Confessions and Concerns of a Suburban Pastor

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chris polskiConfessions and Concerns of a Suburban Pastor

Rev. Chris Polski

 

Dear Lord, forgive me for I am a suburban pastor.  I labor among people of means.  I labor among those who have ample opportunities for self advancement.  I labor among those who lack significant external needs and even have vacation homes. Sometimes, if I can be honest for a moment Lord, I feel guilty about this.  Sometimes, as I am driving home at night, I feel ashamed that I live in a nice neighborhood with virtually no crime, a place where my children can play in relative safety.  Sometimes, as I make my way into church on a Sunday morning, skirting past the occasional gated subdivision and boutique shopping areas, I feel guilty that the people in my church have means.  Sometimes, when I drop my kids off at their Christian school, I am ashamed that I am not driving them into the urban ghetto to learn about real life. Dear Lord, forgive me for turning my back on the people who really need me in the cities.  Amen.

Maybe some of you have secretly felt this way too.  Maybe, others of you are thinking, “Well, suburban man, it’s about time you started to deal with reality!”

But should we feel this way?  Is God really dissatisfied with suburban ministry?  Does God really disdain the suburban church and its people as much as I sometimes am led to believe, especially now, when more and more Christian young people and ministry efforts are being aimed into urban centers?

These are some of the questions that I would like to take some time to explore in this blog.  Why?  Because, as one folk prophet put it, “the times they are a changin’.”

There was a time in America when the cities dominated the landscape of Christendom, in fact there wasn’t even really such a thing as a suburb until the late 19th century. There was the city and the country.  Sociologists and census takers have demonstrated very well the flight of the white middle and upper class out of the cities from that time forward, and especially from about the end of WW II up until the beginning of the new millennium, a time when most large American cities were being emptied of vital evangelical and reformed churches (with a few notable exceptions), most of which were transplanting themselves to the newly founded suburbs.

Certainly, it is true that the edifices that housed some significant reformed congregations might still have been located within the borders of any given major American city, but a survey of any of these church’s rolls would have betrayed the fact that the vast majority of its members lived in the suburbs, commuting into the cities on Sunday mornings where they would park their fine automobiles in guarded parking lots while they attended church.  And this was just the way it was for over half a century.

During those years, middle and upper middle class churches began to thrive in the suburbs, some even booming into mega-churches with contemporary music, grand buildings, and consumer driven mindsets that attracted the average baby boomer who felt some inner compulsions to give their children some kind of moral compass.

Other, more traditional suburban churches chose to offer traditional music, meaningful teaching, carefully designed ministry programs and Christian schools that sought to address both the moral and spiritual needs of those who would come.

At the same time as the suburbs were expanding, the cities were languishing in increased poverty, racial tension, drug abuse, political corruption and the amazing influx of immigrants and refugees from places all over the world.

It would not be hard to demonstrate that the upward curve of the suburban churches growth and influence was directly mirrored by the urban churches spiritual and social decline.

The result of this spiritual and social collapse was to leave the urban churches empty, desperate for resources and people, and severely tempted to compromise true spirituality in favor of social causes that would attract membership.  And that’s what many chose to do in order to stay alive.

Then, by God’s grace, and the vision of a new strain of evangelical, urban-minded neo-apostles, the trend of evangelical (and Reformed) churches vacating the cities began to change, at first slowly and then, with a vengeance! (Stats on recent Reformed and Urban church plants need to be inserted here).

This resurgence of urban church planting is due in large part to the efforts of Randy Neighbors, Tim Keller and others like them, who have painted a compelling, biblically grounded motivation to re-engage the urban centers of America with Christ-centered, contextually sensitive, word and deed based churches that seek to take Christ into the spiritual vacuum of many urban centers and proclaim his Lordship in the lost places of the cities.

Of particular note have been the efforts of Dr. Tim Keller, now pastor of Redeemer Church in Manhattan.  Keller became burdened for the city some 25 years ago, largely based on his understanding of several key biblical texts. As Keller describes it:

“God’s future redeemed world and universe is depicted as a ‘city’. Abraham sought the city ‘whose builder and maker is God’ (Hebrews 11.10). Revelation 21 describes and depicts the apex of God’s redemption, as a city! His redemption is building us a city – the new Jerusalem. In fact, when we look at the New Jerusalem, we discover something strange. In the midst of the city is a crystal river, and on each side of the river is the Tree of Life, bearing fruit and leaves which heal the nations of all their wounds and the effects of the divine covenant curse. This city is the Garden of Eden, remade. The City is the fulfillment of the purposes of the Eden of God. We began in a garden but will end in a city; God’s purpose for humanity is urban!”[1]

Through sermons, books and lectures in theological schools, Dr. Keller has continued to articulate, refine and impress upon a whole generation of young, reformed evangelicals the need to turn their hearts to the cities because “God’s heart beats with the city.”

Every single one of us in the Reformed, evangelical community, should stand and give thanks to God for the amazing, creative and deeply loving pastoral enterprise of these men who have ventured into the “glorious ruins” of America’s cities.  And now, following them are a whole new generation of church planters, mostly young, many of whom are reformed, and all of whom seem to have a special vision for reclaiming the cities for Christ.  Among those in this latest movement were men like Mark Driscoll and Darrin Patrick, both part of the Acts 29 network of churches (and both now having stepped down from their ministries).

This movement is one that I hope to celebrate in this book and beyond.  It is a worthy movement that is grounded in a compelling biblically based inspiration.

But I do have a concern.  It’s not at all a concern about these amazing urban works or those who lead them (per se).  Instead, it’s a historical and practical concern about the other side of the coin.  It might begin with the acknowledgment of a simple maxim, “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

That equal and opposite reaction is that in increasing numbers, the young people, including the next generation of leaders in the evangelical church, are vacating the suburbs and her churches in favor of labors in the more exciting and newly revived urban landscape.  The anecdotal evidence to support this, at least in my little corner of the evangelical suburban world, is compelling.  There isn’t a suburban pastor that I have spoken with in the past few years who hasn’t reported a steep decline in the membership of the 30 and under crowd in their churches.

Even Keller acknowledges the reactionary problem that could be caused because of his deep advocacy of urban ministry.

“Do I mean that all Christians must live in cities? No. We need Christians and churches everywhere there are people!…In his book Two Cities: Two Loves, he (Dr. James Boice) argued that evangelicals should live in cities in at least the same percentage as the general population.” [2]

So here’s the problem, while it is certainly true that most Christian’s still live in the suburbs, it is also true that most young evangelicals are now beginning to live in the cities. The reality is that the next generation of pastors in my own denomination (PCA) is now radically re-oriented to the city in numbers that seem to outpace the 50-50 split that Boice, and presumably Keller, advocate.

But why is this the case?  Let me suggest a number of possibilities, none of which I would classify as sinful or dishonorable.

  1. Young evangelicals have eagerly embraced the vision of our urban apostles and responded with action!
  2. They are tired of the lack of community and authenticity that they have experienced in many evangelical suburban churches.
  3. They long for more ethnic and social diversity within the body of Christ, in accordance with the beautiful pictures painted in Revelation of how the body of Christ will look in glory.
  4. They are having a hard time fitting in to the establishment of the“big steeple” denominational churches.
  5. They yearn for a more deed-oriented model of evangelism which fits much better in urban areas and is in much better accord to what they feel that they have read in the gospels.

To say it another way, they are shifting away from what some might call a Pauline (intellectual, reason based, propositional) theology, and more into a Jesus (deed oriented, story-telling, relationally sensitive) theology.

But embedded underneath these God-honoring reasons for change, we must also contend with some other neutral or even sinful motivations that can creep into our thinking.

  1. The city is where the excitement is.
  2. The city is where the young people live.
  3. The city is cool.
  4. The suburbs are boring.
  5. Suburban Christians are all selfish.

Some observers of this phenomenon toward urban ministry might conclude, “Well, it’s about time.”  Or, “It’s the suburban churches own fault, maybe even God’s judgment on their malaise and apathy.” Or, “The Suburban church has all the resources it needs, why not get more focused on the cities?”

To these objections I humbly acknowledge that for the most part, they are right. Suburban Christianity has been gradually caving in on itself for the better part of a generation due to its consumerism, elitism, and clear lack of concern for the needs of the “least of these” along with its clear over-attention on meeting its own needs, swelling its own intellect and celebrating its own accomplishments.

But this brings me to my primary concern.  All these things being true, doesn’t God still desire the souls of suburbanites?  Does God really value the soul of someone who lives in the city more than he does someone in the suburb?  Are suburbanites wallowing in a brokenness and sin that is just as real as the brokenness and sin we have witnessed in the cities? I believe that everyone in the evangelical reformed tradition would give the same answer to these questions.  Of course God still desires the souls of those who live in the suburbs, of course he loves them just as much as those in the cities, of course suburbanites are broken sinners.

So what then?  My desire is that we in the evangelical church do not repeat the gross error of abandoning the cities generations ago by abandoning the suburbs today.

Because of this, I want to urge the “twenty something” Reformed Evangelicals to carefully weigh the pendulum effect that we are in the midst of and prayerfully and humbly re-assess just what it is that God wants our ministries (urban or sub-urban) to look like, going forward.

I want us to more carefully consider verses like this one from Mark 6 as we develop our pastoral theology:

Mark 6:53 When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored to the shore. 54And when they got out of the boat, the people immediately recognized him 55 and ran about the whole region and began to bring the sick people on their beds to wherever they heard he was. 56And wherever he came, in villages, cities, or countryside, they laid the sick in the marketplaces and implored him that they might touch even the fringe of his garment. And as many as touched it were made well.

Jesus loved the city, Jesus loved the countryside and Jesus loved the ancient equivalent of the suburb, the village.

I believe that a vital, contagious, Christ-centered, gospel oriented, word and deed type church is needed BOTH in the city AND in the suburb. And I believe that the time is now, while we still have vital churches in both places to form strategic, sharing partnerships of resources, people, giftedness and cultural sensitivities so that the next generation of Christians can live wherever God calls them to live, in the city OR the suburb in an all out, selfless quest to serve Christ and His kingdom in both word and deed.

[1] Keller, Tim.  A Biblical Theology of the City. Redeemer Pres. Church. 2002.

[2] Keller, Tim. A New Kind of Urban Christian. Christianity Today, May 2006.