Category: md-3-2

The urban age has dawned. For the first time in the history of humankind, the majority of the world’s population is now urban, having crossed the threshold at some point in 2008. By some estimates, in 2050 the number of people living in cities will exceed 70% of the total population. In terms of sheer numbers, the city will dominate the global landscape in the very near future. The world is migrating to the cities.

It hardly needs stating, therefore, that the future of Christian mission is tied to this wave of urbanization. According to urban missiologist Ray Bakke, mission has “moved from a world of about 200 nations to a new world of some 400 world-class cities.”1 If twenty-first century mission is increasingly post-colonial, post-Christendom, and postmodern, then it is also, and perhaps preeminently, post-rural. Cities are the frontier of the gospel, the “new ‘10/40 window’ of the next generation.”2

Coming to terms with the phenomenon of urbanization, though, goes far beyond recognizing migration patterns. Urbanization is a “process of sociocultural shifting”3 that involves “distinctive forms of human relationships, interconnection, and complex patterns of cultural, economic, and political life that transcend the close-knit patterns of smaller communities.”4 Urbanization generates not one but multiple urbanisms—kaleidoscopic ways of living fostered by the urban matrix. Christians located in the cities must learn to think and live in critical dialogue with this variegated, urban world.

But it is not just Christians living in city centers who will have to respond. The urban “imagination” stretches beyond the geographical boundaries of the world’s cities through the immense influence that cities exercise in the global landscape. Cities concentrate power and resources that position them as “nodes of formal and informal, licit and illicit, global circuits.” Thus, they serve as “command and control centers” for the economic, social, political, and ecological decisions that steer global development and human socialization.5 These facts and figures show, in short, that Christians—urban, suburban, or rural—who proclaim a God who loves the world must learn, as never before, how to love the city.

Loving the city, it seems, has not been a strength of Christians in the recent past. Rather, much modern Christian reflection has participated in the mainstream tradition of anti-urbanism. This editorial is not the place to trace the lineage of anti-urbanism or its Christian iterations, which have been documented elsewhere,6 except to point out that its effects are frequently felt in Christian mission-talk regarding things “urban.” Unfortunately, Christian usage of the descriptor “urban” too often conjures up only negative realities and anxieties. What is more, “urban” is a term habitually used (even by more affluent urban dwellers!) to identify lower-income communities in the city.7 Because it linguistically constructs detrimental patterns of relationship, this kind of usage is highly problematic for several reasons. It can exacerbate racial, social, and cultural division, encourage stereotyping, and feed an “us versus them” mentality. Second, it can unfairly associate a whole community with deleterious behaviors that apply only to discrete parts or members within it and implicitly deny wider interrelationships, even culpability, among wider communities—urban, suburban, exurban, and rural. In addition, labeling a particular type of ministry among marginalized communities as “urban” can denigrate the gifts of faithful Christians living in those communities. Finally, such language represents a failure to imagine all urbanized communities in terms of the promise and potential of the city.8

The rich diversity and gifts of an urban area, however, present a distinct set of challenges to Christians who live, work, and minister in its midst. Some urban communities exhibit an intensity and breadth of social needs—needs that are frequently viewed in light of a perceived scarcity of resources.9 Second, heterogeneity can strain attempts to build relationships and identify common ground on which to forge alliances for the common good. Behaviors of alienation, fear, and violence that are found at some level in all geographies are heightened in many urban contexts because of the stark juxtaposition among peoples of different class, race, or ideology.10 Moreover, the capacity of the city to foster asymmetrical relationships and structural injustice, ensconced in bureaucracy, fractures community both locally and globally.11 Finally, the population’s vulnerability to larger economic forces, which, among other issues, frequently demands mobility from the workforce, can work to thwart long-term relational connection and sustained ministry efforts. While none of these issues is exclusive to the city, the clustering of all these issues in one place makes the urban arena a particularly demanding context in which to serve.

These challenges have regrettably caused many Christian congregations to adopt one of two responses: to stay in the city and develop a fortress mentality that opposes the city or to abandon the city for its outer edges. Not only does the latter reveal a failure of missional imagination, it also fails to grapple with the interconnectedness of the urban with its hinterlands. The urban fabric stretches from city center to suburban to rural communities, whose existences are inextricably tied to decisions of the urban community (and even more so in this globalized age). In short, what affects the city today will ripple through its neighboring communities tomorrow.12

We need more Christians prepared for and by the city—our understanding of missiology needs to migrate, along with the world, to an urban locus. To speak personally, it was not until I entered graduate school that I first pictured “mission” and “city” in redemptive combination. Both my home congregation and the Christian university I attended fired my imagination predominately with bucolic images of mission work. My experience is obviously not universal, but neither do I think it is all that peculiar for many in the North American Restoration tradition. Global reality, however, demands that all Christians take up with much more tenacity the task of acting in, reflecting on, and promoting mission in an urban context. Like the Apostle Paul, an outstanding urban missionary, we need a God-inspired vision that imparts direction in our quest to spread the gospel in unfamiliar territory (Acts 16:6–10). According to Philip Sheldrake:

The future of human cities and their meaning is one of the most critical spiritual issues of our time. . . . What is so often missing from contemporary concerns about cities is precisely a vision. And vision or perspective, rather than some kind of definitive conclusion, is a primary theological task.13

Thus, the following issue of Missio Dei aims to help fill this gap by offering reflections that attempt to re-imagine mission to urban peoples with theological verve. May our blessing be that we, like Paul, become convinced that God has called us to proclaim the good news to them (Acts 16:10).

Bibliography

Bakke, Ray, and Jon Sharpe. Street Signs: A New Direction in Urban Ministry. Birmingham, AL: New Hope Publishers, 2006.

Bess, Philip. Till We Have Built Jerusalem: Architecture, Urbanism, and the Sacred. Religion and Contemporary Culture Series. Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2006.

Bounds, Michael. Urban Social Theory: City, Self, and Society. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Brugmann, Jeb. Welcome to the Urban Revolution: How Cities are Changing the World. New York: Bloomsbury, 2009.

Conn, Harvie M., and Manuel Ortiz. Urban Ministry: The Kingdom, the City, and the People of God. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2001.

Davey, Andrew. “Being Urban Matters: What Is Urban about Urban Mission?” In Crossover City: Resources for Urban Mission and Transformation, ed. Andrew Davey, 24–36. London: Continuum, 2010.

Florida, Richard. The Great Reset: How the Post-Crash Economy Will Change the Way We Live and Work. New York: HarperCollins, 2011.

Glaeser, Edward. Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier and Happier. New York: Penguin Press, 2011.

Gleeson, Brendan. “Critical Commentary. The Urban Age: Paradox and Prospect.” Urban Studies 49 (April 2012): 931–43.

Gorringe, Timothy. A Theology of the Built Environment: Justice, Empowerment, Redemption New York: Cambridge University, 2002.

Green, Clifford J, ed. Churches, Cities, and Human Community: Urban Ministry in the United States 1945–1985. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996.

Peters, Ronald E. Urban Ministry: An Introduction. Nashville: Abingdon, 2007.

Saunders, Doug. Arrival City: How the Largest Migration in History Is Reshaping Our World. London: Pantheon Books, 2010.

Smith, David W. Seeking a City with Foundations: Theology for an Urban World. Nottingham, England: InterVarsity, 2011.

Smith, P. D. City: A Guidebook for the Urban Age. New York: Bloomsbury, 2012.

Stone Bryan P., and Claire E. Wolfteich. Sabbath in the City: Sustaining Urban Pastoral Excellence. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2008.

Swanson, Eric. “Nine Game-Changers for Global Missions: Trends that Shape the Future.” Downloads. Resources. Leadership Network. http://www.leadnet.org/docs/Nine_Game_Changers.pdf.

Toly, Noah J. “Introduction to the Theme Issue: Christian Perspectives on the City.” Christian Scholar’s Review 38, no. 4 (Summer 2009): 409–13.

Thompson, Michael J., ed. Fleeing the City: Studies in the Culture and Politics of Antiurbanism. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009.

Wirth, Louis. “Urbanism as a Way of Life.” The American Journal of Sociology 44, no. 1 (July 1938): 1–24.

The present wave of urbanization compels Christians to reflect scripturally on the place and purpose of the city in God’s mission. To that end, the following essay surveys various appearances of the city in the Old Testament. Some have charged the Old Testament with a largely pessimistic view of urban centers. Though the Hebrew Bible presents the city as a human construct fraught with peril, it also imagines the urban center as locus of God’s redemptive blessing.

INTRODUCTION

The present and unprecedented global wave of urbanization summons Christians to imagine what role the phenomenon of the city plays in the mission of God. Christian reflection upon the city, however, does not happen in a historical vacuum. Augustine’s City of God stands unrivaled in its impact on the Christian urban imagination throughout the last two millennia. Augustine identified two societies of humankind with two cities. Those who live according to God’s will inhabit the city of God, and those who live by human standards populate the city of men. Though Augustine was speaking largely allegorically, some have charged him with bequeathing to Western tradition a negative appraisal of the city qua city.1 Fast-forwarding more than a millennium, Raymond Williams has shown that a pessimistic portrayal of the city—together with a favorable view of the country—operates as a major motif in English literature from the sixteenth century forward.2 In a similar vein, Timothy Gorringe describes Cowper’s famous line “God made the country, and man made the town” as a succinct summary of a “conventional topos of Western thought”—namely, the demonization of the city and the “idyllisation” of the country.3 The American mythos, in particular, has embedded within it a certain amount of bias against the urban environment.4 Of course, Christians in the last two millennia have not wholly demonized the city.5 Nevertheless, critical reflection upon the city, from both Christian and secular perspectives in the Western tradition, attests that the city carries negative emotional baggage.

Does the biblical narrative lend any support to such pessimism about the city? The Bible certainly offers plenty of theological grist for Christian reflection on urban environments. The city appears early and often (Gen 4, 11, 18), and continues to make regular appearances throughout, both in the foreground and in the background, all the way up to the close of the Christian canon, which takes place in a city (Rev 21-22).6 However, some Old Testament scholarship leaves the impression that Scripture has little positive to say about the earthly city, outside of an ideological praise for Jerusalem.7 For example, a significant strand of interpretation reads into Israel’s canonical witness a none-too-subtle polemic against urban society. George Mendenhall and Norman Gottwald popularized a theory of Israel’s emergence in the land that cast proto-Israelites as a countermovement against Canaanite city culture.8 In their reckoning, Canaanite cities embodied the social stratification, exploitation, and human injustice that Israel’s pastoral, egalitarian community was formed to oppose. Furthermore, the Deuteronomistic History has been read as a historical retelling of the demise of the Israelite state due in large part to a failure of human institutions, centralized in and epitomized by cities.9 The prophets too have been construed as anti-urban, pointing to a restoration of Israel’s failed urban experiment in ways that hark back to an idealized pre-urban (egalitarian/desert) tradition, which is often associated with idyllic “back to nature” categories.10

There is surely truth in these observations. Though the Old Testament does not provide anything like a doctrine or theology of the city (nor is the city qua city a major topos of biblical literature), Scripture nonetheless frequently presents the city in a negative light. Much of its literature can even sound at times as if it is rejecting urban civilization. Our review of the biblical evidence will demonstrate that the Hebrew Bible imagines the city as an unavoidable human construct where power and people collide, and subsequently where lurks the potential for great harm. But it will also show that the Bible holds out hope that the city can be a context of human flourishing and divine blessing, and that Scripture does not endorse a predominately pessimistic view of the urban environment. The city is the major setting of much of what the Bible says about sin, judgment, and restoration, though not to the exclusion of the countryside. Indeed, we will see that in the imagination of the Hebrew Bible, city and countryside are tethered theologically. This essay will show that the overall biblical portrayal is more ambiguous than negative—the phenomenon of the city is shaded with gray far more than with either black or white.

DEFINING THE BIBLICAL CITY

The Bible is full of cities. They are a part of the “symbolic geography” of the biblical writers and more broadly the literature of the ancient Near East.11 Before going any further, it is necessary to give attention to what is meant when talking about “the city” in ancient Israel. Frank Frick describes the city as “the crowning achievement of the ancient world,” but just what constitutes an ancient city is a major point of discussion.12

The English connotation of the term “city” does not correspond to the ancient reality in multiple ways. First, ancient cities were far smaller in size and population than what the term suggests today, and cities in ancient Palestine were even smaller than most cities of their contemporary nations.13 Consider, for example, that Hezekiah’s Jerusalem covered at most 150 acres.14 Most recently, William Dever has postulated a multi-tiered hierarchy of Israelite sites in the eighth-century BCE. in which he heuristically defines an Israelite city as a site of ten acres or more with a population of 1,000 or more (using a coefficient of 100 people per acre).15 Based on these population estimates, Dever calculates that the land of Israel was home to around twenty cities, and very few of these exceeded a population of 3,000.16 Moreover, the vast majority of the population did not reside in cities. Dever estimates that only twenty-five percent of the population would have lived in communities of 300 or more people, and eighty percent of these communities were towns of only 300–1,000 people. Thus, approximately five percent of the total population dwelled in urban centers.17 These figures highlight the fact that when pondering what the Bible says about the city, one must keep in mind that the space to which it refers does not much resemble our modern cities in size or density.

Second, cities in the ancient world for the most part did not recognize the modern-day dichotomy between city and country. Most recent sociological study of ancient Israel has stressed that the city was dependent on and deeply vested in the countryside.18 Many of the “urban elite” would have been rural landowners not confined to the city (e.g., Boaz).19 Furthermore, the city gave to as well as took from the countryside, fueling the economic engine that profited all the population of its immediate environs. If a strict urban-rural divide did exist, it would most likely have involved only a small number of specialists (probably associated with the royal court) and only in the capital cities of Jerusalem and Samaria.20

Third, the main Hebrew term for “city” (⁽ îr) has a broader semantic range than its English translation suggests.21 Earlier biblical archaeologists commonly distinguished a city from a village by the presence of a wall, but the biblical authors use the term just as well for an unwalled village as for a fortified city (e.g., Deut 3:5).22 Nor does the term carry any implicit population marker, and Scripture makes no systematic distinction between city, town, and village, as there is in English usage.23 Furthermore, just as there was no uniform physical profile of the city, neither was there a uniform role for how the city related to its environs.24 The Hebrew Bible can designate any inhabited human settlement set “ideologically apart from its environs”25—whether for military, economic, religious, or social purposes—as a city, though most often cities were associated with physical features such as a wall or gate, or other monumental architecture (e.g., a temple).26

Despite this lack of definitional specificity, archaeology has contributed significantly to (and broadly supported) the biblical picture that Israel experienced a wave of urbanization with the rise of the monarchy.27 At this time, major cities in ancient Israel began to take on various and somewhat distinct kinds of functional characteristics, so that it becomes possible to categorize cities accordingly. Frick helpfully names four types of cities: (1) major (capital) cities with large populations and a symbolic presence among a host of cities; (2) administrative centers, which though not heavily populated, contained extensive water works, storage facilities, courtyards, temples, and palaces; (3) industrial cities, mainly characterized by industrial installations and craft workshops; and (4) forts that were located at strategic military points.28 Of course, many of these functions overlapped among cities, and some of the largest cities (e.g., Samaria, Jerusalem, Hazor) no doubt encompassed all of them. I might add one other significant category, the ceremonial city, to describe the urban centers that were main ritual destinations for the population (e.g., Jerusalem, Samaria, Dan, Beersheba, Bethel).29

The disciplines of anthropology and sociology shed additional light on some of the common functions of cities in ancient Israel.30 Among the most important, ancient cities were centers for trade and work-related specialties, tax collection and distribution, the administration of law and order, and the housing of nobility and/or wealthy gentry as well as specialists not associated with food production, such as bureaucrats, religious officials, and scribes.31 Moreover, by virtue of their defenses, cities offered protection from chaotic forces abroad. But the walls served an important sociological function as well, bonding people together in common cause. Most of the city’s working class denizens (peasants, artisans, traders, etc.) lived outside the gates, in close proximity to the city or in nearby villages, and in this way the city extended its dominant influence over the surrounding countryside.32

The various functions of cities comport with the biblical presentation that urban centers held powerful sway over the social, economic, and religious character of their dependents. Because of this kind of influence, the biblical witness often depicts a city, as Ellen Davis observes, “more like a person than an inert object. It has moral as well as physical character; its character grows and changes, for good or for ill. A city has a spirit, and a city with a future has a store of creative energy that enables it to respond to challenge.”33 Yet, in the biblical witness concerning cities, we will see that though cities embody the highest hopes of humankind, they also manifest the basest capacity for human sin. They can both protect and violate their inhabitants; both prosper corporate ingenuity and multiply creative evil. They magnify the effect of both the virtues and the vices of their people.34 This dialectical capacity for both blessing and destructiveness stands behind the ambivalence with which the biblical text evaluates the city as a human construct.

CITY IN THE HEBREW BIBLE

The biblical record includes an abundance of material related to the city and its happenings, to be sure, but outside of Jerusalem, the city is mentioned only as a byproduct of other issues.35 Nevertheless, in the biblical narrative the city appears at critical junctures in the history of redemption. In the following I will selectively trace reflections about the city in the biblical narrative in an attempt to come to some conclusions about what is an unsystematic presentation of the city in the Hebrew Scriptures.

Primeval History

The first observation to note is what is not said about the city in Israel’s story of beginnings. In stark contrast to some of the mythic literature of her contemporaries, Israel’s creation account makes clear that the earthly city has no divine prefigurement in the heavenly sphere nor is its appearance an act of creation.36 Instead of building a city for divine habitation (as, e.g., Marduk, the head god of the Babylonians, does after defeating Tiamat and creating earth), the God of the Bible plants a garden. Only on the outside of this garden, in the wider world, does the city come to be, and this at humanity’s initiative (Gen 4:17). The city, then, is a fully human establishment, leading the reader to suspect from the beginning that it will participate wholly in the weal and woe of humanity. Furthermore, given the city’s appearance so soon after the expulsion from the garden, the biblical author seems to consider it an inevitable human development. Nonetheless, the Bible is not clear whether the first urban building project is a positive or negative development.

On the one hand, Cain’s murderous actions set in motion a process leading to the construction of the first city.37 This inauspicious chain of events shrouds the city’s beginning in suspicion.38 Moreover, Cain’s acquired insecurity is a God-willed consequence of his violent act, yet such insecurity is the very thing a city is built to avoid. The connection of the city to violence perhaps reappears in the description of Nimrod, who is credited as the founder of great cities in Assyria and Babylon (Gen 10:10-12). Nimrod is portrayed as a mighty warrior and hunter (Gen 10:8-10). Does this briefest of descriptions imply that the city is necessarily tied to subjugation and violence, despite the fact that Nimrod’s conquests appear to be credited to the Lord (v. 9)? The Bible does not make the answer explicit.

On the other hand, Cain’s offense is not city building but fratricide, and the city could be understood as a development permitted by God in mercy to Cain and his sons. Furthermore, Cain’s descendants are credited with the cultivation of the arts and specialized technology, two developments associated with urban civilization. The first city, then, bequeaths gifts to humanity that the Genesis writer surely regarded as beneficial (Gen 4:21-22). Yet, these advances are tainted by the co-temporal violent aggression of Lamech (Gen 4:19-24), whose words might be taken, again, to tie together violence and advances related to city living.39 Urban society seems a mixed blessing.

The narrative about Babel may appear less ambiguous in regard to the city. Yet, the underlying polemic in this text is not against the urban project per se but directed at the sinful manifestation of human ambition that becomes exemplified in city building. In short, “the problem with the polis . . . is power,” not population growth.40 The community on the plain of Shinar wishes to construct a city in order to make a name for itself, signaling that the lust for power and control always lurks in the shadows of dreams for urban high-rises. In the ancient world, cities were more often than not built by slave labor, as Israel was all too aware, based on her slavery in Egypt (Exod 1:11). Perhaps, then, there is reason to hear in this story a polemic against the urban oppression of one group by another. Babel represents a centralization and use of authority that was engineered to thwart God’s purposes.41 The project’s success demonstrates that cities have an uncanny ability to catalyze human ingenuity, though the Bible illustrates how such a project can quickly devolve into a corrupt exercise in apotheosis. About Babel, Christopher Seitz observes:

The problem with city building is that no one can tell exactly when the appropriate need for protection and justice and organization slides over into name seeking, human endeavor in love with itself, and a false sense of independence and unity, achieved rather than granted. The story warns about this danger and lets the example of Babel stand as a signpost.42

Thus, the primeval history ends with a failed city that falters because of its aberrant ethos—though it does not necessarily pronounce the phenomenon of the city a doomed enterprise.

The Pentateuch

Cities continue to dot the landscape of the Pentateuch. Sodom, perhaps the most well-known city in the Bible other than Jerusalem, is the topic of an extended dialogue between Abraham and God in Gen 18. The people of Sodom sinned greatly against the Lord (Gen 13:13). The account of the sexual perversion and inhospitality of Sodom’s denizens notwithstanding, the text specifies only that God becomes interested in Sodom because of the “outcry” that goes up against it (18:20-21; 19:13). In other contexts, this specific language of “cry” is connected with the cry of injustice, of the oppressed against the oppressor.43 Again, the text appears to offer an episode about a city that facilitates relationships of injustice, likely pointing to Sodom’s relationship with the surrounding (and dependent) countryside.44 Nevertheless, God solicits Abraham to pray on behalf of the city. God’s exchanges with Abraham, no mere account of haggling over the city, are rather a demonstration of the lengths to which God is willing to go to save the city.45 Even though finally too few righteous exist in the city to merit its salvation, God’s actions underline God’s desire to bless the city because of the righteous therein. Furthermore, because the wider biblical witness uses Sodom as a paradigm for wicked cities (e.g., Deut 29:23; Isa 13:19-20; Ezek 16:48-50), one might also view Abraham’s intercession as one model for how God’s people ought to posture themselves toward the city.46

The Exodus narrative opens with oppressed Israel building supply cities in Egypt (Exod 1:11). The supply cities that were once their salvation (Gen 42:1-5) have become their curse. Though the motif of the city does not play a key role in the exodus, Ellen Davis astutely shows that the character of work entailed in such building projects is a main focus of the narrator.47 The account of the construction of the tabernacle (Exod 25-31, 35-40) is, among other things, a counternarrative to the oppressive work of Egypt, which Israel experienced in Egypt’s building program. The problem with Egypt is not the desire to build but the desire to build without reference to worship of the one true God—a perversion of God’s creational gift of good work. The construction of the tabernacle shows Israel the character of good work, or, said differently, how to build rightly: by observing the rhythms of the Sabbath (31:17; 35:2), by everyone offering their God-given talents and materials (35-36:7), and by keeping covenant with God through it all (32-34). Israel will need to recall these exodus-defined “building codes” when she settles into the land.

On the plains of Moab, poised between past experience (Egypt) and future anticipation of urban dwelling (Canaan), Israel receives in Deuteronomy a vision of city living.48 Up to this point in the canonical-literary context of Scripture, most reflection on the city has been negatively formulated. In Deuteronomy, however, the city is presented explicitly as a gift from God that Israel will acquire (Deut 6:10; 17:2).49 Israel must now learn how to behave faithfully as urban dwellers.50 John Goldingay nicely summarizes six concerns of Deuteronomy’s vision that are particularly pertinent to Israel’s urban imagination:51

1. Honesty and truth in social and economic relations, as opposed to fraud and violence (17:8-13; 19; 25:13-16);
2. A system of care for the needy as opposed to exploitation (chs. 14-15; 26);
3. Social cohesiveness, as opposed to anonymity and/or individualism (note the language of brotherhood throughout Deuteronomy);
4. Womanhood (ch. 15; Deuteronomy frequently adds concern for women alongside that of men);
5. Family order and sexual relations (ch. 22);
6. Regular celebration and joy, in the form of urban festivals (ch. 16).

In a block of text at the heart of the book (16:18-17:20), Moses instructs the Israelites on the challenge of the administration of justice in cities (16:18). That this is a main concern should not surprise the reader given the character of cities previously encountered in the Pentateuch.52 Here, though, the cities are gifts, and city administration performed justly contributes something integral to the broader vision of Israel’s existence.53 Finally, it should be noted that the blessings proclaimed in Deuteronomy imagine cities fully unified and at peace with the countryside (Deut 28:3-7).54 Deuteronomy’s urban vision integrates the concern for the practice of religion, politics, economics, and even ecology (cf. Deut 20:20) in its overall concern for city existence. Thus, Deuteronomy’s vision provides another contribution to what it means to practice faithful urban habitation.55

Jerusalem

David’s capture and subsequent selection of Jerusalem as the capital of his kingdom opened up new vistas in Israel’s imagination about the city (2 Sam 5:7-9). Jerusalem looms large in Israel’s historical, poetic, and prophetic literature.56 Regularly, Jerusalem is cast throughout Israel’s canon as a personified female figure; she is the most frequently referenced female agent in the Hebrew Bible, and perhaps the most complex of any human character.57

Theologically, Jerusalem was beset by a fundamental tension.58 On the one hand, David’s transfer of the ark of the covenant and Solomon’s construction of the temple cemented the centrality of Jerusalem as the holy city and dwelling place of YHWH—signified by the name “Zion” (1 Kings 8; 11:36; Pss 46; 48; 132). Over time a “Zion” tradition developed that celebrated Jerusalem as the special meeting point of heaven and earth (Pss 9:11; 50:2), creating a mythic aura of invincibility because of an assumed divine protection (Pss 46:5; 48; 125:1). As the location of the temple, Jerusalem was the epicenter of God’s blessing, from which every nation would receive blessing (43:3). Jerusalem and its temple were a routine focal point of Israel’s prayers (Ps 122:6-9). As long as Jerusalem stood, its people presumed a measure of security, because it was the place from which YHWH ruled the earth (Ps 99:1-2). On the other hand, many of the prophets inveighed against the city’s inhabitants for the jingoism supported by these presumptions, particularly in light of their callous covenantal unfaithfulness (e.g., Isa 1-5; 24; Ezek 16; Jer 7). Because of the people’s idolization of Jerusalem the prophets pronounced God’s judgment. Ezekiel, for example, shows that God is not monopolized by the city but can depart from God’s dwelling leaving the city to be destroyed (Ezek 10). Nevertheless, the prophets envision for the city an eventual salvation.

Jerusalem, for all its flaws, becomes in the imagination of Scripture something of a model for God’s agenda for urban life. Jerusalem as a metaphor stands for a reality and truth larger than itself, namely, the possibility and problems of God’s dwelling among any human city. Historically it is experienced as a place where evil is magnified; but many prayers and prophecies testify that the city can also survive by the creative power of God. For this reason, Ellen Davis compares Jerusalem in Scripture’s imagination to “an icon: a holy, healing image whose function is to invite worshipers into a different experience of the world and their own humanity.”59 As an icon, Jerusalem embodies a theology of urban dwelling where justice and righteousness find a home (Isa 1:21), to which people stream for its life-giving capacities (Ps 87; Mic 4:1-2), and where divine blessing finds an outlet to the far reaches of the earth (Isa 2:3; Pss 72; 134). Because of its enduring connection to God’s love, Zion could be said to be the “mother” of all good city dwelling (Ps 87:5).60 Thus, Jerusalem teaches readers both what to pray for and what to offer praise for in regard to the city.61

Prophets

In no other part of the canon is the city as dominant a theme as in the prophetic literature. The prophets give expression to the ambiguity of the city just as we have seen in other parts of the canon, but the prophets provide the largest and most conspicuous picture of the city in its peril and promise.62 In a brief essay it is impossible to plot the polyphony of responses to the city in the prophetic corpus.63 Below I paint in broad brushstrokes a few of the most important truths that the prophetic literature offers to a theological assessment of the city.

To recall earlier comments, the prophets are often understood as railing against a corrupt, wealthy urban system from the perspective of the exploited, poor rural community. Indeed, the prophets inveighed against sins associated with the city (e.g., Isa 1:21-23; 3:16-17.; 5:8-13; Amos 3:9-10; 4:1; Mic 6:9-16.; Hab 2:12; Nah 3-19; Zeph 3:1-7) and the wealth garnered from exploitation of agricultural communities (e.g., Isa 5:8-10; Amos 5:11; 8:4-6; Mic 3:9-12). But to read a generalized anti-urban attitude64 overlooks the fact that the prophetic critique often concerns the totality of the population, with city names frequently standing as metonyms for a much larger population.65 Furthermore, many of the prophets themselves probably hailed from privileged backgrounds or were at least associated with cities and the wealthy power holders therein (consider, e.g., Samuel, Jeremiah, Huldah, Isaiah).66 Far from an urban polemic, those texts that castigate the city should be read instead as a sharp reminder of the degree of interconnectedness of city and country.67

The prophets were religious spokespeople who were covenantal truth tellers, warning and interpreting for urban audiences the impending judgments of YHWH.68 In the prophets, God’s judgment on the city frequently targets the city for its arrogant, persistent belief in its own security (Isa 17:9-10; Jer 7; Ezek 13:1-16; Hos 8:14; 13:10; Amos 6:8).69 The prophets regularly chide cities and their officials for not delivering on the promise of the city to be a place that fosters the practice of justice and righteousness: “How the faithful city has become a whore! She that was full of justice, righteousness lodged in her—but now murderers!” (Isa 1:21).70 All through the prophetic literature, it seems that cities “impress” prophets for their persistent ability to harbor evil. The defeat of the wicked “city of chaos” as a phenomenon takes a typological, apocalyptic response (Isa 24-25). The city that is the mirror of the human lust for control and power must finally die to its pride and injustice.

But if in the prophets the city frequently fell under the judgment of God, the city also was the setting for the restoration of God (Isa 2:2-4; Mic 4:1-4). In dialogue with two texts (Isa 24-27 and Jer 7), Robert Carroll develops the argument that the dialectic of judgment and restoration, of despair and hope, points to a symbolic understanding of the topos of the city in the prophets: every city may at one point be the life-giving Jerusalem-Zion or may be the death-dealing “city of chaos.” Carroll surmises:

All the cities in the Bible represent different phases of the one city—the city of humankind. . . . There is no city of god unless it be Jerusalem, an all too human city. . . . In the Hebrew Bible, unlike in the New Testament, there is no city outside the human sphere which may descend in due course from heaven nor is there a Jerusalem which is from above (Gal. 4.26) or at the end of history (contrast Rev. 21.1-4), there is only the human-all-too-human city of humankind where justice and peace may reside, along with murderers and the lovers of bribes who also live there, oppressors and oppressed together.71

Carroll has likely not given enough due to the prophetic vision of Jerusalem’s restoration in redemptive history, or to the evil that is symbolized by Babylon;72 nevertheless, his point stands that the prophetic literature as a whole testifies that no city is beyond the pale of God’s redemptive activity. For the Jews of exile a strict bifurcation between Jerusalem and the wicked city (e.g., Babylon) does not makes sense of either Jeremiah’s command to pray for the peace of the city (Babylon! Jer 29:7) or the literature of Jewish heroes and heroines within the city (e.g., Joseph, Daniel, Esther). Rather, in one sense every city was to one degree or another tinged with Babylon but also invested with the potential to be a renewed, Zion-like habitation of peace.73 Indeed, one need only recall the message of Jonah. God announces the wickedness of Nineveh (1:2), and Jonah’s message to Nineveh is devoid of hope (3:4). Yet the city exemplifies a remarkable capacity for repentance, and God, in turn, a remarkable capacity for mercy, showing that “no great city is past praying for.”74

CONCLUSION

This survey of the city in the Hebrew Bible has been selective, and I have noted that care must be taken in transferring what the Bible says about the city to the context of the modern urbanized world. Our investigation has revealed that though the Bible often exhibits ambivalence about the city, the God depicted in various parts of the canon cares about the fate of the human city. The city is not divinely underwritten, and the times when humans are susceptible to such a belief, the biblical text makes clear that God is not monopolized by any city, even Jerusalem. Still, the city is the setting for the cultivation and sustenance of civilization (Ps 107:4-9). Moreover, Zion as an epitome of the human city shows that the city has the stunning potential to manifest the presence of God.75

The city, then, is quite an important development, but one that the biblical witness recognizes is fraught with danger. This is so not because of an ideological bias against all things urban; the city and countryside share a similar destiny. Rather, people are sinful, and because cities consist of a concentration of people, they can manifest and magnify the evil inclinations of their constituents. But the concentration cuts both ways, and the prophets teach us that God does not finally abandon the city, which “bears the hope for redemption.”76 As a potential image of Zion, every city can thrive if it fosters the same environment imagined for the holy city of God.77

The human city cannot sustain itself without the saving mercy of God. In this way it is no different from any other human construct:

The city is one of a series of human devices such as sacrifice, monarchy, and temple, which are taken up by God, even though they did not arise from God’s initiative, and are worked into God’s purpose so graciously that we would not be able to conceive of worship or of Jesus or of the fulfillment of God’s final purpose without them.78

The city may represent an ambiguous moral sphere, but this does not stop the biblical tradents from treating it as the subject of prayer, praise, prophecy, lament, and hope. Surely all this attention is a show of love. Thus, if the narrative of the city is a narrative of repeated failure, it is also a narrative of faith in the power of God to create something lovely in the midst of human foundering. “Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines forth” (Ps 50:2).

Nathan Bills is a ThD student at Duke Divinity School. His focus is in Old Testament, and he is particularly interested in the intersection of Old Testament theology, ecclesiology, and urban communities of poverty. In the Spring of 2013, Nathan will join the Bible faculty of Lipscomb University, where he anticipates teaching and living in this intersection. You can contact Nathan at nbills80@gmail.com.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Arnold, Bill T., and H. G. M. Williamson. Dictionary of the Old Testament: Historical Books. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2005.

Blenkinsopp, Joseph. “Cityscape to Landscape: The ‘Back to Nature’ Theme in Isaiah 1-35.” In “Every City Shall Be Forsaken”: Urbanism and Prophecy in Ancient Israel and the Near East, edited by Lester L. Grabbe and Robert D. Haak, 35-44. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 2001.

Boyce, Richard N. The Cry to God in the Old Testament. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988.

Brown, Francis, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs. The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon: With an Appendix Containing the Biblical Aramaic. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1996.

Brown, William P., and John T. Carroll. “The Garden and the Plaza: Biblical Images of the City.” Interpretation 54, no. 1 (January 2000): 3-11.

Brueggemann, Walter. “The City in Biblical Perspective: Failed and Possible.” Word and World 19, no. 3 (Summer 1999): 236-50.

Carroll, Robert P. “City of Chaos, City of Stone, City of Flesh: Urbanscapes in Prophetic Discourses.” In “Every City Shall Be Forsaken”: Urbanism and Prophecy in Ancient Israel and the Near East, edited by Lester L. Grabbe and Robert D. Haak, 45-61. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 2001.

Davis, Ellen F. Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

_______. “Slaves or Sabbath-Keepers? A Biblical Perspective on Human Work.” Anglican Theological Review 83, no. 1 (Winter 2001): 25-40.

Dever, William G. The Lives of Ordinary People in Ancient Israel: When Archaeology and the Bible Intersect. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012.

Ellul, Jacques. The Meaning of the City. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970.

Fox, Richard. Urban Anthropology: Cities in Their Cultural Setting. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1977.

Freedman, David Noel, ed. The Anchor Bible Dictionary. 6 vols. New York: Doubleday, 1992.

Frick, Frank S. The City in Ancient Israel. Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series 36. Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1977.

Fritz, Volkmar. The City in Ancient Israel. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1995.

Goldingay, John. Key Questions About Christian Faith: Old Testament Answers. Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2010.

Gorringe, T. J. A Theology of the Built Environment: Justice, Empowerment, Redemption. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Gottwald, Norman K. The Tribes of Yahweh: A Sociology of the Religion of Liberated Israel, 1250-1050 B. C. E. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1979.

Grabbe, Lester L., and Robert D. Haak. “Every City Shall Be Forsaken”: Urbanism and Prophecy in Ancient Israel and the Near East. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 330. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 2001.

________. “Sup-Urbs or Only Hyp-Urbs? Prophets and Populations in Ancient Israel and Socio-historical Method.” In “Every City Shall Be Forsaken”: Urbanism and Prophecy in Ancient Israel and the Near East, edited by Lester L. Grabbe and Robert D. Haak, 95-123. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament: Supplement Series. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 2001.

Hoppe, Leslie J. The Holy City: Jerusalem in the Theology of the Old Testament. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000.

Houston, Walter. “Exit the Oppressed Peasant? Rethinking the Background of Social Criticism in the Prophets.” In Prophecy and the Prophets in Ancient Israel: Proceeding of the Oxford Old Testament Seminar, edited by John Day, 101-16. London: T&T Clark, 2010.

Jenni, Ernst, and Claus Westermann, eds., Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament. Translated by Mark E. Biddle. 3 vols. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1997.

Köhler, Ludwig, Walter Baumgartner, and Johann Jakob Stamm. Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament. Translated and edited by Mervyn Edwin John Richardson. 5 vols. Boston: Brill, 2000.

MacDonald, Nathan. “Listening to Abraham—Listening to YHWH: Divine Justice and Mercy in Genesis 18:16-33.” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 66, no. 1 (January 2004): 25-43.

Mendenhall, George. “The Hebrew Conquest of Palestine.” In The Biblical Archaeologist Reader 3, edited by Edward Campbell Jr. and David N. Freedman, 100-120. Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1970.

Middleton, J. Richard. The Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis 1. Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2005.

Miller, Patrick D. Israelite Religion and Biblical Theology: Collected Essays. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000.

Mills, Mary. “Urban Morality and the Great City in the Book of Jonah.” Political Theology 11, no. 3 (July 2010): 453-65.

Mulder, Mark, and James K. A. Smith. “Subdivided By Faith? An Historical Account of Evangelicals and the City.” Christian Scholar’s Review 38, no. 4 (Summer 2009): 415-433.

O’Brien, Mark. “Deuteronomy 16.18-18.22: Meeting the Challenge of Towns and Nations.” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 33, no. 2 (December 2008): 155-72.

O’Connor, Michael Patrick. “The Biblical Notion of the City.” In Constructions of Space II: The Biblical City and Other Imagined Spaces, edited by Jon L. Berquist and Claudia V. Camp, 18-39. Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies 490. New York: T&T Clark, 2008.

Park, Sejin (Sam). “Cain’s Legacy: The City and Justice in the Book of Genesis.” In vol. 1 of A Teacher for All Generations: Essays in Honor of James C. VanderKam, edited by Eric F. Mason, et al., 49-63. Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism 153. Leiden: Brill, 2012.

Roddy, Nicolae. “Landscape of Shadows: The Image of City in the Hebrew Bible.” In Cities through the Looking Glass: Essays on the History and Archaeology of Biblical Urbanism, edited by Rami Arav, 11-21. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2008.

Rogerson, J. W., and John Vincent. The City in Biblical Perspective. Biblical Challenges in the Contemporary World. Oakville, CT: Equinox, 2009.

Sakenfeld, Katharine Doob, ed. New Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible. 5 vols. Nashville: Abingdon, 2006-2009.

Seitz, Christopher R. “The Two Cities in Christian Scripture.” In The Two Cities of God: The Church’s Responsibility for the Earthly City, edited by Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson, 11-27. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997.

Sheldrake, Philip. “A Spiritual City: Urban Vision and the Christian Tradition.” In Theology in Built Environments: Exploring Religion, Architecture, and Design, edited by Sigurd Bergmann, 151-70. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2009.

Towner, W. Sibley. “A Crisis of the Imagination: The Real Jerusalem Confronts the Ideal Jerusalem.” Interpretation 54, no. 1 (January 2000): 13-22.

VanGemeren, Willem A., ed. New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis. 5 vols. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997.

Van Wieringen, Archibald L. H. M., and Annemarieke van der Woude, eds. “Enlarge the Site of Your Tent”: The City as Unifying Theme in Isaiah. Old Testament Studies 58. Leiden: Brill, 2011.

Williams, Raymond. The Country and the City. New York: Oxford University Press, 1975.

Willis, Timothy M. The Elders of the City: A Study of the Elders-Laws in Deuteronomy. Society of Biblical Literature Monograph Series 55. Atlanta: SBL, 2001.

Wright, Christopher J. H. The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2006.

An accurate understanding the city’s relationship to the early church reveals how Christians lived out and embraced the kingdom of God as a way of life in their particular cultural settings. The aim of such an analysis is not to find a strategic “silver bullet” that will allow the church to return to the growth pattern of its early years. Rather, a more profitable way of reading Scripture as it relates to the early expansion of the church recognizes that missions is not so much about strategies of evangelism as it is about meeting God where he is already at work and living purposefully in the ways of Jesus, the Christ.

The discussion of where to initiate new mission efforts has for many years involved the consideration of the appropriate size of a city for such a work. Cities have almost always been the target of new efforts of evangelization for many reasons—the most obvious of which is the potential of larger numbers of conversions where larger groupings of people live and work. Roland Allen’s classic work Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours?, first published in 1912, raised the question of Paul’s use of the city in his missionary strategies. To be more specific, Allen focused on Paul’s strategy to permeate the Roman provinces with the gospel. However, Allen explicitly mentions Paul’s use of major cities as points of proclamation within a province—a city where there would be much coming in and going out.1 Allen was convinced Paul intentionally planted evangelistic churches at such strategic locations so that such churches would be “sources of rivers, mints from which the new coin of the Gospel was spread in every direction. . . . [Paul’s] method of work was so designed that centres of intellectual and commercial activity became centres of Christian activity.”2

In Wayne A. Meeks’s preface to the second edition of his work The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul, he writes:

The urbanization that Alexander, his successors, and then the Romans brought to the region may have affected the movement at an even earlier stage that we once thought. Be that as it may, it was as an urban cult that Christianity spread through the empire, and the earliest substantial evidence we have of its formation as an urban cult comes from the documents associated with Paul.3

Meeks then reminds his readers that ancient cities were much different from cities as we know them today, especially in the West. Those living in developing nations have a clearer view of what cities in Paul’s era were like—crowded streets, raw sewage, poor construction, little urban planning—in other words, generally unpleasant places to live. The purpose of his book (and its revision) is to attempt to reconstruct the social dynamics of the cities in which the early church so rapidly spread.

It is interesting to point out that both Meeks and Allen wrote out of a concern for appropriately applying the methods and teachings of Paul. Allen’s concern was methodological—attempting to set the record straight, for “almost every intolerable abuse that has ever been known in the mission field has claimed some sentence or act of St. Paul as its original.”4 Meeks, on the other hand, was concerned with a hermeneutical issue. He believed the social context and functions of doctrine in ancient cities had been all but universally neglected when interpreting the letters attributed to Paul, leading to serious distortions when attempting to apply his teachings to the reader’s context.5

Rodney Stark renewed an interest in the dynamics of the city in relationship to the early church in his book Cities of God: The Real Story of How Christianity Became an Urban Movement and Conquered Rome. Stark set out to debunk many of the many assumptions about the early church that have no supporting quantitative data.6 Stark calls for historians to count—literally! He states early in the book, “A major purpose of this book is to demonstrate that quantitative methods can help to resolve many debates about early church history.”7

Stark’s work has been well received by some and rejected by others. Those who reject the validity of his work tend to have personal stakes in their dissenting views. He argues (I think convincingly) that the growth of the early church was neither explosive nor miraculous as the usual interpretation concludes.8 He studies the thirty most populated cities of the Roman empire during the apostolic era and establishes several statistically supported hypotheses, such as the impact of a city’s distance from Jerusalem upon its size (the closer to Jerusalem, the larger the community), the influence of Hellenism, and the nature of travel (inland versus port cities; port cities having larger numbers of Christians). Basically he attempts to demonstrate that the expansion of the early church can be explained based on criteria present in the ancient world. This is not to discount in any way the work of the Holy Spirit in the early church, but to convince the reader that the power of conversion was the everyday life of the “normal” believer. It was the living out of loving one’s neighbor as oneself, doing to others what one would have them do to oneself, and helping the poor as if they were Jesus that made the difference.9

The most exhaustive work to date concerning the development of the early church is James D. G. Dunn’s Beginning From Jerusalem, volume two of his Christianity in the Making series.10 This volume is limited to the church as recorded in the New Testament writings (30 to 70 CE). Volume three, to be entitled A Contested Identity (hopefully to be published in 2013), will deal with the continual development of the church from 70 to 120 CE. Even if one disagrees with some of Dunn’s conclusions, the exhaustive references (the bibliography in volume two alone is 62 pages long!) make his works indispensable in the library of anyone interested in the early church as revealed in the biblical text. Dunn’s primary concern is properly reading the New Testament text, but there are many nuggets provided for consideration of the relationship between the early church and the city.

Dunn’s research strongly supports several significant considerations of the first years of the Christian movement. First, Paul’s (and other NT writers’) understanding of the mission of Jesus was not different from that which Jesus embodied and taught (as many scholars have suggested).11 The central idea of the establishment of “the kingdom of God” continued to be the core purpose of the nascent Christian churches.12 Secondly, the delay of the Parousia was not the problem many have suggested it was. The death of Christian leaders and other great difficulties of life from the beginning (Acts 3) disallowed any triumphalist expectation of Jesus’ immediate return.13 If true, this impacts any study of early evangelism because it explains the impulse of the missionary expansion of the early church was not one of eschatological necessity (urgency due to the imminent return of Jesus) but rather because the good news of the kingdom of God truly added great value to everyday life.14 For Dunn, the cities did indeed have an influence on the early church’s growth simply because that is where the synagogues were located, and it was from there the “good news” emanated in its earliest developments. He contends that “most small churches in effect probably continued to shelter under the legal status of the synagogues.”15

One last point from Dunn (which directly challenges the Stone-Campbell tradition’s often reductionistic patternist hermeneutic) is the complexity and differences of the Christian movement by 70 CE. He concludes, “The somewhat uncomfortable fact is that first-generation Christianity was never the pure ideal church which subsequent generations imagined as ‘the apostolic age’ or for whose return radical reformers longed.”16 There was no single pattern of “doing church,” as most students and scholars know. Ecclesiology was not the primary focus, according to Dunn. It was christology. The implications of this in an appropriate understanding of the early church cannot be overstated.17

It is here that I arrive at my purpose for writing this article. As a church historian, I am painfully and acutely aware of the continual misuse of biblical history to validate contemporary ideas and initiatives. This is particularly true with the early church and what it might teach us concerning the expansion of the kingdom of God. Many misguided efforts toward church growth and missions have been based on some aspect or idea generated from perceived practices of the early church. My hope is to help move us toward a more profitable way of reading Scripture (in particular as it relates to the early expansion of the church)—to the glory of God and for the sake of today’s church in today’s world.

Therefore I will identify my thesis here and spend the rest of this study attempting to demonstrate its validity. The actions and teachings of the early church reveal how Christians lived out and embraced “the kingdom of God” as a way of life in their particular cultural settings. The whole idea of “strategy” is a post-Enlightenment idea—especially as it pertains to an endeavor generated by the Holy Spirit to the glory of God through the work of Jesus Christ. That is not to say that careful planning, preparation, and study do not have a place in the work of today’s church—they most certainly do. But searching for a “silver bullet” that will allow the church to return to the miraculous growth pattern of its early years risks, ironically, defeating or at least greatly impeding the very work of the Holy Spirit we seek to understand and ultimately put into action.

I recently reviewed an extensive research project (which I will not identify for obvious reasons) based on finding the key to the expansive growth of the early church. I was asked to evaluate the work as an “early church historian.” The entire study was based on the assumption that the early church exploded from Jerusalem as the expression of a well thought out strategy of the Holy Spirit enacted by Peter, Paul, and other followers of Jesus (beginning with Acts 2 and continuing to explore the exponential growth reflected in Acts). The study was based on the proposal that there were miraculous conversions of large groups of people that led to the phenomenal expansion of the early church.18 It concluded with a riveting and complex strategy based on an intricate system of networking (confirmed by recent sociological studies) established through carefully negotiated relationships between leading churches in various major cities. The author is convinced this was the key to evangelistic success and thus is attempting to establish similar dynamics through cooperating churches in major cities in today’s world. His study is not without merit of consideration. My reply to that author will be reflected in the remainder of this article.

Are We Missing the Obvious?

It is of particular importance that those of us participating in the Restoration Movement model a proper understanding of the appropriate use of the study of the early church. There is currently a growing desire, especially among evangelical churches, to reconsider their governance in light of what the Scriptures teach. Those of us who have advocated a return to the principles of Scripture for guidance in such matters concerning the purposes, teachings, and functions of the church have a wonderful opportunity to lead the way in this pursuit.

What might we gain from an accurate understanding of “the city” and its relationship to the early Christian church as reflected in Scripture and other documents of the early church? To this day, whether discussing strategy, theology, missiology, or hermeneutics, much of what we debate appropriately originates from Paul’s actions recorded in Acts or writings attributed to him. We immediately note that Paul’s teaching methodology differs considerably from that of Jesus. Paul rarely quotes Jesus and in fact uses remarkably different language and style. Yet, as Dunn and others have convincingly shown, Paul teaches the same gospel. If Paul, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, is contextualizing the message of the good news of the kingdom of God for the cities of his day, it would be helpful for us to understand the similar dynamics of life in our cities. This is where studies like those of Meeks and Stark are extremely helpful to our understanding of appropriately contextualizing the gospel.

Meeks attempts to use social description or social history to better understand Paul’s writings. Might more information concerning the ancient cities inform us of Paul’s concerns so that that we might better apply them to our cities? If the gospel originates in the teaching of Jesus and not Paul, how does Paul convey Jesus’ message to his hearers? If we understand Paul as the urban interpreter of the gospel of Jesus in the context of the Hellenistic, Romanized cities of his day, might this help us be better interpreters of the gospel of Jesus in the Modern (Postmodern?), Western cities of our day? Or, if you are working in a non-Western, developing nation—does the nature of your context modify the way you read and understand Paul?

Stark raises other interesting possibilities. As he attempts to reconstruct the cities to which the Christian message spread, he looks for elements in those cultures that might be of particular propensity to embrace the good news of Jesus. Missiologists often use the phrase “redemptive analogy” in the context of cultural studies. Too often this has more to do with particular practices rather than basic understandings of reality. Stark is convinced the monotheism of the Christian faith made it particularly attractive to the cities where Paul preached because of currents in those cultures. Might there be similar elements in our cities that will lead non-believers to faith? One of the issues Stark discusses is the confusion that polytheism had created. People were ready for a better way to understand their lives in the context of a divine power. Paul’s teachings were very attractive—one God, one reason to live (to serve others), and a view of worship and praise that no longer required a “portfolio” of competing gods.19

In March of 2012, I took a group of Lipscomb University students with me to Dundee, Scotland to work with the church there. One of the ministers, Patrick Sullivan, has established great relationships with a local secular high school, where he serves as chaplain. Patrick arranged for our group to speak to the seventh graders during their religious education classes. A large majority of the students were non-believers. Most viewed Christianity with obvious negative bias. One of the reasons we were asked to speak to the young people was to convince them of the importance of continuing their education. We spoke to almost two hundred students in groups of thirty, for ninety minutes each. Using various activities, including breaking the students into groups with our students, we told the story of Jesus as the hero of our lives—giving us a reason to learn. Working on the idea that life for these young people was without hope and meaning, we explained how Jesus gives each of us the opportunity to be rescuers and redeemers (returning value to damaged lives). I was amazed at how well we were received. The students enjoyed it so much that we are taking a larger group next year so we can cover all grade levels. Borrowing from Donald Miller, we offered them “a better story.”20

This is where texts like Amy Oden’s And You Welcomed Me and Bruce Winter’s Seek the Welfare of the City set a more helpful trajectory for considering the relationship of the city and the early church.21 Along with Stark and Meeks, Oden and Winter point out the power of the early Christian’s faithful witness to the love and concerns of Jesus. While this is true in all populations, rural and urban, cities were important because that is where large gatherings of people lived—in very dense, compact quarters. As pagans fled the cities when calamities such as plagues and fires devastated cities, the Christians flowed in to help the sick and displaced.22 They carried with them a message of healing, spiritually and physically.

Here we encounter a widely espoused idea of the missional church movement: missions is not so much about strategies of evangelism as it is about meeting God where he is already at work. An excellent presentation of this is Alan Roxburgh’s Missional: Joining God in the Neighborhood.23 As simple as this sounds, this may be the key to kingdom growth—living intentionally and purposefully in the ways of Jesus, the Christ. This is certainly not a negation of the importance of biblical teaching and proclamation. It is a plea to recognize that proclamation in the absence of visible life transformation, leading all believers to lives of love and concern for others, lacks purpose and power. In the words of Paul that we all know by heart:

So, my dear family, this is my appeal to you by the mercies of God: offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. Worship like this brings your mind into line with God’s. What’s more, don’t let yourselves be squeezed into the shape dictated by the present age. Instead, be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you can work out what God’s will is—what is good, acceptable, and complete (Rom 12:1,2).24

Conclusion and Challenge

I recently had a great discussion with a friend whom I deeply admire concerning this approach to missions in the city (joining God where he is already at work). While he agreed with me in principle, he also pointed out the difficulty of this kind of methodology in leading to concrete results. He mentioned a mission work with which he is familiar where the workers have spent several years “just living and doing good,” yet have no tangible, measurable results. This is a challenge. We have worked for so long trying to produce results, rather than live faithfully and let the Holy Spirit work, that “faithful witness” seems to lack content, direction, and purpose. This is where the early church can help. Apparently, this lack of direction was not a problem for them. The life they lived was of such stark contrast to the complex paganism of their day that people, one by one, experienced conversion because the Christ-way offered a better story for their lives. When authentic discipleship is on display, church happens. The good news of kingdom living is too wonderful not to share. One lives a life of authentic discipleship, which provides an opportunity for a defense of that hopeful, purposeful living (1 Pet 3:15). The experience of authentic Christian living is too dynamic to remain unorganized. Disciples gather because they need to share, experience vibrant community, and learn more about Jesus. Discipleship, or apprenticeship to Jesus in the school of life, as the focus of proclamation is a different approach than attempting to plant churches. It focuses on christology rather than ecclesiology. I realize there is much yet to be developed in such statements—another article for another time perhaps.

Yet, the challenge I offer is for us to return to the impulse of kingdom life manifest in the early church. The teachings of Paul were for the most part focused on Christian living rather than overt evangelism. Actually, it might be that intentional, authentic Christian living is overt evangelism. I would argue that most of Paul’s “theology” would be better understood as the true story upon which Christian living is based. My experience as a professor over the last few years, in bringing non-believing students to faith, has convinced me this is true. My experience in helping churches, whether mission churches or established, traditional churches, understand their missional calling in the context of the individual lives of each member bearing witness to the kingdom of God, has also given me great hope for new growth in the church.

Cities are where broken people live. That does not exclude rural settings as also being ripe for the gospel. But cities are a great starting place. The key to effective proclamation in the early church was the result of their taking seriously the words of Jesus: “As you go, make disciples.” Cities happened to be where early believers “went.” The power of teaching the ways of Jesus has not diminished. The Holy Spirit continues to lead the way in the cities and throughout the world. Will we follow the Spirit’s leading? We will proclaim through our lives that there is a better story?

Earl Lavender is executive director of the Institute for Christian Spirituality and director of missional studies at Lipscomb University. Born to missionary parents in Italy, he returned there with his wife Rebecca for six years, planting a church in northeastern Italy. They have also been involved in domestic church planting. Earl has worked in mission efforts throughout Europe, as well as Australia, India, Russia, Brazil, Ghana, and China. Earl completed his undergradu- ate and masters work at David Lipscomb College and received a PhD in Historical Theology from Saint Louis University in 1991. He has written multiple books and published articles as well as contributing encyclopedia entries in several published volumes concerning patristics or ancient history. He can be contacted at earl.lavender@lipscomb.edu.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Allen, Roland. Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours? 6th ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983.

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Crossan, John Dominic, and Jonathan L. Reed. In Search of Paul: How Jesus’s Apostle Opposed Rome’s Empire with God’s Kingdom. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2004.

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Meeks, Wayne A. The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul. 2nd ed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003.

Miller, Donald. A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: How I Learned to Live a Better Story. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2009.

Oden, Amy. And You Welcomed Me: A Sourcebook on Hospitality in Early Christianity. Nashville: Abington, 2001.

Roxburgh, Alan. Missional: Joining God in the Neighborhood. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2011.

Stark, Rodney. Cities of God: The Real Story of How Christianity Became an Urban Movement and Conquered Rome. New York: HarperOne, 2006.

Winter, Bruce. Seek the Welfare of the City: Christians as Benefactors and Citizens. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994.

Wright, N. T. The Kingdom New Testament: A Contemporary Translation. New York: HarperCollins, 2011.