discovering missions - Southern Nazarene University

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New Contexts for Mission 165 165
The non-Western world is being urbanized at an even faster rate than the
West. While it took England 79 years and the United States 66 years to go
from under 10 percent to more than 30 percent urban, it took Japan only 36
years to make that same jump from 10 percent urban to more than 30 percent.
Although Africa and Asia were relatively late arrivals on the industrial scene,
urbanization is going on there at an extremely rapid pace.
The movement of the world to the cities has brought both uneasiness and
excitement for the Church. Christian urbanologist Ray Bakke has argued that
massive migrations of people into cities provide great opportunities for the
Church. Looking at the changes brought on by rapid urbanization, Bakke said,
“The Lord is shaking up the world.” 4 The result is an urban context full of
challenges for evangelism, church planting, and discipleship.
In more affluent nations, the pull of urban jobs combined with an idealization
of rural life has produced suburbia where people live away from the city
core but remain connected to it by umbilical cords of rapid transit systems and
freeways. In his book The Exurbanites, sociologist A. C. Spectorsky described
business executives in the U.S., Canada, and Australia moving out beyond the
suburbs to what he dubbed the exurbs. Those exurbanites also remain tied to
the central city.
Why Is This Happening?
The biggest reason people move to the cities is to improve their standard
of living. The promise of a better life, even though frequently illusory, has
turned cities into powerful magnets for rural populations. Urbanization has also
been fostered by the mechanization of farming, which enables fewer farmers
to feed more people. In the United States, for example, the percentage of the
population employed in farming has dropped from 35 percent in 1900 to less
than 2 percent today. Even so, mechanization has allowed the U.S. to remain a
net exporter of foodstuffs. Another reason for the move to the cities is to allow
children educational opportunities not available in rural areas.
One poignant memory of a recent visit to Africa was seeing a
woman trying to carry a refrigerator carton down a path in a rainstorm,
with the wind constantly blowing her off the path. She persevered,
reminding me of millions of others throughout Africa. The
miles and miles of shantytowns surrounding every metropolis are
mute testimonies to the precarious existence of many. In addition,
there are the homeless who do not even have a shelter of their own,
and who live under bridges or in culverts.
—Charles Gailey