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AdventistsinCitiesn In 1880 there was 1 Adventist for every 89,768 people.nity Services an occupancy permit. Ina powerful tribute to our church, morethan 100 people from the communitycame out to support Clark and thechurch: pastors of other denominations,business leaders, mothers, etc. 155. Bidding people to follow Him.Inviting people to follow Jesus isn’tsome artificial construct placed on topof all the other steps. It’s a naturaloutgrowth. Will all people acceptJesus? No. Does that mean we stopmingling with them and servingthem? Certainly not.As Clark and his team mingled,showed sympathy, ministered toneeds, and won confidence, theyreceived plenty of criticism from otherAdventists. “You’ve been mingling formonths now; where are the results?”But God has His own timing. Oneday a tattooed teenager Clark had beenworking with said, “Pastor Clark, am Ian Adventist yet, or what?” I received amessage from Clark pleading for helpin finding a Bible worker. Bible studyrequests were starting to flood in.“PLEASE HELP!!!!” Andrew wrote, inhis typical enthusiastic style. “We arefour people already stretched too thintrying to follow up 70 leads so far!”Ellen White wrote that Christ’smethod, when accompanied by thepower of persuasion, prayer, andGod’s love, “will not, cannot, be withoutfruit.” 16Will We Have the Faith?When Moses sent spies into Canaan,he instructed them to investigatethree things: (1) the land, (2) thepeople, (3) the cities.The spies returned with glowingreports of the land and its produce,but also a daunting picture of the peopleand cities (Num. 13:26-30). Thepeople were giants, the cities were “fortifiedand very large” (verse 28). OnlyCaleb and Joshua dared speak of victoryagainst such formidable obstacles.Today’s twenty-first-century citiesare also “fortified and very large.” Thefortifications aren’t made of stone;they’re reinforced by the intangiblefortifications of secularism, postmodernism,and consumerism. Will wehave the faith of Caleb and Joshua tosay that, with God’s help, “we can certainlydo it” (verse 30)? n1Vanity Fair, November 2011.2In Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Nov. 11, 1909.3This is calculated on the basis of 730 baptized Seventh-dayAdventists in a Dhaka population of 7 million people. Thisis a conservative figure; many authorities estimate Dhaka’spopulation at up to 15 million.4Of course, there are some notable exceptions to this trend.Many inner-city Adventist churches have been lighthouses forthe good news for many decades.5Ivan Warden, “Ellen G. White Speaks on Urban Ministries.”6Ibid.7Quoted in Amy Lee Sheppard, “Doers of the Word: Seventh-dayAdventist Social Christianity in Thought and Practice Duringthe Gilded Age” (unpublished B.A. honors thesis, Department ofHistory, University of Michigan, Mar. 26, 2007), p. 67.8Ellen G. White, Medical Ministry, p. 304.9Ellen G. White, The Ministry of Healing, p. 143.10See www.advantagetechsolutions.net/SW2001_html/history.htm and Monte Sahlin, Mission in Metropolis: The AdventistMovement in an Urban World (Lincoln, Nebr.: Center forCreative Ministry, 2007), pp. 128, 129.11He also noticed in the press of the crowd the touch of awoman who had been sick for 12 years.12Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, NewInternational Version. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 byBiblica, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.13For more information about this church, visit www.cccc.org.au.14Rochelle Madden, “My Ministry Idea,” South Pacific Record,June 4, 2011, p. 12.15A video of the event, “Finding Carnegie,” can be viewedat www.youtube.com/watch?v=htzzdAHs4co. To view moreAdventist mission videos about this church-planting initiative,visit AdventistMission.org and type “Carnegie” in the search box.16Ellen G. White, The Ministry of Healing, p. 144.Gary Krause is directorof the Office of AdventistMission.HearThe scene is etched in my mindforever—as vivid today as it wasmore than 40 years ago. It wasone of those sweltering July days in thesummer of 1968. We were waiting forthe traffic light to change at an intersectionin New York City’s Bowery. Weoften returned from our home in southernConnecticut to New York City tovisit Dad’s childhood neighborhoods.New York City was in Dad’s blood.Somehow he wanted his children tounderstand their heritage. Dad’s storiesof growing up in the city were pricelessfamily treasures, heirlooms to pass onfrom one generation to the next.In the late 1960s sections of theBowery were havens for men andwoman using alcohol to escape fromthe reality of life. The run-down tenementapartments, dingy storefrontbars, and trash-littered streets toldtragic stories of broken lives, shatteredhomes, and ruined futures.As I sat gazing out the car windowthinking about the lives of theunshaven, bleary-eyed men lying onthe sidewalk in a drunken stupor, Inoticed a red-faced man with a shabbyplaid shirt staggering over to the car.As he approached he simply said,“Could you spare a man a dollar?” Adollar to buy another drink, no! Butfood, yes! We rummaged around andcame up with a semblance of a lunch.As I handed it to him, he reached20 Adventist World | October 2011