Write About Now

Like most of you, I live in the suburbs. Unlike you, perhaps, it’s not by choice–I’m a country girl at heart. But I can’t yet afford that 1935 farmhouse on five acres, so for now I reluctantly join you in the land of strip malls and subdivisions.

And megachurches. Although the ‘burbs lack personality, they don’t lack pews. Nashville, I’ve heard, has more churches per capita than any other city in America, but I also found plenty of places to worship during my years living in suburban Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and Orange County.

This isn’t always true in an urban environment. In the first lines of his article in this week’s Christian Standard, Steve Carr gets right to the point: “By sometime this summer half of the world’s population will live in cities. For Restoration Movement churches in America this fact is problematic because our presence in cities is anemic.”

He cites several reasons for this anemia, including ministerial isolation and financial issues, and graciously writes, “A reason our movement has struggled to embrace urban ministry is it doesn’t fit neatly within our pre-established paradigms of church growth. While the suburban model has proven to be reproducible in many areas of the country, there is no dominant urban model for success.” (I’ll be more blunt: many of our suburban churches are as alike as the O’Charley’s restaurants where the members eat lunch after services.)

Carr’s article goes on to report the encouraging February gathering of 40 urban ministry leaders from across the country. He writes that, to his knowledge, this “Urban Conversation” was the first of its kind in our movement.

But it won’t be the last, or the biggest. Yesterday’s mail brought the Johnson Bible College “Blue & White” newsletter, in which president Gary Weedman wrote about the recent petition from thirty students wanting JBC to add an urban studies program. Another article described the work of the college’s students in homeless ministry, English tutoring for Ukrainian families in downtown Knoxville, and Sarah Sykes’ organization of everything from grocery shopping to driver training to holiday celebrations for nearby Burundian refugees. (Sarah, I’ll be calling you soon to schedule an interview for Buzz.)

These efforts involve 200 students serving radically different people groups with very different needs–and this is in Knoxville, not typically thought of as a major urban center. Carr makes this point, as well. “We discovered [at our meeting] that virtually none of our contexts is similar,” he writes. “Scott Jewell’s ministry among the urban poor in inner-city St. Louis is nothing like Steve Denney’s ministry with City Walk Christian Church in a gentrified area of San Diego.”

These differences will require more partnership, more creativity, and more work than maintaining the surburban status quo–but it will also take the financial and human resources of our suburban churches to make a difference. Carr and team, let us know how we can help. And when I get that big farmhouse I’m happy to host a rural retreat.