The Soul of the City: Mapping the Spiritual Geography of Eleven Canadian Cities by Len Hjalmarson, Editor

How do we get to know our cities? How do we identify the spirit of a place? What theological and social frameworks will contribute to our understanding? As a church we have lagged far behind in our understanding of the city. Very few congregations see themselves as communities wrestling with what it means to be salt and light in the urban landscape. We have not been intentional around thinking about the places where we are located and how we might engage them. As you work your way through this book, you will see a wide range of approaches and definitions to the question of the soul of the city. We have gathered thirteen theological practitioners to reflect on the spiritual topography of their city. These writers each contribute one chapter of five thousand words on the place they live.

 

 

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Eat What is Set Before You: A Missiology of the Congregation in Context by Scott Hagley

What does it look like for a congregation to give and receive hospitality by cultivating life-giving partnerships with people of peace and goodwill? In Eat What is Set Before You, Scott Hagley offers a vivid picture of the habits and postures necessary for congregations to join God’s mission in the neighborhood. Drawing from congregational research and his own experience as a pastor and consultant, Hagley describes three different crisis moments that congregations must navigate practically and understand theologically as they learn to dwell with and within their neighborhood. In so doing, he unearths the tensions, temptations, and possibilities missional churches face in the current North American context.

 

 

 

The Bees of Rainbow Falls: Finding Faith, Imagination, and Delight in Your Neighbourhood by Preston Pouteaux

What if we could imagine living in our neighbourhoods in a way that transformed our whole outlook on faith, hope, and love? Preston Pouteaux writes about how an unlikely journey into beekeeping changed how he saw his neighbors. The Bees of Rainbow Falls reminds us that we matter to our community, that goodness is found all around us, and that new life emerges out of the small and sublime. With the quirky curiosity of a beekeeper and the thoughtful care of a pastor, he gently welcomes readers to step into their own neighbourhoods. What if the very best gift was waiting for you just beyond your front door?

 

 

 

 

Crossroads_cover Crossroads of the Nations: Diaspora, Globalization, and Evangelism by Jared Looney

The twin forces of globalization and urbanization are transforming the context of global missions. While the Western church grapples with the challenges of evangelism in an age of globalization, new evangelistic opportunities are emerging that blur the conventional boundaries between local and global outreach. Even as the rise of a persistent post-Christendom presents new challenges for the church, global migration is rearranging the religious and ethnic makeup of our cities. Cities are centers of constant change, and in an urban world, current missionaries will need to become adaptable. Furthermore, contemporary missions strategies will need to engage a world organized along networks that may transcend geographic boundaries. Painting a picture of evangelism and church planting in our urban and global world, Crossroads of the Nations utilizes contemporary data and together with missionary accounts – both actual and recent – tells a story of transnational missions impacting our world.

 

 

The Urbanity of the Bible: Rediscovering the Urban Nature of the Bible by Sean Benesh

Often times the Bible is associated with rural pastoral settings. The Israelites wandering in the desert wilderness living in tents, David playing his harp for sheep out in the pasture, and Jesus strolling along dusty roads between remote villages. But what if I told you that the Bible is an urban book and that the center stage for where the drama of biblical events played out was truly the city? Starting in Genesis, all of the way to the end of the Bible in Revelation, the whole trajectory of humanity and the focal point for the Missio Dei was and is urban and not rural. When Jesus erupted into history through the womb of a teenager he lived in the most urban region in the world. The early church was birthed in the city and spread to the largest most influential cosmopolitan urban centers of the day. For the first-century Christian, to be a follower of Jesus was synonymous with being an urbanite. The Urbanity of the Bible explores the urban nature of the Bible and displays the urban trajectory of the Missio Dei. The city was and is a dominant theme of the setting, backdrop, and purposes of God throughout history. As the world today has flooded to the cities this book is good news. We were meant to live in the city.

 

 

MTP-cover Mind the Gap: Reflections from Luke's Gospel on the Divided City by Colin Smith

In a time of mass urban migration, the great irony of our age is that the closer we have come together the further we have moved apart. Within this globalizing world the gap between rich and poor grows ever wider, creating seemingly unbridgeable chasms between people who inhabit the same city. It is against this backdrop that Colin Smith explores what it might mean to create a different kind of narrative where these gaps become redemptive spaces, open to new possibilities. Mind the Gapweaves a rich tapestry of stories from Nairobi along with London and Cape Town. These imaginatively combine with reflections from Luke’s gospel to chart possibilities for hope in the heart of the divided city.

 

 

 

 

seeds Sowing Seeds of Change by Michael D. Crane

More than half the people on the planet live in cities. It’s not just our future that’s urban- our present is. What does the Bible say about cities? How should the church go about reaching those billions of city-dwellers? Where do our cities fit into the Kingdom of God The church needs a comprehensive, gospel-centered response to these questions as we seek to obey God’s call to “seek the welfare of the city” (Jer. 29:7). In Sowing Seeds of Change, Michael Crane weaves together theology and praxis, creating a framework for understanding your city, a means of crafting a vision of what it could be, and a way forward towards transforming it. Sowing Seeds of Change proposes an approach to the city that is both holistic and Christ-centered, offering churches a balanced, compassionate, well-researched model for ministry in diverse urban contexts. Whether you’re a pastor, missionary, seminarian, or urban church member, you’ll be challenged, edified, and equipped by Sowing Seeds of Change.

 

 

City Church City Church: Working Together to Transform Cities by Kelly Malone

In the world’s cities, the church must not only give people hope for eternal life. We must also help them realize their most basic hopes for physical, psychological, and spiritual well-being in the present world. An individual Christ-follower can feed a hungry child, and a single congregation can provide food for the hungry families in their neighborhood. But it will take all God’s people working together to stamp out the problem of hunger in a city. And hunger is only one small piece of the puzzle of human suffering that plagues our world’s cities.

The Christian community, moved by Christ’s compassion, can bring lasting change to a city. The world’s cities are not only large concentrations of people. Cities form nuclei through which people, money, materials, information, and ideas flow to energize our globalized world. A businessman in a village in India can sit in a coffee shop reading the Wall Street Journal online before making his investments in the London and Tokyo markets. This is only possible because of the kind of interchange taking place between cities like New York, Paris, Delhi, Nairobi, and Sao Paulo. The results of globalization ripple out from these great hubs to engulf the smaller cities, villages, and rural areas of the surrounding hinterlands.

 

 

Small Voice, Big City: The Challenge of Urban Mission by Howard Snyder

Small Voice, Big City sets urban mission, the mission of Jesus, in a broad context: people, land, and the kingdom of God. This book focuses on the power of the gospel -- often outwardly weak, small, foolish -- to heal the nations and redeem earth's cities. The gospel proved powerful in the first-century world, when the church was born; it still is today.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Out of Nazareth: Christ-Centered Civic Transformation by Randy White & H. Spees, editors

If it takes a village to raise a child, it certainly takes a dedicated community to catalyze transformation in the name of Christ in a city. Our hope is that this glimpse at the work of a few of those on this catalytic team, and the insights that have been hard won by them, might be of encouragement and some practical help to you and your team, as you seek the peace of your city. We certainly agree on a set of values, and a theory of change certainly plays a part. But these insights and stories emerge from practitioners. While we don’t offer this as a model, we do offer it as one example of a journey of transformation, one that is in fact fruitful, and one that we are joyfully on together.

 

 

 

 

 

Mosaic: A Ministry Handbook for a Globalizing World by Jared Looney and Seth Bouchelle

Church leaders throughout North America are discovering the world has moved next door. In a globalized world, cities are mosaics of peoples and cultures where change is the only constant. Mosaic is a “crash course” on engaging culture. It serves as a resource for Christian leaders who have recognized that a cross-cultural mission field is now present in their own backyard and who desire to grow in their ability to incarnate the gospel among their culturally different neighbors.

 

 

 

 

 


Coming soon in the General Urban Ministry Track:

By His Mighty Hand by John Perkins, Stephen Burris, and Kendi Howells Douglas

The Enduring City: God's Reconcilliation of Urban Places by D. Arnold

Lay People are Ministers Too: The City-Changing Power of Called Christians by R. Linthicum

Leadership Character and Calling: A Multiethnic Perspective by Yucan Chiu

New Awakenings: The Mission of God and the Changing Landscape of North America by Jared Looney, ed.

Urban Chinese Women and the Missional Challenge by Lisa Hoff

Spirituality for Mission in the Urban Context by Karina Kreminski

Community Churches: Making Disciples In Urban Areas by Kelly Malone

The Community Pastor Leading People Beyonf the Institutional Church by R. Lovejoy

Women in Urban Ministry by Kendi Howells Douglas

Urban Anthropology and a View of the City by C. Tooley

Modern Legends in Urban Mission by Kendi Howells Douglas

Missional Urban Church

Models of Urban Ministry

Holistic Approaches to Urban Ministry

Incanational Models of Urban Ministry

Discipleship in an Urban Context

Healthy Churches for Healthy Global University Towns by Yuan Chiu

Doing Mission Among Human Civilizations by C. Van Engen, J. Tiersma Watson, and Stephen Burris