the third necessary ingredient for an effective Christian presence in the city. Not only must we be in the city and be a community, we must also be Bible-directed. In other words, we must be the kind of community God wants us to be. What kind of a community is that? This is a big subject, of course, but a short statement of it is in Micah: “What does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8).
That verse lists three requirements. First, to act justly. This means justice for all, not just for Christians or for our pet projects. It means justice for the Jew and the Catholic, the poor and the rich, the utterly destitute, for everybody. Justice is impartial. It means acting justly, not just talking about justice. It means acting justly ourselves and not just expecting other people to do it.
Second, to love mercy. This does not mean that we should merely act in a compassionate way from time to time, still less only to those who are like us or not much worse off than us. It means trying to show mercy always and in all possible ways. The activities of city Christians can be just and merciful at the same time.
Third, to walk humbly with God. We need to hear this especially, since often Christians are anything but humble. Instead of working with others in a genuinely humble manner, we act as if we already have all the answers (which we do not) and thus rightly cause the secular world to scorn us.
4. We need a vision. The final element needed for an effective Christian presence in the city is a vision for the kind of society we hope to see established. Up to this point we have failed in providing our secular culture with this vision. Colonel V. Doner, in a recent book entitled The Samaritan Strategy: A New Agenda for Christian Activism, claims that this was the specific failure of the Christian Right in the 1980s. It was able to marshal effective support for a few select causes, such as the fight against abortion or pornography. But it had no vision for the kind of society we should want to see established. So the Christian Right was regarded as being a crusade only for Christian interests as well as a threat to those who had even slightly different goals. Writes Doner,
To many, it appeared that all the Christian Right had to offer was a negative/reactionary collage of ‘don’ts,’ rather than a comprehensive and constructive agenda of ‘do’s.’ Worse yet, most Christians could not understand how all the issues connected to each other…. Without a clear Christian worldview, Christians were unable to act in unison behind a comprehensive and clearly understood agenda.1
That carefully-thought-out and well-articulated Christian worldview has not yet emerged. Developing such a vision should be a primary objective for our time.
And while we are doing that we should not think that the world is utterly opposed to us. The society about is far less hostile than we sometimes think. Not long ago the Gallup Poll organization conducted a survey of residents of cities with populations that exceed 50,000, asking what organizations they perceived as trying hardest to improve city life. There were all kinds of suggestions: the mayor, city council, local newspapers, local businesses, neighborhood groups, the chamber of commerce, banks, service clubs, builders, almost anything you can think of. Do you know what group led the list? The local churches! They gained 48 percent of the vote, ahead even of the mayor who came second. And he only had 39 percent.
Let’s not be negative. The world is waiting to see what true Christians can do. I think even God is waiting. Ray Bakke has written, “I think God wants to bless [the] cities, and he waits for a renewed church.”2
1Colonel V. Doner, The Samaritan Strategy: A New Agenda for Christian Activism (Brentwood, TN: Wolgemuth & Hyatt, 1988), 37.
2Raymond J. Bakke, “The Battle for the Cities: What We Have Learned About Urban Evangelization Since Pattaya 1980,” World Evangelism, March 1986, 16.
