Evangelism Handbook

In 1974, Ralph Winter presented an address at the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization entitled “The Highest Priority—Cross-Cultural Evangelism.” Winter’s address led to a growing focus on the identification of unreached people groups around the world. As these groups became identified worldwide, it became apparent most of them live in one large region in the East. In 1990, Luis Bush coined the term the “10/40 window,” referring to the area in the Eastern Hemisphere between 10 and 40 degrees north of the equator. Since then, the growing awareness of this region’s need for the gospel has had a profound effect on the development of international mission strategy. Of the 55 most unreached countries, 97 percent of their population lives in that window. Hardly a day goes by on our campus without mention of this designation. Much energy and urgency for the unsaved has been generated because of this focus.

The time has come for a Western version of the 10/40 window. Whereas the 10/40 window refers to the area demanding the greatest cause for urgency, the window to which I refer holds as much promise as it manifests great need. I am referring to a revolutionary call to reach the great cities of the West, and of the world.

Arguably no one has championed the city as a place of promise and need as much as Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City. Read Keller’s resources (www.redeemer.com) and you may join me in a conviction that the time has never been more urgent to reach the cities.

Over the years I have tried to write about areas where I believe the church today has failed to be effective as it relates to reaching people. I have written on spiritual awakenings because I am sure we cannot reach the West or the world without a God-intervention. I have written on reaching the unchurched because we mostly are not, and on students because we tend to treat them like kids instead of radicals. So in this book I am including chapters related to areas the church must refocus. Areas like church planting. And the cities. Why a chapter on the cities?

Biblically, the gospel spread via the cities of the Roman world. Simply study the book of Acts to see the priority given to cities. Large cities influence the culture like never before in history. In The Rise of Christianity Stark argued, “Within a decade of the crucifixion of Jesus, the village culture of Palestine had been left far behind, and the Graeco-Roman city became the dominant environment of the Christian movement.”² In fact by AD 300, the urban areas of the Roman Empire were 50 percent Christian, but the countryside remained 90 percent pagan.³

Strategically, commerce and culture flow through the cities. The flattening of the world has given large cities global ties and national influence. Now more than ever a teenager in rural North Carolina decides everything from musical tastes to future plans based more on urban America than from his local community. As a young adult I know in New York City recently observed, “Everything that will happen in the U.S. happens first in New York.” As the city goes, so goes the nation. Keller argues that large cities have as much or more power than states or nations today.

Globalization has caused large cities to be more similar than different around the world. In the past few years I have spent time in cities in several nations: Kiev, London, Paris, Florence, Rome, Chiang Mai, and Bangkok, among others. Add to that ventures to large cities in the United States, and having lived in medium to large metropolitan areas from Birmingham and Raleigh-Durham to Indianapolis, Dallas-Fort Worth, and Houston, and a common theme is apparent. In most if not all of these cities I just named, one can go to a major shopping district and grab a quick meal at McDonald’s or a sit-down meal at Hard Rock, grab a latte at Starbucks, and shop for Prada. I have done all the above except shop for Prada.

Major cities have more in common with each other from nation to nation than they do with rural areas in their own country. Pop culture, which changes little over space but rapidly over time, has increased in influence, while traditional culture, which changes slowly over time but varies greatly over space, has lessened in influence. We may reach Warsaw and Tokyo more by studying New York than by taking knowledge gained from village evangelism (overseas or in the U.S.) to the cities.

Cities are changing. This past spring I spoke at a college in Dallas, Texas. On the flight home I sat next to a middle-aged divorcee who had recently moved to the city-center in Dallas, the downtown area that had recently undergone a major revitalization, replete with loft apartments and the opportunity to live a complete life never driving a car or traveling far from home. She loved her life. She epitomized what so many have found—the city can be a place of greatness, where excellence in the arts and education is appreciated, where energy and life pulsate 24/7.

Keller has observed the rise of the city-center as key to understanding the city:

The center city, unlike the “inner city” (where the poor live) or where the working-class live, is where there is a confluence of a) residences for professionals, b) major work and job centers, and c) major cultural institutions—all in close proximity.⁴

Keller notes who lives there; people who have immense influence live in these centers—young professionals, mostly single; creative professionals; corporate leaders; leaders in the arts and education; new immigrant families; second-generation Americans; students/academics; and the gay community.

Anglo evangelicals have been fascinated with the suburbs for decades but must begin to see the importance of the city-centers. As a child I remember when a trip across Birmingham to the zoo seemed like a forever-long excursion. Then Interstate 59 was built in the 1960s. Suddenly the zoo was closer! We trace the rise of the (mostly suburban) megachurch to the year 1970 due in no small part to the ease of travel afforded by the interstate. But today the suburban-inner city dichotomy I hear so many use to categorize the city must be changed. The city-center and its holistic life view have replaced the suburbs and the shopping mall as the locus of influence, and we must realize that city is not synonymous with inner city.

We are losing the cities. My young adult friend in New York City would argue we have already lost them. We must go after them with the aggression of pioneer missionaries in an unchurched land, for that is where we are. In 2000 the Census Bureau reported that 80 percent of the United States lives in metropolitan areas. Yet Anglo evangelicals in particular tend not to be there. Only 50 percent of Southern Baptist churches are in metro areas.

Perhaps we could begin a serious conversation about whether the key to reaching the cities, the nation, and the world might be to offer a vision to believers to move to the cities. In particular, what if we began a call to the Millennials (those roughly 25 and under) in the United States who love Jesus and want to be part of something that matters to include in their career plans the idea of spending their lives in the great cities? I cannot help but believe that if 30 percent of Southern Baptists, for instance, shifted to the cities and at the same time took a missional, passionate, evangelistic heart for those cities with them, things might be different in a generation.

The cities of the West have been immersed in postmodern thought. Pluralism, tolerance toward other faiths (except for Christianity), relativism, and experientialism thrive in such contexts. Cities teem with young postmoderns who are not uninterested in spiritual matters; conventional, institutional Christianity however generally does not sway them.⁵

The nations of the world are in the cities of the West. When my family lived in Houston, our street included Anglo, Chinese, Hispanic, and African-American families. A few blocks away the street signs in one area were printed in English and Mandarin Chinese. Even in the town of Wake Forest, North Carolina, where we currently live, our street is multiethnic and includes one mixed-race marriage. Over 40 percent of the new students at New York University in 1996–1997 had other than English as their first language, while 50 percent of the PhDs granted in engineering and science in the United States are to “foreign nationals,” mostly Asians. Some 13 percent of Americans speak another language at home besides English. The twentieth century was dominated by the mainly Anglo (at least in terms of influential leaders) United States, but the twenty-first century is the ethnic century, or even the Asian century. Globalization has shrunk the world and shifted influence.

One of the most remarkable shifts in the last few decades has been the dramatic rise of Hispanics in the United States, particularly in the cities. Half the U.S. population growth since 2008 came from Latinos, a remarkable statistic and one the church should know. By mid-2007, Hispanics accounted for 15 percent of the U.S. population. We may see the day when Spanish becomes a required language for ministry students! Fastest growth has come in Texas, on the West Coast (particularly the cities of the Pacific Northwest), Florida, and remarkably, North Carolina.⁶

However, the effect of postmodernism has not been to bring all ethnic groups together. Only the gospel can truly break down the walls of race or class. Read the book of Acts to see how quickly the gospel collapsed numerous barriers. On the surface, while the multicultural emphasis of postmodernism seems to liberate all in the name of tolerance, it in fact leads to the destruction of various cultures, as Veith notes:

The fact is, real cultures promote strict ethical guidelines. From Mexico to Africa, family ties are strong and sexual promiscuity is strictly forbidden. No culture (other than our own) would teach that there are no absolutes. Contemporary Western culture with its pornography, consumerism, and all-encompassing skepticism toward authority and moral traditions is ravaging traditional cultures.⁷

Rather than lifting up all people by praising their differences, postmodernism leads to fragmentation. Any common ground for discussion is destroyed by a multitude of competing groups. As Veith notes, “People are finding their identities, not so much in themselves, nor in their communities or nation, but in the groups that they belong to.”⁸

We should continue to press for more and more to go to the nations in international missions. We cannot take away from this call. We may never catch up with the need. But need alone does not determine God’s call; if it did we should all start packing for China tomorrow. We must be driven by the Spirit and captivated by a strategy that sees not only the need of the times, but the perspective of long-term change as well. And in fact our focus, in addition to an urgent call to the nations, will have the serendipitous effect of reaching the nations as well, since those from virtually every tribe and tongue live in the great cities of the West.

In a two-day period recently I had meals with two men who in many ways represent the great need of our time in the West—to go back into the cities and reach them for the gospel. One of the men was a younger church planter named Darrin Patrick. Darrin had planted the Journey church six years earlier in the city of St. Louis. A church already with alliances with the Southern Baptist Convention, the Acts 29 Network, and including a relationship with Covenant Seminary (Presbyterian), Journey had in six years become the largest SBC church in the city. The next day I had lunch with Charles Lyons, pastor for three decades of the Armitage Baptist Church in Chicago. Lyons was the first person to get the wheels spinning in my mind about the need and opportunity of the city.

These men came from two different generations, two different backgrounds, and two different cities, albeit both were Midwestern. One was a church planter who had quickly developed a church-planting network, the other an established pastor who had given his life to the city of Chicago. But both of these men, neither of whom knew the other, said so much of the same thing. They both described the need of the city. They recognized what Tim Keller of Redeemer Presbyterian in New York City has been saying, that the cities of America are revitalizing, that many young, ethnic, single, and spiritually unaligned people are flocking back into the cities, and we have done little to reach them. They spoke in similar terms of what it would take to turn the tide of (being generous) modest success (if any) in church planting efforts in the cities around. They spoke of the need of interns and the failure of sending young couples to the cities to plant churches only to be chewed up and spat out due to isolation. They spoke of the need of suburban and other churches thriving outside the cities to help fund such internships.

The American church has tended to see cities as dangerous places, places to be avoided. Suburbs have become the haven of many evangelicals. And we wonder why the church has lost so much influence in our day? Influence comes from the cities.

A quick scan of the Bible reveals 724 references to the term “city” (HCSB). As early as Gen 4:17 we read of Cain establishing a city and naming it after his son Enoch. Why do we avoid the cities? Cities are places of great sin. In Genesis 11 we read of the effects of sin, when men gathered in a city and longed to make a tower up to the sky to “make a name for ourselves” (Gen 11:4). Later, Sodom was a city filled with gross immorality, where Abraham could not find as many as 10 righteous men (Gen 18:32).

But cities also provide great opportunity. Read Joshua and see that the conquest centered on the cities of the region. The conquests of the Old Testament and the spread of the church in the New focused on cities. Influence lies close to cities, as cities hold many people!

In 1 Samuel 9 we read of a city where a man of God resided, none other than Samuel. His reputation is known throughout the region. A respected man of God in the city can have much influence. It was the city of Jerusalem chosen by God to be the place where His temple would be built (1 Kings 8). This city would be known as the city of David. After the exile, Ezra and Nehemiah gave much attention to rebuilding the city as the key to rebuilding all aspects of society, spiritual or not. The psalmist (Ps 46:4) described the dwelling place of God as a city (see also Psalm 48). Similarly the writer of Hebrews described heaven as a city (11:16), and John in Revelation did so as well.

The cities need the Lord! Read Ps 127:1. Proverbs 11:11 tells us “a city is built up by the blessing of the upright, but it is torn down by the mouth of the wicked.” The prophets speak much of the judgment of God on the cities. God judged Jerusalem, allowing her to be overtaken by pagans because of her sin (Jer 33:4). And yet, the Lord promised a day of future restoration: “This city will bear on My behalf a name of joy, praise, and glory before all the nations of the earth, who will hear of all the good I will do for them. They will tremble with awe because of all the good and all the peace I will bring about for them” (Jer 33:9).

Would that God would give us the same burden for the lostness of the cities He gave to Jeremiah in the book of Lamentations: “My eyes are worn out from weeping; I am churning within. My heart is poured out in grief because of the destruction of my dear people, because children and infants faint in the streets of the city” (Lam 2:11).

Read Acts and see how the spread of the gospel followed the path of cities. Paul’s epistles were written to one of two groups: some addressed individuals (Timothy, Titus, Philemon), but for the most part they addressed churches in the cities (Rome, Corinth, Ephesus, Philippi).

We cannot underestimate the role Antioch played in the expansion of the Christian movement. “Antioch is of special interest because it was unusually receptive to the Christian movement, sustaining a relatively large and affluent Christian community quite early on,” Stark argued, noting that the urban conditions, replete with overcrowding, disease, sanitation issues, and the like, “gave Christianity the opportunity to exploit its immense competitive advantages vis-à-vis paganism and other religious movements of the day as a solution to those problems.”⁹

By the end of the first century, Antioch had about 150,000 residents, making it the fourth largest city in the empire, Rome being the largest. That means those who lived inside the city walls constituted about 117 people per acre. Compare that to New York with 27:1 and Chicago with 21:1. A transient and multiethnic population filled the city. “Any accurate portrait of Antioch in New Testament times must depict a city filled with misery, danger, fear, despair, and hatred,” Stark observed. “A city where the average family lived a squalid life in filthy and cramped quarters, where at least half the children . . . died at birth or during infancy. . . A city filled with hatred and fear rooted in intense ethnic antagonisms and exacerbated by a constant stream of strangers.”¹⁰ “And surely,” he observed, “too they must often have longed for relief, for hope, indeed for salvation.”¹¹

Stark argued that Christianity in Antioch literally revitalized the city by “providing new norms and new kinds of social relationships able to cope with many urgent urban problems.”¹² Disease, earthquakes, ethnic strife, poverty, and the like existed prior to Christianity’s appearance in Antioch; but the Christians showed a new way to cope. His observation should be heeded by those who seek to move out of the Christian subculture with signs on the church property as a primary means of “outreach.” The residents of Antioch warmly received the missionaries as recorded in Acts 11. They brought a message of hope, but more than words—they brought “a new culture of making life in Graeco-Roman cities more tolerable.”¹³

People today, especially in the cities, identify themselves less by broad categories (political parties, grand ideologies, etc.), and more by subcultures, or as some would put it, by tribes. “On one occasion,” Hirsch observed, “some youth ministry specialists I work with identified in an hour fifty easily discernible youth subcultures alone (computer nerds, skaters, homies, surfies, punks, etc.). Each of them take their subcultural identity with utmost seriousness, hence any missional response to them must as well.”¹⁴

In 2008 the ten largest cities of the world were these:¹⁵

The largest cities in the U.S.:¹⁶

However, when you include the larger metro areas the cities in the top 10 change dramatically:

Largest metro areas in the United States (July 1, 2007 U.S. Census estimates)¹⁷

A little closer look at the numbers reveals the following: About 162 million (58% of the population) live in the 50 largest metros in the United States. Over 100 million lost people at a minimum live there. The fastest growing metros are in the southern and western parts. The 50 largest metros account for 63 percent of the nation’s population.¹⁸

Las Vegas (83%), Austin (48%), and Phoenix (45%) were the fastest growing metros in 1990–2000. However, a study of Southern Baptists and the cities revealed only 50 percent of Southern Baptist churches are in the metros where 80 percent of the population lives. But the numbers are actually even worse because only 25 percent of SBC churches are in the 50 largest metros, where 63 percent of Americans live. There is a great and open door for the gospel in the cities of the United States. We are indeed a mission field.

Darrin Patrick and Charles Lyons agreed that the best way to plant churches in the city involves bringing interns alongside effective churches (whether new churches like Patrick’s or established churches like Lyons’s). These interns can live for a time among the people of an urban church in order to learn the culture of the city. Cities are so multiethnic and so diverse that one cannot expect to take a seminary diploma and a young wife and be effective among the unchurched without learning from people already there. We often set up young church planters for failure before they begin. Further, a team approach works far better than a couple in the urban setting. Read Acts and see how often Paul traveled with others in his church-planting efforts. Some groups and denominations focus far too much on the numbers of new churches (sowing grass seed) and not enough on planting strategic, exponentially growing churches (planting a garden). The latter takes more time to see an impact, but long term is much more effective.

No one demonstrates this better in the cities than Tim Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City. Begun in 1989 with 15 people and a desire to reach professional New Yorkers in Manhattan, Redeemer now has more than 4,500 gathering weekly in at least four sites. In 1993 she began a church-planting ministry and has planted churches in other cities and nations. Her church-planting center has helped many church planters learn effective church planting in the cities.

Darrin Patrick relayed to me a simple approach to church planting in the cities which seems to be effective in other places:

Local Church → Networks (within a denomination) → Alliances (like-minded groups across denominations) → church-planting movements result.

This is the approach of Redeemer Presbyterian:

The vision of Redeemer’s Church Planting Center (RCPC) is to ignite and fuel a city-focused, gospel-centered, values-driven church planting movement in New York, in cooperation with the wider Christian church, and to assist national leaders and denominations to plant resource churches in the global centers of the world.¹⁹

You can see in this description recognition of the need to move beyond traditions for the sake of the gospel. However, it does not include surrender to those traditions and their distinctives. I would argue that a group of, say, Southern Baptist churches intent on planting new churches in the city could work together and then network with other evangelicals to pool their resources. The net result would be more, not less, Southern Baptist churches, along with others as well, all sharing Christ in the city. We see this in international missions all over the world as different groups work together and yet do not lose their identity.

A sectarian, parochial mind-set will never reach the cities. On the other hand, the surrender of conviction will not lead to long-term, biblical effectiveness. These two extremes must be avoided. The need is great, the gospel is our only hope, and church planting is the means to get the gospel to the cities.

The cities of America influence the entire nation and the world. The entertainment centers of Los Angeles, New York City, and increasingly Nashville affect cities globally. Other world cities like Chicago wield great influence as well. But one does not reach a world city in our time in a year or a decade. One must look at a generation, or maybe two, to see real change. Boston is the major city of New England. When the Great Awakening hit Boston and New England, the colonies and ultimately the young nation reaped the benefit. As secularism and its impact have spread in Boston, one can see its growing influence. San Francisco comes to mind when one thinks of the homosexual agenda, but we make a mistake if we underestimate the impact of Boston. Massachusetts, after all, has been in the headlines as much as any place on the issue of gay marriage. A student of mine who plans to go to Boston and has studied the city told me this week that from kindergarten on, public school children are taught the homosexual agenda. Just think about the impact of that one reality on a generation.  

We are too like politicians looking for a quick fix to solve issues that may take a generation to change. Are we willing to say, for example, that we will go after the five most influential cities in America for a generation? If we cast a vision for our best and brightest believers to move to New York, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., for a generation, we just might affect the whole world. While the United States has experienced what some call urban sprawl, the church has exhibited an urban crawl.

In 1906, San Francisco was hit by one of the most destructive earthquakes in history. In his book on the earthquakes, Simon Winchester argues that San Francisco was the major city on the West Coast, much more influential than Los Angeles, for example.²⁰ But after the earthquake, the City of the Angels soon began to grow in influence. One hundred years later, the media capital of the world, which arguably exerts more influence in popular culture than any city on earth, is Los Angeles. If we took a century-long look into the future and seriously sought to reach the major cities of the United States, it just might change the whole world. And we may not need an earthquake to see it happen.

In the summer of 2008 I took Hannah on a trip to Thailand. Spending time in Bangkok and Chiang Mai reminded me how similar cities are globally. Seeing the vast numbers of people so in need of Christ is staggering. While there I caught up with a former student who spent time in Pattaya, Thailand. She told me the wickedness there was visceral. I observed the child prostitution and glimpses of the awful sex trade industry. She informed me Pattaya led the world in sex change operations.

Earlier a British band called Bluetree had come to Pattaya to be part of an event with their church, featuring everything from live worship to cleaning the streets. More than 30,000 prostitutes fill this city, and the band saw the wickedness all around them. On one of the more vile streets a club called the Climax Club advertised the need for a band to play. Aaron, the bandleader, explained what happened there:

We got the chance to play in this bar, a two-hour worship set in this bar. I don’t think the people in the bar spoke a word of English but we basically got to go in. The deal was that we play and we bring a following of people with us; so we’re there, set up, really good gear! Amazing drums, the biggest drum kit you’ve ever seen in your life. . . . So we all set up and there was like 20 Christians all standing in front of us, and the deal was we play, they buy lots of drinks, alright? I don’t think the place has ever sold so much Coke in its whole life in one night!²¹

As they played they watched people weep while they sang songs about Jesus. In the midst of their worship, Aaron began singing “greater things” over and over, broken for this wicked city. That night, in a club, they penned the words to a song that has reminded me many times that our God is Lord of the cities:

Perhaps it is time to think about a Western window, playing off the 10/40 concept, which should still receive priority. Reach the city, reach the nation. No, reach the city, reach the nations.

1. Do you think of cities as (a) a place of crime, crowds, and noise; (b) a place to visit but not to live; (c) a place full of life, culture, and vitality; (d) an amazing opportunity for the gospel? (You can choose more than one.)