A few weeks ago, I posted a review of Richard Florida's article "Where the Brains Are" in the October Atlantic Monthly (the entire article is now available here on Florida's website). While they are fruitful and multiplying, America's college grads are not filling the earth. Instead, they are meeting up in relatively few "means metros" in order to ply their trades and realize their full economic potential.
So what does this means migration mean for mission and church planting? It has already been well-argued that America itself is a huge mission-field, and we need an urban-focused strategy to meet the challenge. In this post, I'd like to think about the next step: Assuming Christians go to the cities, what will our evangelism and discipleship need to look like? Here are two initial thoughts:
An emphasis on worldviews. Means metros, according to Florida are composed of "people of diverse talents, lifestyles, and social circles (as opposed to a few tight connections within homogenous groups). They are socially tolerant and open to new ways of thinking." Mixing it up in this milieu causes people to ask deeper questions than, "How can I have a more intimate personal relationship with Jesus?" Instead, they ask things like, "Is there one true way of looking at the world or just many different ways? Are the sexual ethics I was taught growing up rooted in anything deeper than my parents' outdated traditions?" Effective evangelism and teaching will have to address these questions.
This need for worldview discipleship was highlighted recently when I was talking to a lady who wanted to give a "good Christian book" to a friend living in New York. She thought he would like John Eldredge's Wild at Heart. Perhaps, I said, but having been educated at a liberal arts college and now living in NYC, he might benefit more from something like Francis Shaeffer's Trilogy or Nancy Pearcey's Total Truth. Suburban evangelicalism has been much better at producing stuff like Wild at Heart that deals with private piety and therapy. In addition to this, urban Christians need a worldview that can compete in a pluralistic age.
An emphasis on stewardship. The high earning potential of these urban dwellers is obvious enough, but Florida's insight is actually more nuanced: "Young graduates are flocking in ever-greater numbers to these 'means metros' where they often live in penury until either making it or being forced out by the high cots of living." In other words, they don't start off wealthy; many start off making very little. In Denver the progression goes like this: College grad moves to the city and rents a flat in Cap Hill or a house in Wash Park that she splits with 3 other people in the same situation. In a few years, she makes enough money to buy a small condo. She gets married in her early 30's to a guy with a good job and they pool their home equity to buy a bungalow in Wash Park or Congress Park or Park Hill or the Highlands. In the decade between age 25 to 35, many of these means-metroers will go from barely paying 1/4 of the rent to making lots of money. They go from needing help to being able to give it. A Christian church will have to both help these young grads get settled in the city and help them steward their growing income.
Another area of stewardship concerns the poor. Gentrification is a fact-of-life as more upwardly mobile types move into traditionally inner-city neighborhoods and fill the streets with their big-wheeled baby jogging strollers. How to "remember the poor" will be crucial to Christian credibility in these cities.
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