Jack Dennison 2

 

3 Strands of City Reaching

George Otis: Pray and Wait

Evangelism

Jack Dennison: Pray and Go

A few years ago, a donor suggested bringing these three strands together in Fiji.

What worked and what didn't? This is my experience based upon 10 years of city reaching activity.

Of all the cities that I have visited, Boulder is one of the most unique cities for impact and transformation that I know of. Their book The Externally Focused Church is a great example of the principles.

Positive Lessons Learned

Prayer Movement is the single most invigorating and refreshing movement of our day. It has called us into relationship and called us together into a common vision. We emphasize what we have in common, not what is different. This must continue. This underscores dependence on God.

Don't worry that your leadership will take glory from God. Follow him

We have seen a renewed emphasis on strategy out of which tactics emerge. Military terms of objective strategy and tactics is something God himself has ordained into the structure of humanity. In Africa, a herder has an objective of survival which involves strategy and tactics for accomplishing the objective. What we've discovered in city reaching, is that this process is intuitive and must become intentional the larger and more dynamic the objective. City reaching demands intentional development of objective strategy and tactics to accomplish the mission.

 


Strategy is the art of the general. Someone has to be the general, who will inspire, call to action, identify best practices.

We are concerned with our whole city, not just with tactics but strategy for transformation. This helps us to call others into the vision.

Part of what happens in Boulder, is they have an understanding of transformation means. Others have tended to link transformation with tactics. Transformation has to do with a deep broad impact of social systems and structures of society. It is not just spiritual, it is identifiable difference. Eutopia is a place of goodness, manifesting the values of the kingdom in the here and now.

It was strategic business leaders like Scott Beck and community leaders like Tom Kobe that brought legitimacy to the movement of transformation and build trust with the secular human service organizations. You don't want to fight the secular human service structures, you want to embrace this. Partnering with these kinds of leaders makes a huge difference. The animosity that often exists between the church and the secular structures can be healed in this process.

Partnering with other faiths is possible if it centers around blessing the city, not theology. Bring your theology but center on love for the city. Its not as if we don’t talk about Jesus or have distinctive faiths. The Holy Spirit works in the midst diverse peoples to glorify Christ. We can also fully support the Buddhist reading program at the same time that we debate the truths of our faith. Organizationally we can partner with organizations that are morally positive and spiritually neutral.

Does this kind of partnering create confusion? Perhaps but service is open to all to influence the city. If we don’t step into this role the church will be left behind and others will step in to bless the city. But with a mobilized church and the Holy Spirit what do we have to lose.



10 years ago in Boulder there was no confusion about Evangelicals. They were known by what they were against, their preaching etc. Now there is much confusion because people don't have Evangelicals pegged anymore.

Leadership must have a shared vision, common language, common strategy and relational and spiritual vitality. There must be a sense of sharedness and commonality. Without leadership you have no inspiration and gathering of people and resources.

Information is important. Andy has gathered information in Knoxville to understand the current reality so that we can make good decisions. You must know all the knowable about what your about. If it's affordable housing, you must go to all of the organizations that have information about that issue. There are people that have the key information that you need. You must find it.

You must identify and focus on the city. The city has become more important than ever.

The negative:

This is emotional for me.

The failure of pastoral leadership within our communities. They couldn't get past the prayer gatherings. They couldn't work together on a shared need or shared vision. What was missing: A commitment to transforming the city, a commitment to transforming the various sectors of the community, a commitment to working together beyond prayer, access to resources and influential people. None of these seemed to be present, but they were present in the business community. At the end of my experience with City Reach I felt we needed to retool to connect with the marketplace.

Marketplace leaders loved their pastors but didn't respect them. Pastors wanted to pray, marketplace leaders wanted measurable action. Pastors wouldn't affirm marketplace leaders. It wasn't working. This was very disappointing.

Ralph Winter wrote in an article in 1963 of Modalities and Sodalities. C. Peter Wagner wrote of this in a book with a chapter entitled "Why Bill Bright is not your pastor". Perhaps our expectations of pastors was unrealistic. Pastors are not the city leaders. Mature Christians in positions of influence should be invited to the table of leadership in city reaching.

There are churches that are entrepreneurial but they often work in isolation from other churches in the city.

Wagner wrote in Apostles of the City that certain pastors can take the lead in city reaching. But church size is not a criteria, nor is an authoritarian claim to apostleship.

Where do I find qualified leaders for spiritual endeavor? The assumption is that only pastors can lead. This is not the case.

Another failure was to not understand what transformation means. Personal, professional and public transformation.

Personal transformation: death to life, evangelism, salvation.

Professional transformation: Christians in business, education, etc. working to bring biblical values and the power and presence in to their field of endeavor. Bringing about Eutopia, the better place. We have that responsibility. How can we serve and bless the sphere of our profession. All the while personal transformation continues.

Public transformation: how can all of these professions work together to transform whole people groups.

I think all big public evangelism tends to do more harm than good. It says that you care more about you than them. They don't care about your evangelism. They care about where they hurt and what they need.

This goes back to why pastors can't work together. Public transformation provokes different responses from church leaders because the public doesn't care about it. Choosing to work for things that the city wants is something that everyone can rally around.

We failed to engage the other sectors of the community in transformation. We viewed this as a church thing, not a city thing.

We failed to see present day evangelism as something other than an administrative function. How many videos, how many mailings, how many people came to this or that event. This is a big failure.

We did way to much talking and too little acting.

Fiji: Many came together because someone was paying the bill. For 18 months we worked on achieving a shared vision. Luis Palau is a crusade evangelist. George Otis is a prayer movement leader preparing hearts for revival. City Reach has different goals.

Praying for revival is good, but what do we do while we are waiting for revival: collaborate in unity to bless the city. I don't believe that revival is the normative expression of the church. If it was we should just sit and wait. But God has chosen to use the Church to bring transformation whether or not it is accompanied by revival.

It was very hard to work together. We probably won't do it again. The integration doesn't happen at the international level, it happens at the local level. It's the city that is the personal connection for leaders, not an administrative, theoretical task regarding someone else's place.