A conference in January is planning to help build the church by unpacking the principles behind church planting in some of the major cities of the UK.
To reach the nation must mean making ministry to our cities an urgent priority: Tim Keller argues in his book Center Church that ‘there is nothing more critical for the evangelical church today than to emphasise and support urban ministry’. In the UK our cities continue to grow in size, diversity and complexity and given such challenges the need to think biblically but also creatively as to what urban ministry needs to look like now and in the future has never been more necessary.
Network for networks
City to City UK exists to help both church planters and networks reach their cities. By functioning as a network for other networks within urban areas it seeks to complement the work being done through existing churches, denominations and networks to better impact cities with the gospel.
Each church must consider what it means to be a gospel church for their own time and place. City to City UK is working to help meet the challenges and opportunities of ministry to cities by building a movement for the planting of highly contextualised, gospel-centred, church-planting churches in the most influential cities in the UK.
Radical generosity
The three distinctives of the City to City theological vision are: Gospel, City and Movement. An approach that centres around these values fosters a radical generosity as we look to the planting of many gospel churches across each city in partnership with other evangelical churches.
Al Barth, from Redeemer City to City, said: ‘The urban environment presents unique challenges that usually no one denomination or tight network of churches has the expertise for, on their own. There is a desperate need for church planters working in the leading cities of the UK to be brought into meaningful communication with each other. City to City UK, while not challenging a leader’s loyalty to his own denominational group, can do just that.’ The DNA Download conference to be held at St James' Church in Clerkenwell, London, is an opportunity for all with a heart for urban church planting to unpack the principles outlined in Timothy Keller’s Center Church which stand at the centre of the approach to reaching cities for Christ.
