Urban Missionaries

“When the Feast of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place….then, like a wildfire, the Holy Spirit spread through their ranks” (Acts 2:1,3). On the Day of Pentecost, the sending of the Spirit activated a group or community of believers, not just one individual. The Holy Spirit sent a community into thee community or city of Jerusalem; urban missionaries (Acts 2:1-6, 1:8). The result of the sending of the Spirit was a positioning of one community into the very life of another. It’s not only one person here and another there getting saved, now assured of eternal life. It is also people being made right to be part of a new Kingdom society (community) and to take part in God’s current Kingdom project. In I Corinthians 12 the Message Bible says, “By means of His one Spirit, we all said good-bye to our partial and piecemeal lives. We each used to independently call our own shots, but then we entered into a large and integrated life. Each of us is now a part of His resurrection body. A body isn’t just a single part blown up into something huge. It’s all the different-but-similar parts arranged and functioning together. For no matter how signifigant you are, it is only because of what you are a part of“. Jesus died and rose again to launch a new creation community into the world and begin its restoration!

As a community of believers is exposed to the sending/missional nature of Jesus, it cannot help but embed in the larger community by LIFESTYLE. Psalm 20:2 says “God sends help from His sanctuary”. The word “embed” means “to be inserted into as an integral part of a surrounding whole”. The Christian community becomes Christ IN community through the vehicle of everyday life. We are saying “look, there is a new way to be human, a different way to be a community!” The new age has begun though the old age continues right along side it.

A picture of this is seen in Jeremiah 29:4-7, “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the captives whom I have caused to be carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build yourselves houses and dwell in them; plant gardens and eat the fruit of them. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not be diminished. And seek the peace and welfare of the city to which I have caused you to be carried away captive; and pray to the Lord for it, for in the welfare of the city in which you live you will have welfare.” The historical background to this message is important. The Jews had existed in their own nation-state, in which faith in the biblical God was kind of the official religion. When the Babylonian army sacked Jerusalem, they, as was their policy, carried off Israel’s professional classes and spiritual leaders to exile in Babylon. It was expected that within a generation or two, the exiles would assimilate culturally and lose their national and spiritual distinctives.

Their first response to the situation was to stay outside the city of Babylon and form a homogeneous enclave of believers. But to the horror and amazement of the listeners, God commands them in Jeremiah 29 to instead move into and dwell in the heart of the pagan city, become involved in its cultural and economic life, and seek the common good of the Babylonian oppressors who had destroyed their homeland! God calls them to increase in number—and that they are not to lose their identity as a distinct and different people. Yet they are not allowed separatist withdrawal either. As a city within a city they are to minister to the whole city, to all the people, out of the resources of their spiritual and moral difference. The Jews were to keep their distinctive beliefs and practices (surely offensive in many ways to the sensibilities of the Babylonians) but were to serve their neighbors and city anyway. A culturally relevant counter culture!

As I see it, this may be a key to undermining the themes, perspectives and practices of the dominant culture here in Burlington, Vermont and communities everywhere. Here you have the community version of ‘if your enemies are hungry, feed them…overcome evil with good”. (Romans 12:20-21.). God called the believers to seek the “prosperity of the city—and pray for it.” (v7). And God did not tell the exiles to just use the city to build up their own community, but rather to use the resources of their community to build up the city. See, the influence of the “heavenly city” on segments of the temporal city will eventually influence and permeate (in different ways) the whole culture. And as you can see, God lays down an important principle: the way to power and influence is not to seek power and influence, but to seek to serve. This is about a community testifying not of itself but as the Message Bible says we are, “opening up our lives to others, prompting people to open up to God…”.

We see this in Jesus; He was the ultimate “urban” missionary. He did not “commute” in from heaven but actually moved in “among”. And instead of taking power, He gave it up and sacrificially loved and died for the people of the “city” (us). He initiated the beginnings of a new Kingdom society, bringing its expression of resurrection life into that which was old and waxing away…  “the Word becoming flesh and blood, and moving into the neighborhood” . (Jn.1:14 MSG).