These 3 Challenges Are The Keys To Multiplying Discipleship in Our Cities
By S. Crawley
Photo by Austin Laser on Unsplash
God’s end-vision for Creation is a Biblically explicit, universal constant.
He is restoring His Kingdom and bringing all things back into harmony and unity under His loving reign and rule. At the human level, He is inviting us to participate in His Kingdom as beloved Sons and Daughters who join with Him to help others do the same.
In essence, this is discipleship that replicates.
The size of God’s vision challenges us and stretches us - particularly when we look at the size and complexity of our cities and megacities. How is He going to do this?
Same, But Different
Although the end goal is clear, each city’s exact path towards it will differ. God has uniquely shaped cities, disciples, teams, and leaders, and He has unique plans for each. Part of the adventure lies in seeking Him and discerning the path forward for each of us in our own contexts.
At the same time, patterns are emerging from what God is doing in different cities around Asia and the world. One of the aims of this blog is to draw attention to these insights to facilitate cross-pollination between regions and cities and accelerate learning.
In this post, I will highlight one fundamental reality (Urban Complexity) and three crucial challenges in the urban harvest field.
- Cultural Dynamics
- Movement Dynamics
- Urban Social Dynamics
These are important keys for us to consider as we seek to join what the Father is doing in our cities.
God’s Vision, Urban Complexity, and three crucial challenges in the urban harvest field.
Urban Complexity
Complexity is the fundamental reality of our urban contexts.
Our cities have an increasing number of residents at increasingly high density. Cultural, social, and linguistic diversity overlap and intertwine, brought together by transportation and information networks. Relationships and social networks span and intersect this complexity, ebbing and flowing with high levels of relational mobility.
How do we tackle this complexity?
Historically, geography has been used to reduce complexity, but in modern cities, even small geographic areas are frequently very diverse. In addition, urban dwellers often don’t even know their neighbours’ names.
Another common to break down complexity is by ethnicity or language. However, this is also frequently inadequate in today’s cities. Even when people with shared ethnicity and language are concentrated in the same urban areas, they can inhabit vastly different social networks, care deeply about very different things and experience very different types of brokenness.
Jesus and Paul ministered in urban environments, but our cities are infinitely more complex than 1st-century Jerusalem, Ephesus, or even Rome. Many of the discipleship processes and wineskins we have inherited were developed for much simpler contexts than the ones we face. Any attempt to serve God’s vision for the entirety of our cities must wrestle with this reality.
Cultural Dynamics - Effective Communication
Culture is important.
It shapes how we see the world, the words we use to describe it, and the things we do to interact with it. It profoundly impacts how we engage with the spiritual realm, talk about it, and embody and communicate God’s Kingdom.
Jesus (John 4:1-43) and Paul (1 Cor 9:19-23) both showed sensitivity to the importance of culture and made conscious adjustments to communicate the Kingdom better. In recent decades, there has been a growing re-discovery of this dynamic in the world of frontier missions. This awareness has translated into new attempts to articulate and embody the Gospel, which communicates more effectively to different cultures and communities.
This dynamic can be particularly challenging in contexts where the Body of Christ has a historical presence and established “wineskins”. In Christian minority contexts, there is often a strong sense of identity attached to the Christian wineskin, but this wineskin makes it harder for people to grasp the Kingdom of God and see the King.
In Christian majority contexts, the wineskins have often become merged with popular culture, with the same effect.
When we add urban complexity and diversity into the mix the challenge is plain. The vast majority of the people in our cities live, work and relate in social networks that are not primarily Christian. Our words and actions simply don’t communicate what we want them to communicate.
Replicating discipleship in our cities will only happen if we can communicate effectively to a diverse range of cultures - embodying and articulating God’s Kingdom in ways that friends from other backgrounds can catch with their hearts.
Movement Dynamics - Empowered Replication
Jesus clearly expected discipleship (and the Kingdom) to replicate. Crucially, Jesus discipled people in a way that enabled His disciples to replicate.
The Gospels record Him living out a relationship of intimacy and trusting obedience with the Father. He brought successive and expanding cohorts of His disciples into that journey (note the progression from Lk 8:1-3, Lk 9:1-6, and Lk 10:1-12) and then commanded them to continue in His absence (Mt 28:18-20). His death and resurrection opened the way for a restored relationship with the Father through the Holy Spirit, who, among other things, picked up the role of teacher and instructor that Jesus had during His earthly ministry.
All the ingredients are there for replication - the Father’s vision, Christ’s mandate, and the empowering presence and leadership of the Holy Spirit.
Replication has been happening ever since Jesus, but in recent decades, replicative discipleship has been re-discovered. Intentional and systematic efforts have been made to integrate replication into discipleship processes, particularly in un-Christianised contexts. Hundreds of successful efforts have been documented by researchers, often under the labels of “Church Planting Movements” (CPMs) and “Disciple-Making Movements” (DMMs).
At the core of these approaches lies a discipleship paradigm that emphasises the empowerment of every single follower of Jesus to walk with God in their context and help others to do the same where they are.
This kind of discipleship can spread virally into and throughout new communities.
If we want to see replicating discipleship in our cities, we need to wrestle with how to do discipleship that empowers everyday followers of Jesus to walk with God and help others do the same wherever He has placed them.
Urban Social Dynamics - Meaningful Connection
The complaint is the same in every city worldwide: “Nobody has time. There’s no community in the city.”
This is not exactly true. People have the same amount of time in the cities as they have in the villages. And people have the same need for relationships in cities that they have in the villages. It just looks different.
The truth is that relationships look different in cities.
The complexity, social density and social expectations in cities mean that relationships and social networks form and grow differently. Meaningful social connection takes place differently. The spread of influence and information flows differently.
I will explore this dynamic in future blogs, but understanding and adjusting to the dynamics of urban connection is a third important key to unlocking sustained replicating discipleship in contemporary urban contexts.
Towards Replicating Discipleship In Our Cities
The vision of our Father-King is for humanity to be drawn back to Him into a living relationship of trusting obedience. He is actively pursuing this vision through the Holy Spirit, who stirs up hunger, draws responsive children to the heart of the Father and leads them into His purposes in and around them.
Our operating environment is urban complexity.
Recognising the challenges posed by three sets of dynamics will help us discern God’s work and join Him effectively:
- Cultural Dynamics affect our ability to communicate effectively from God, through us, to those we live amongst.
- Movement Dynamics impact the ability of everyday people to carry, express and embody the Kingdom of God where they are and to pass it on.
- Urban Social Dynamics shape the way that relationships are formed and community is expressed.
Cities are a crucial frontier for replicating discipleship. A growing network of teams are wrestling with these things and learning together in different cities in the world. The questions are becoming clearer.
None of us have all the answers, but we know Who does!
Getting Practical
Consider the sheer size of God’s vision for our cities. Consider the immense diversity of the urban harvest.
None of us has all the answers. Our cities are way too big for any worker, team, church, or organisation to tackle on their own. The task is too great!
The keys to unlocking discipleship that replicates in our cities will be prayer, communication and collaboration.
Who else do you know with a burden for God’s vision for your city/context?
Who else do you know with a passion for replicating discipleship?
Who could you pray with about how God might want to move towards city-wide replicating discipleship?
Discipling the Urban Harvest provides practical insights and encouragement to walk with God in multiplying discipleship in an increasingly urban world - growing as children of the Father, serving the communities He has called us to, and discipling those hungry to know Him.