This is the latest in a three-part review of Richard Florida’s book, The New Urban Crisis: Gentrification, Housing Bubbles, Growing Inequality and What We Can Do About It?(The new urban crisis: gentrification, housing bubbles, growing inequality and what we can do about it. )
In Part 2, we established that rich churches, despite initial good intentions, do not fund or support poorer churches based on neglected communities. In partnership with “Acts29”, we recently created “Church in Difficult Places”. (Church in difficult places) (churchinhardplaces. com) exactly because of this issue. It is a network of men around the world who work in poor communities, often without support and with financial difficulties. In a recent call, I said to everyone, “There is no real help coming from some of these great networks and churches upstream. We’ll have to come together to help each other. We will have to help each other to train our own trainees and future leaders. We’ll have to come together to fund each other. They may throw something small at us from time to time, but are we largely alone?We, as experts in poor communities, must begin the slow reconstruction of churches and train leaders in our local areas. Currently we do not receive significant help due to the effect of radioactive rain, nor on the way soon.
- In any case.
- Unless I’ve missed something.
- I don’t see how biblical this top-down approach can be.
- Certainly.
- If the Lord had wanted to use this strategy to reach the poor with the good news.
- He would have come down as governor or Roman emperor.
- This would have a second-round effect! But instead.
- He came as a Jew from the north.
- Poor and unimportant in the eyes of the world.
- Pastors and women have announced their arrival.
- His ministry was among the poor and marginalized.
- It seems that a much more biblical approach is “the church downstream.
- “Maybe we should think of one?Maybe we can call it the salmon approach.
- Upstream and against current.
- Let me be clear.
- Am I not against planting? (Although I despise this terminology and what it represents).
- I defend the establishment and revitalization of churches in cultural contexts.
- I say planting upstream as a strategy to reach the poor doesn’t work and has little merit or biblical basis.
David Robertson, associate director of? Single CPC? In Dundee and Minister of St. Peter’s Free Church, he said recently about this:
In recent decades, evangelicals in the United Kingdom and the United States seem to be working with different criteria for church establishment and evangelization than those of the Apostle Paul, who told the Corinthians:?, Not much of a noble cradle?. (1C 1. 26). All too often, the Church reflects the values and methodology of the materialistic culture around us. We’re talking about the poor. Much, but what do we do, have I developed a principle, but will we call it theorem of runoff, the richer the church, the more likely it is that they will talk about the poor and marginalized, but we actually prefer the decim of the millionaire to the widow’s money.
When we want to organize a “Church Plant” we look for rich areas, justifying ourselves by saying that once established, we will reach the poor. This almost never happens, but in the meantime, we console ourselves by saying that at least distribute soup. Only the poor need the gospel much more than soup. It is necessary a biblical love that respects and sees all human beings as well as created in the image of God. Not the 21st century version of charity.
I know the objections. I know the accusations of socialism, hypocrisy, literalism, etc. I know there are biblical examples that the Lord calls the rich, the elite, the powerful, and the privileged. But these are the exceptions, the “not much”. The biblical strategy is not to reach out to the rich who can reach the poor, it is to reach the poor who can reach the rich (who are actually the hardest to reach), but we don’t believe it. Is that why I can get several religious groups in the United States to set up churches in central London, Oxford, Edinburgh and St Andrews?But ask them to come to work in Doncaster, Dartford or Dundee and they won’t be interested. Apparently, these aren’t d-places?Influence? (like Nazaré!) We reverse the biblical criteria and then declare that we are doing so to be faithful to the Bible!
My standing ovations for that!
But let’s go back to the book. (It’s supposed to be an analysis, after all!)
Our geographical distribution of classes no longer follows the old model of a rich suburb and a poor center. Highly educated and well-paid workers, the rich and the young have returned in droves to urban centers over the past ten or two years, as increasing numbers of the poor and disadvantaged are relocated to the suburbs. The geography of our class is being transformed into a more complex and varied model that I call the “patchwork metropolis”, which is divided into areas where highly favored areas are concentrated and into even larger areas where there are no advantages. they intersect cities and suburbs. ? (p136)
Overall, I found the book easy to read, informative and provocative. Do I think all working-class people want to be part of the middle class?Not really. I think Florida thinks being middle-class is a good thing and a good goal to have in life. I think having your own property and/or being able to pay rent doesn’t make you a middle class. It’s much more complex than that. ! But other than that, it’s a book worth buying. Of course, you’re not a Christian, but it helps us think about strategies for setting churches today and how they mimic global trends (not that it’s a bad thing). It will certainly stimulate your thinking, even if you disagree with some of your conclusions (which I found very idealistic).
I’m reading one of his other two books and I’ll let him know
This is the latest in a three-part review of Richard Florida’s book, The New Urban Crisis.
By: Mez McConnell. © 20 diagrams. Website: 20schemes. com. Translated with permission. Source: The new urban crisis: Jesus did not start “upstream”.
Original: The new urban crisis: Jesus did not start with the upper classes. © Return to the Gospel. Website: voltemosaoevangelho. com All rights are reserved Translation: Paulo Reiss Junior Comment: Filipe Castelo Branco.