The urban priority

Dave Williams reminds us of some uncomfortable facts about the evangelical church

‘The UK is a mission field and the church needs to step out of maintenance mode and into mission mode.’

How often have you heard phrases along these lines? It’s a great catchphrase, but what does it actually mean in practice?

One thing it should mean is that we will be pro-actively looking for the places where the gospel isn’t currently being proclaimed and prioritise sending people into those areas to share the good news. Of course, we cannot talk about sending without being willing to go ourselves.

Map of the city

So where are those places? Tim Chester wrote in 2012: ‘I once attended a lecture at which the speaker showed a map of my city, Sheffield. The council wards were coloured different shades according to a series of social indicators: educational achievement, household income, benefit recipients, social housing, criminal activity, and so on. Slide after slide showed that the east side of the city was the needy, socially deprived half, compared to the more prosperous west. Where are all the churches? Counting all the various tribes of evangelicalism, the large churches are on the west side. The working class and deprived areas of our cities are not being reached with the gospel.’

Moving to the council estate

In 2010, I was called as a pastor to Bearwood Chapel. We moved onto a council estate. We quickly realised that while there were churches bordering the estate, there wasn’t any gospel engagement with the community where we lived. In fact, the only active presence had been cults like the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Over the past few years, I’ve begun to make contact with a number of pastors and church planters working on estates and in inner city areas, often in areas of great deprivation and often encountering real hunger for God’s Word and an openness to the gospel that many of us have been praying for over a long time. At the same time, I get a consistent message: ‘We need workers to come and help us. We need resources to enable the work to continue.’ Yet getting people to come, getting churches in more prosperous areas to pray, give, send is like trying to get blood out of a stone.

Student ministry?

Here’s another perspective. We put a lot of effort into student ministry, and quite rightly so because we want to see young people at our universities put their faith in Christ. There’s a good chance if you are reading this article that you attended a Christian Union; you may even have become a Christian through a UCCF mission. Your church may well be supporting UCCF in prayer and financially. You will no doubt be talking to young people in your church now about the importance of getting along to CU and finding a good student church. 32.6% of 18year-olds went to university in 2017. That’s a lot of people.

However, this means that the majority, 67.4%, did not. Meanwhile, it is reckoned that about 80% of church attendees have a degree-level qualification. Churches are disproportionately made up of graduates compared to the rest of the population.

Church is a middle-class pursuit

Indeed, as Tim Chester explained in Unreached, churches are disproportionately middle class: ‘Research conducted by Tearfund in 2007 shows that churchgoing in the UK is a middle-class pursuit. Adults in social grades AB (professionals, senior and middle management) are over represented among both regular and occasional churchgoers. Meanwhile adults of social grade C2 and D (semi-skilled and unskilled manual) have the highest proportion of non-churched.’

We are failing to reach working-class people with the good news that Jesus died for their sin. Now, I know that the suggestion that the gospel has a bias to the poor is a controversial one, but it certainly is not meant to have a bias to the rich.

Immigration and segregation

There’s a lot more to say about urban ministry. As well as the issue of class, there’s the opportunities that come with immigration. God has brought the nations to our cities. This includes people with some Christian background and people from other faiths: Islam, Hinduism, etc. There are challenges here as well. It should sadden us that our churches are often deeply segregated.

First-generation Afro-Caribbean immigrants came as believers but, for various reasons, not least the experience of racism and rejection in existing churches, started their own. Even where we have one or two first-generation immigrants in our congregations, we rarely see the second and third generations.

Also, while people talk about the need to have multi-ethnic leadership teams and elderships, if we are going to see multi-cultural churches, the reality all too often is that we overlooked the very people God sent us, despite their gospel-heartedness, godliness and amazing prayer lives.

But things are happening

The good news is that things are happening. In Scotland, Mez McConnell and the 20schemes team are committed to planting or revitalising churches in 20 of Scotland’s neediest housing estates.

In our capital city, London City Mission is hard at work on the front line, seeing people come to faith and being discipled through their Pioneers Scheme. Duncan Forbes has planted a church on a challenging estate in South London and put together an ‘Urban Catechism’ to help disciple people. Up in Oldham, Stephen Kneale is pastoring a church in a majority Muslim area in one of the officially most deprived towns in England.

Here in the West Midlands, we are encouraging people to consider church planting and mission into the Black Country; it is possible to come and train with us as you prepare to plant. We also host a Church Planting Initiative (CPI) hub focused on urban church planting. It includes people from South America, Africa, Iran and other backgrounds with a shared commitment to the gospel.

Scratching the surface

However, we are only scratching the surface. As the Bible puts it:

‘The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.’

Would you and your church be willing to consider how you can get involved in this mission field?

FOOTNOTES

Here are some links for those who would like to find out more: www.bearwoodchapel.org.uk http://www.urbanministries.org.uk/rtu.html https://20schemes.com/uk/blog/ https://www.oldhambethelchurch.org.uk/training/