Loving the enemy

Listen to an audio version of this post: http://media1.imbresources.org/files/107/10745/10745-57495.mp3

Love your enemies, Jesus said.

We nod in easy agreement with the theory. It’s the application that gets sticky. Which enemies, exactly, are you prepared to love? The guy who tailgates you on the road? The “friend” who spreads lies about you?

What about Osama bin Laden?

The latest issue of Mission Frontiers magazine poses that question in a cover article titled “Loving Bin Laden: What does Jesus expect us to do?” (http://www.missionfrontiers.org/) Christian peacemaker Carl Medearis recounts the evolution of his friendship with one of the top operatives in Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based (and Iran-backed) Islamic militant movement that fought Israel during the cross-border war of 2006. Medearis and co-author Ted Dekker tell the same story at greater length in their new book, Tea with Hezbollah: Sitting at the Enemies’ Table (Doubleday, 2010).

“(B)y most definitions he was the enemy of my people, Americans. Maybe even the enemy of Christians. And for sure the enemy of the Israelis. But how could I follow the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth to love my enemies if I never met any?” Medearis writes of his first nervous encounter with the Hezbollah leader.

“That day a friendship began. It was a cautious friendship — on both sides. We were equally skeptical of the other’s agenda. But over the years we have become friends. He’s still a Muslim, still the leader of the Hezbollah in all of south Lebanon, still at war with Israel. But he has now received prayer a thousand times, often by the laying on of hands by my Christian pastor friends I take to see him. He has now read the New Testament. We talk often and deeply about the Gospel, about big international issues, about the small hidden things of our hearts.”

Medearis challenges his friend to make peace with a loving God — and with Israel, Hezbollah’s bitter enemy. He knows some people consider him foolish, naïve, a “useful idiot” being manipulated by terrorists for political or public relations purposes. Yet Christ’s words about loving enemies remain. Could the steady application of love and God’s Word to his friend’s war-hardened heart change the course of history in the Middle East?

When Medearis talks about loving enemies as a method of transmitting the love of Jesus across boundaries, the most common response he gets from Christians goes something like this: “Yeah, I know that Jesus said to love our enemies, but … I mean, you’re not suggesting that, well, you know, we should, like, love Osama bin Laden, are you?”

What Medearis (or anyone else) suggests is irrelevant. What matters is the command of Christ, who committed the ultimate act of love on behalf of those who opposed, rejected, betrayed, hated and killed Him. That act, that supernatural life, transcends politics, cultures, nations — and all past, present and future animosities. Forgive as you have been forgiven, He says. No exceptions.

The command doesn’t apply just to individual relationships. The global progress of the Gospel depends on loving and blessing enemies. Every day, hundreds of mission workers and thousands of local believers are forming the kinds of friendships Medearis describes. As often as not, the families, clans or tribes awaiting the Gospel in the next village or across the border are enemies. You fear them; they fear you. How to bridge the gap? Unconditional mercy.

And we must go first, if we claim to follow Christ. We can’t ask new disciples across the world to share the Good News with enemies if we aren’t willing to model the practice.

If all this sounds hyper-spiritual, here’s a real-world model: Steve Hyde.

Steve’s no otherworldly mystic. He’s a big ol’ guy with a big smile and a huge heart — just like his dad, Southern Baptist missionary Bill Hyde. Bill was killed in a 2003 terror bombing carried out by an Islamic rebel group in the Philippines. It was an abrupt end to a life lived passionately for Christ. During 25 years in the Philippines, Bill planted (and trained Filipino Christians to plant) hundreds of churches.

Steve was already doing full-time mission work elsewhere in Southeast Asia when his father was killed. He’s still there, spreading the Good News and equipping believers to multiply churches — just like his dad. On the seventh anniversary of Bill’s death March 4, Steve recalled the words he spoke at his father’s funeral:

“I will avenge my father’s death, but not like the plans of the evil one. To kill and destroy is easy, but to love your enemy is God’s command. The plans of Jesus are peace and love through the forgiveness of sins. I will go and bring Jesus throughout this evil world and take the light of Jesus into the darkness.

“Please, all of you whose lives were touched by my father, who were motivated and encouraged by him in church planting, evangelism and the kingdom of God, join me in avenging my father’s death. Let us together go into every dark area, those hard-to-go places, those places that bring fear just by mention of their name. Go, as my father went. My dad will not be the last martyr, but in the end the Lord Jesus Christ will have the victory. Take the Light into the darkness with me.”

If loving enemies into heaven is good enough for Steve Hyde, it’s good enough for you and me.

Lent in our hearts

Listen to an audio version of this post at
http://media1.imbresources.org/files/106/10690/10690-57106.mp3

American Christianity has become so worldly, to use an old-fashioned word, that believers of an earlier age would barely recognize many of us as followers of Christ.

The ancient spiritual practices of extended prayer, fasting and silence are rare in a culture addicted to constant sensory stimulation. Abstaining from pleasures and entertainments for the purpose of holiness is rarer still.

Voluntary poverty and self-denial in our day sound so … medieval.

They’re actually a lot older than that. “Do not love the world nor the things of the world,” wrote John, Jesus’ beloved disciple, to first-century Christians. “If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world” (1 John 2:15,16, NASB).

On the surface, that statement seems to contradict Jesus, who said, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16, KJV).

The difference: God loves the world with a holy and selfless passion. Our love, without His Spirit, is unholy and selfish.

The unholy love John warned against emanates from “people who love themselves, and who love things without regard to God,” wrote Francois Fenelon, a 17th-century spiritual master. “When do we show that we love the world? When we are jealous of authority. When we love a reputation that we are not worthy of. When we spend idle time in the company of others. When we look for comforts that magnify the flesh. When we are weak and fainthearted in our Christian practices. When we do not take care to study the truths of the Gospel.”

Many Christians no longer follow the traditional church calendar. Evangelicals in particular are wary of the time-encrusted rituals of a season such as Lent, the 40 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter. Lent has lost much of its meaning and solemnity even in the liturgical churches. Church members, if they still observe the season at all, often go through the motions of giving up some vice or beloved habit (double cheeseburgers, say), then revert immediately to unrestrained indulgence as soon as the 40 days are up.

That’s not the true spirit of Lent, which calls Christians to prayer, self-denial, self-examination and repentance. Think of Christ in the desert — fasting, praying and resisting the devil as He prepared for His mission on earth. If you can’t handle 40 days, can you devote one day, perhaps two or three, to the undivided pursuit of God?

Rightly observing Lent in our hearts is about loving God more. If we do that, loving ourselves less will be a natural result.

“As you stand before God, think about the mercy He has shown you, the enlightenment He has given you … the pitfalls of this world from which He has kept you safe,” Fenelon recommended. “Think about the crosses He has entrusted to you so that you may become a living sacrifice, because they are clear signs of His love. Let your gratefulness for the past inspire you with trust for the future. Be persuaded that He has loved you too much not to love you still. ...

“God has taken away the soft and comfortable things from your life. Why? Because you need to be humbled and to come to know yourself; because in vain you have sought elsewhere for help and comfort.”

If God has yet to remove the “soft and comfortable” things from your life, what if you voluntarily gave some of them to Him as an act of love and obedience?

When we love Him more, we love others more, particularly those who wander in darkness. It’s amazing how a heart like that of Jonah — who wanted to see Nineveh destroyed — can be transformed into the heart of God, who was passionately concerned about the 120,000 lost souls of that city.

A return to the true observance of Lent in our hearts could be a powerful impetus for missions, which is the lifting of God’s great name among all the nations.

Hosea, the prophet of a God heartbroken over the unfaithfulness of His people, delivered a beautiful Lenten appeal long before the beginning of Lent. Let’s make it our prayer:

“Come, let us return to the Lord,
For He has torn us, but He will heal us,
He has wounded us, but He will bandage us.
He will revive us after two days;
He will raise us up on the third day,
That we may live before Him.
So let us know, let us press on to know the Lord.
His going forth is as certain as the dawn;
And He will come to us like the rain,
Like the spring rain watering the earth” (Hosea 6:1-3, NASB).

The year of living dangerously

Listen to an audio version of this post at http://media1.imbresources.org/files/106/10631/10631-56748.mp3

What do you think about when you look back on the past year of your life?

Family joys and heartaches, perhaps. Victories and defeats on the job or at school. Sickness and health. Events in the lives of close friends. Odds are, you aren’t remembering the physical beatings you took for Christ.

Rasheed* and Farooq* are.

I’ve written several times about Rasheed and Farooq, two Muslims in India who have become committed followers of Jesus Christ. They lead a growing movement of Muslim-background believers in Mumbai, India’s largest city. The urban giant’s 20 million people include some 2 million Muslims — a large but often marginalized minority that is showing increasing openness to the Gospel.

Last time we checked in with Rasheed, he was lying in a hospital bed with a head wound, broken rib and internal injuries suffered during a brutal attack at the hands of people angered by his stand for Jesus. He had led two Muslim men to faith in Christ. One of them went home and told family members. Enraged, they found Rasheed, pushed him down and beat him with a cricket bat until others rescued him. He was hospitalized for nearly a month.

“Rasheed is almost fully recovered now,” says a Christian worker who keeps in touch with him. “He is looking for work again while continuing to teach six leaders of jama’ats” — indigenous worship groups composed of Muslim-background followers of Jesus — and leading five jama’ats himself.

“While he was recovering, three more Muslims gave their lives to Christ through the faithful witness of believers in his groups.”

Farooq, meanwhile, has stayed busy with more than 70 Shi’ite Muslim “seeker groups” investigating the Gospel. Spiritual seekers in the groups now probably surpass 1,000.

“The Muslims they speak with are incredulous,” reports the worker. “They say, ‘This is the first time we have heard this truth.’”

The year 2009, the worker adds, was a “very good year — and a difficult year — for both Farooq and Rasheed.”

A selected chronology of the year’s events in their lives and ministries:

-- Rasheed begins a jama’at in his hometown and four more elsewhere.

-- Farooq is framed, arrested and beaten for sharing his faith with Muslim seekers. He loses his possessions and sustains painful leg injuries. “I did nothing wrong,” he declares. “I know that God was with me in jail and through the whole ordeal. I can trust Him for anything!”

-- Exonerated and released from jail, Farooq promptly restarts the seeker meeting that was the source of his persecution.

-- Nawab* becomes a believer in Farooq’s native place. He begins two jama’ats and currently conducts a weekly seeker meeting.

-- Many women’s seeker meetings begin. More than 50 women now attend three jama’ats.

-- Thirty new leaders are trained to launch seeker meetings following extensive evangelistic outreach during an annual Muslim festival.

-- During Ramadan outreach efforts, two leaders are beaten for sharing Jesus. One lies in a coma for several days. Both recover.

-- At least 52 new jama’ats are begun during the year, bringing Farooq’s total to more than 100. It’s getting harder to count them, he reports.

“It wasn’t an easy year, but God has done amazing things in the hearts of Farooq and Rasheed, as well as in the hearts of the Muslim-background believers whose faith and fearlessness have grown in ways we never could have imagined,” reflects the Christian worker.

Next time somebody tells you the Gospel will never penetrate the Muslim world, or that Muslims aren’t interested in knowing about Jesus Christ, remember Rasheed, Farooq and many others like them.

They beg to differ — and they put their lives on the line daily to prove otherwise.

*(Names changed)

UN violates its own ideals

Listen to an audio version of this post at
http://media1.imbresources.org/files/105/10543/10543-56209.mp3

Sitting in a coffee shop the other day, I watched a young couple helping their toddler daughter learn how to walk.

The child’s tiny fists gripped her mother’s fingers tightly as she staggered forward. Her face shone with utter joy.

But what sort of world is she stepping into in 2010? A hurting one, where thousands of children her age die each day of malnutrition and preventable diseases. Where millions experience violence or the threat of it. Where half the people of Haiti existed on a dollar a day even before the killer earthquake struck Jan. 12.

And where nearly seven of every 10 people live in countries that significantly restrict religious faith and practice — through laws, social pressure or both.

That shameful statistic comes from a report released in December by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Of 198 nations studied, 75 put official limits on religious evangelization. Nearly 180 require houses of worship to register with the government; in 117 of those, the requirement causes problems for religious believers.

Christians are by no means the only targets of such restrictions, but they are the most widespread on a global scale. In many places — primarily but not exclusively communist and Muslim-majority lands — Christians continue to pay in blood for their faith, particularly if they dare to lead others to follow Jesus.

In 1948, the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 18 of that document states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.”

Article 19 is inseparably related, just as the freedoms of speech and religion are inseparable in our own Bill of Rights: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

For the fifth year in a row, however, the U.N. General Assembly has violated the letter and the spirit of its own declaration. At the urging of the 56 member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference — including some of the most notorious abusers of religious rights in their own countries — the assembly endorsed a resolution in December against the so-called “defamation of religion.”

The controversial, non-binding resolution passed with less support than in previous years. But it passed, providing continuing philosophical aid and comfort to those who seek to silence free religious expression.

“Essentially the resolution [seeks] to criminalize words or actions that are deemed to be against a particular religion, namely, Islam,” said Lindsay Vessey, director of advocacy for Open Doors, an international ministry that supports persecuted Christians. Wherever the resolution gains the force of law, Vessey warned, citizens won’t be “free to preach the Gospel [or] to say what they believe, even if they’re not trying to evangelize. But it’s also going to impact missionaries and foreign workers who go into these countries to evangelize.”

In November, the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) joined more than 100 other organizations in opposing the “defamation” resolutions then being debated in the United Nations.

The statement endorsed by the ERLC and others — ranging from the Baptist World Alliance and American Jewish Congress to the American Islamic Forum for Democracy and the American Humanist Association — said the “defamation of religions” concept undermines “the fundamental freedoms of individuals to freely exercise and peacefully exercise their thoughts, ideas and beliefs.”

The “defamation” resolution also provides an international sanction for national laws that prohibit so-called “blasphemy.” It’s no secret that accusations of “blasphemy” amount to a potential death sentence against both Muslims and non-Muslims in some Islamic nations.

“Blasphemy” can be defined “by the laws which seek to outlaw it,” writes Jeremy Havardi in The Guardian, a leading British newspaper. “In countries across the world, these laws clamp down on those … whose words and deeds insult the prevailing religious culture. Looked at in this way, blasphemy laws are a dangerous anachronism — a blight on any society that values freedom of speech.
…

“Ideas must be defended in the court of public opinion, not in a court of law. That is why the U.N. resolution on the defamation of religion is similarly flawed.”

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton put it this way when she expressed the United States’ opposition to such measures: “An individual’s ability to practice his or her religion has no bearing on others’ freedom of speech. The protection of speech about religion is particularly important since persons of different faiths will inevitably hold divergent views on religious questions. These differences should be met with tolerance, not with the suppression of discourse.”

The “international community,” as represented by the U.N. General Assembly, apparently doesn’t see it that way.

Religious believers — particularly Christians who spread the Gospel — will continue to endure persecution with or without “defamation of religion” laws, of course. They always have. For the church universal, suffering is historical, normal and biblical, as an expert on global Christian persecution stated recently.

The real victims of those who attempt to silence the Good News, he asserted, are the multitudes who have yet to hear it.

The 'First Globals'

Listen to an audio version of this post at http://media1.imbresources.org/files/104/10408/10408-55553.mp3

A father who lives down the street from me turned his small backyard into a state-of-the-art batting cage, complete with a high-velocity pitching machine, when his son was in elementary school.

The son practiced hitting for hours every day. He played high school baseball. Now he’s playing college ball. Just what Pop wanted.

I hope it’s what his son wanted.

We’ve all seen sports dads, stage moms and other victims of a condition I call “Hyperactive Parent Syndrome” living out their dreams through their kids. Maybe we’ve even been one of them.

We do it because we love our children, right? We’re involved in their lives because we care. We want to encourage them to develop their gifts and talents.

Involvement and encouragement are great. Manipulation isn’t.

I’m thinking about the difference a lot these days while trying to help my senior-high kids find the right college.

What is the point of going to college in the first place? To study the best our civilization has to offer, according to the classical ideal? To gain the knowledge and skills to launch a career? To earn more money?

Or to serve God with all one’s mind?

“What are your goals?” asks C.J. Mahaney, editor of Worldliness: Resisting the Seduction of a Fallen World (Crossway, 2008). “Do they move you forward — to financial security, more friends, successful kids, a certain position at work, learning a craft or trade? Or do they drive you upward — to obeying and glorifying God above all else?”

There’s nothing wrong with helping a young person prepare to earn a living. But there’s more to life than earning a living, even in hard economic times. That’s what Jesus meant when He said we do not live by bread alone, but by the words of God.

We cannot force our children to serve the Lord. Neither should we unwittingly push them toward worldliness and materialism with the best intentions of helping them achieve “success” as defined by the world. Rather, we should model lives of love and service — and invite our children to join us in the great task of sharing the Gospel with lost and suffering people everywhere.

There’s plenty of data indicating they’re open to the invitation.

Pollster John Zogby has renamed the so-called Millennials (18- to 29-year-old Americans) the “First Globals.” They are “the most outward-looking and accepting generation in American history,” Zogby reports. “First Globals are also the most cosmopolitan age group in America, the most international, and the one most concerned about the environment and human rights.”

By and large, they’re comfortable with the different skin colors, cultures and languages they encounter every day. A fourth of them expect to live outside America at some point in their lives.

They sound like potential missionaries to me.

If your children fall into this age group or mindset, why not show them the unprecedented opportunities they have — not just to pursue a career, but to pursue the glory of God among the nations?

"The Decade from Hell"

Listen to an audio version of this post at
http://media1.imbresources.org/files/103/10351/10351-55297.mp3

Ten years ago this month, many people were wondering if the world would end with the beginning of the new millennium.

It didn’t happen, although in light of subsequent events, some might wish it had. TIME magazine recently dubbed 2000-2009 “The Decade from Hell” — a “10-year gauntlet” of trials and tribulations (see http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1942834,00.html).

A partial list:

-- the Sept. 11 attacks, which ended any lingering hope of a peaceful post-Cold War world

-- innumerable smaller terrorist attacks from Madrid to Mumbai

-- wars and insurgencies in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Congo, Yemen, Sri Lanka, Somalia and many other places

-- earthquakes that killed tens of thousands in China, Iran and Pakistan

-- a tsunami that swept away more than 200,000 people in Asia and Africa

As if those events weren’t devastating enough, a major economic downturn beginning in 2008 continues to cause untold hardships across the globe for hundreds of millions of workers and their families.

In a struggle that captured far fewer headlines, many Christian believers died for their faith during the decade — including eight Southern Baptist missionaries. Countless other followers of Christ have suffered violence, imprisonment, harassment and other forms of persecution for living and sharing their faith.

Would it have been better if the last 10 years had never occurred? To answer yes is to misunderstand God’s sovereignty. If He is the Lord of all history, He is the Lord of recent history. He uses all things, even tragedies and actions others intend for evil, to bless the nations and bring glory to Himself.

In a December 1999 column, I observed:

“The tumultuous 20th [century] staggers to an end this month. … Historians will recall many things about it: two world wars, the fall of old empires and rise of new ones, the devastation wrought by communism and totalitarianism, the Holocaust, the spread of democracy and capitalism, man on the moon, the computer, the Bomb. …

“[But] the fresh movement of God's Spirit is the real story of the century. How else to explain the staggering growth of the church, the Gospel's spread to countless places worldwide — not just in the West — and the glorifying of God's name among peoples who've never heard it until now? God isn't finished with us. … His Spirit is quietly, inexorably, powerfully moving — like a vast, unseen river.”

God is still moving. After the great tsunami and the Pakistan quake, whole communities and regions previously cut off from the Gospel experienced the love of Christ through relief and rebuilding efforts initiated by Christians. Military conflicts have opened spiritual doors as churches and mission workers aided suffering populations and refugees. The lives of believers who remained faithful under persecution have changed history among the people they love and serve.

Ten years ago, Rasheed* didn’t know Jesus Christ as Lord. Today he is one of the leaders of a growing movement of Muslim-background followers of Christ in India. But he’s paid the price for his new commitment. As I write this, he is recovering from a broken rib and other injuries — the result of the latest (and worst) beating he has suffered at the hands of people angered by his stand for Jesus.

He remains too weak to talk much, but one of his friends related what happened:

“Rasheed shared with a couple of Muslim men who both became [believers in Christ]. One of them went home and told his family. The men in the family gathered others from the community, and six of them found Rasheed and angrily asked him questions about what he had taught this new believer. As Rasheed attempted to explain, they began to beat him. One of the men pushed him down, and he hit his head on a pile of bricks as he fell. Another continued to beat him with a cricket bat until other villagers stopped the beating and took Rasheed to his brother.”

Rasheed is learning what the earliest disciples discovered in similar times: It isn’t easy to be a real follower of Christ. It’s hard. It costs everything — especially when you’re one of the first to commit yourself to Him.

But one day, Rasheed and the many souls he is leading to Christ will look back on “The Decade from Hell” as the moment when they found the way to heaven.

*(Name changed)

A tale of five cities

(Watch video about followers of Christ in Jakarta at http://www.commissionstories.com/stories/421)

My son wants to go to school next year in New York City.

In midtown Manhattan, no less — the Big Apple, the belly of the beast, the postmodern Babylon.

“Are you crazy?” a few friends asked (or implied) when I told them we would be visiting a school located there. No, I’m not crazy, although I had a few second thoughts driving through the Lincoln Tunnel into New York’s frantic traffic.

If my son ventures there, the big, bad city will present quite a challenge for him — more challenge than I could have handled at his age. But I envy him. He will attend an exciting Christian college that prepares young minds to confront the world as it is.

And he will experience the world as it is rapidly becoming: urban.

The stories about Jakarta, Indonesia, posted today at http://imb.org (“Jakarta: City of God” and “Second chance brings changed life”) are the last in a series called “A tale of five cities.” Over the past two years, I’ve had the opportunity to visit and profile five great cities on four continents: Buenos Aires, London, Nairobi, Mumbai and Jakarta (combined population: up to 70 million people). The purpose of the project was to grapple with the realities of declaring the Christian Gospel to a global population that is now more than 50 percent urban for the first time in history. You can read other stories in the series at http://bpnews.net/BPCollectionNews.asp?ID=151.

To review some of the numbers:

* A projected 88 percent of population growth over the next generation will occur in cities in the developing world. Half of India’s billion-plus people will live in cities by 2020.

* Urban dwellers will double to 6.4 billion by mid-century — 70 percent of humanity — according to United Nations forecasts.

* Nearly 80 percent of South America’s 380 million people live in cities. A third of Argentina’s population, for instance, lives in greater Buenos Aires.

Whether cities fit into the fast-multiplying category of 500,000 to 1 million people, “mega” size (1 million or more) or “super-mega” (above 10 million), they tend to share common characteristics. They attract the young, the rich, the poor, students, job seekers, minorities, immigrants, refugees. Cities speak many languages and encompass many cultures and religions. Sometimes different people groups within cities mix and meld. Sometimes they form distinct, exclusive communities — cities within cities.

In London, called “a world in one city,” you can hear more than 300 languages spoken. The city is home to at least 50 non-indigenous communities of 10,000 or more people each. Mumbai, approaching 20 million people, plays host to India’s Bollywood movie stars, its richest business tycoons — and Dharavi, reputedly Asia’s largest slum. Hindus dominate Mumbai, but 2 million Muslims live there, as well as members of nearly every caste, religion and people group in India. Nairobi is a hub and magnet for all of east Africa, attracting immigrants and refugees from every major people in the region. One area of the city, “Little Mogadishu,” functions as a kind of capital in exile for Somalia, Kenya’s anarchic neighbor.

Cities are aggressively secular — and zealously religious.

“Secularism is the predominant ‘religion’ of the city, but every other ‘ism’ is here in strong force,” says a Southern Baptist missionary in London. “The largest Sikh and Hindu temples outside of India are in west London. London is the Islamic capital of Europe. Satanism and all kinds of mystic practices are also alive and well.”

Cities are hectic, fragmented and violent. Despite their large numbers, city dwellers often live in isolation and fear. They are hard to reach — physically and spiritually — in their locked offices and high-rise apartments guarded by vigilant doormen.

“In a big city, the spiritual strongholds are loneliness and fear,” says missionary Randy Whittall, Southern Baptist team leader for Buenos Aires. “It may seem crazy to think about being lonely when you’re surrounded by 13 million people, but they are.”

How are Christians responding to the challenge of postmodern cities? Not very well, at least so far.

Local churches in the cities I visited tend to be tradition-bound, fearful of reaching beyond their comfort zones, overly dependent on buildings and property (prohibitively expensive in major cities). Mission organizations and other Christian ministries talk about “reaching the cities,” but struggle to find effective ways to do it. Missionaries in many countries have focused for generations on reaching rural regions untouched by the Gospel. While they have toiled in the hinterlands, cities have mushroomed.

“We still have the mindset of rural missions,” observes Whittall. “But the mission of the 21st century, however much we don’t like it, is going to be in the Beijings, the New Delhis, the massive, polluted, crowded urban areas where billions of people live.”

What works in such places varies, but smaller tends to be better.

The effective urban Christian workers I met cultivate global prayer networks and pursue city-spanning “seed-sowing” (Gospel distribution), to be sure. But they follow up with focused community ministries among specific people groups, winning hearts and minds for the Gospel — as in Jakarta, London and Nairobi. They start small cell groups and house or apartment churches that multiply over time, as in Buenos Aires and Jakarta. They intensively train committed local believers to make disciples, who in turn train others, as in Nairobi.

In Mumbai, the faithful discipleship of just two Muslim-background followers of Christ by a Southern Baptist worker has sparked the beginning of many worship groups among Muslims in the city.

“I wouldn’t say so much that we’re failing [in the cities] as that we’ve never tried,” says the worker in Mumbai. “We can talk about the problems, the poverty and corruption and politicians. But it all goes back to the darkness they live in. They need Jesus Christ.”

Whatever it takes, it’s time to try.