Speaking about Tim Keller, Christianity Today wrote, “Fifty years from now if evangelical Christians are widely known for their love of cities, their commitment to mercy and justice, and their love of their neighbours, Tim Keller will be remembered as a pioneer of the new urban Christians.” These words stand as true now as when they were first written. They’re also very true regarding my own commitment to urban ministry and church planting in African cities.
I can’t think of a better way to remember Keller than sharing why urban ministry matters.
Keller convinced me to change my ministry positioning. Before reading him I’d dreamed of planting a church in some remote part of the DRC. I was afraid of life in cities; I perceived them as polluted, sinful places. So I thought the way to faithfulness was outside of the city. This all started to change when I read Center Church. Today, I’m a passionate advocate of urban ministries in Africa, because Keller’s arguments aren’t only appealing but surprisingly exciting. Cities are exhilarating, fascinating and necessary locations to serve God’s purposes in our time.
As we reflect on the anniversary of Tim Keller’s death, I can’t think of a better way to remember the gift of his life and ministry than to share why I believe urban ministry matters; and how to reach African cities. These aren’t my ideas; they’re Keller’s, from beginning to end.
Why Do African Cities Matter?
At face value, one might feel that Keller’s writing was about a context very different from our own. But I’d argue that his writing is profoundly relevant for our continent. For while Africa is the least urbanised continent in the world, it also has the fastest rate of urbanisation in the world. It’s in cities that we’ll reach the next generation; from the culture makers to the marginalised, business people to artists, thinkers to authors and influencers. If projections are true, by 2050 more than 60% of Africans will be living in cities.
Cities matter for many reasons. Some are more obvious than others. Here are a few of the reasons Tim Keller put forward:
- God loves cities. This isn’t because he’s impressed by the architectural beauty of tall buildings but simply because he loves people. God loves his image bearers. And there are more people per square metre in the city than in the countryside and rural areas. Strikingly, in Jonah 4:11, God says that he cares for Nineveh greatly because as a great city it was full of people.
- Cities matter because as the city goes so goes the society. They are the home of policy making, big business, and technological progress. Cities influence cultural and national narratives. Thus they shape society. Cities influence the way people live, relate to one another and the rest of the world.
- Then, as I already noted, more and more Africans are moving into cities. Simultaneously, cities are coming to people. Urbanisation on our continent is both unrelenting and unstoppable.
These reasons alone are enough to encourage evangelicals to position themselves in cities. But how will we reach African cities for Christ? To answer that question let’s consider three more points from Keller on urban ministries.
Understand the City
This can be broken down further.
Probe the City’s Cultural Layers
We cannot successfully reach African cities unless we understand the worldview and underlying narratives that shape them. Tim Keller uses the metaphor of an onion to describe how culture works. Just as an onion has many layers, he argues, so does a culture. These layers go from the superficial, outward, and visible to the deep, invisible, and fundamental aspects. There is a centre, around which everything else grows. In every culture, the presenting, external facets driven by more complex forces. We call this worldview, which is in some ways more fundamental than belief systems. This is what we must get at if we want to understand the city.
Unless we go deeper, people’s core commitments will remain unchallenged.
Unless we go deeper, people’s core hopes and commitments will remain unchallenged. Here is where the African culture is particularly complex. For, externally, much of it is similar to the Western culture. This is increasingly true with the passing of every year. People live, dress, and use technology just as their peers in Western cities around the world. However, many Africans’ operating paradigms or worldview has remained traditional and animistic. African urbanites, therefore, appear differently to what they are fundamentally. So simply using Western approaches to urban ministry in reaching African cities is naïve.
Map Its Idols
Just like any other city in the world, African cities have their own idols. We must learn to identify and expose them. However, unlike the West, the idols of African urbanites aren’t always seen in what people love, but in what they hope for. Obviously money is the major personal and cultural idol in African cities. But politics, education, employment, comfort, security, as well as marriage are other personal and cultural idols. These must be carefully studied and engaged. If we don’t address the city’s idols we won’t be speaking the language of the heart.
Identify a City’s Evangelists and Catechisms
Gospels abound in any place, but they’re perhaps especially proliferate in cities. Each city has a gospel; often many. They believe a kind of good news, which has cultural preachers and influential priests. This good news is the message that keeps the city’s hope and dreams alive. There are evangelists outside of the church, persuasively proclaiming other gospels. And catechism also takes place outside the four walls of the church.
To reach the city we need to identify these forces and figures, engaging their message with the one true gospel. Beyond merely identifying a city’s gospel or cultural catechisms, we must proclaim a counter-gospel.
Engage the City
Secondly, Keller’s winsome approach to evangelism will be crucial to winning African cities for Christ. This begins by a careful, culturally sensitive contextualisation. This means both affirming the culture and critiquing its idols. We must affirm the city’s cultural expression which are gifts of God’s common grace. However, we must also speak against its idols and call people to repentance. Contextualisation isn’t about appearing cool, tolerant, or open-minded. It’s the simple desire to not unnecessarily put up barriers to believing.
Keller made the truth desirable.
When it comes to evangelism, then, we must labour to imitate Keller’s approach. By reflecting deeply on both the human and city’s heart he was able to speak both sympathetically and persuasively. He did this with a careful genius and indirect argumentation. Rather than smacking people in the face repeatedly with the truth, Keller would expose personal and cultural pursuits. He’d identity what someone lives for. Then he’d affirm and legitimatise the longing, behind those pursuits, before exposing the disappointment that comes from seeking fulfilment in the wrong place, person, or thing. Finally, Keller would show people that the gospel is the solution to all their longings and pursuits.
Part of Keller’s genius, outlined above, was in his making the truth desirable. Instead of always starting with the relevance or reliability of some Christian truth, he would demonstrate why we want it to be true. This has been particularly effective among young educated and urban Africans, where the gospel is often competing against motivational, self-help sermons.
Serve the City
Finally, we turn to Jeremiah 29:7. It’s a verse that could be said to summarise Keller’s philosophy of urban ministry. “Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”
The church must defend the marginalised and combat corruption.
The church shouldn’t exist in cities to try to increase her tribe. The needs in African urban settings are endless. Therefore churches must go to the cities to serve the people, regardless of whether they agree with her theology or not. Unemployment, poverty, poor housing, little access to opportunity, health issues, violence, hopelessness, and misery are higher in African cities compared to the rest of the world. So we must be willing to reach out and serve the city by meeting its practical needs, through strong mercy ministries. Because Africa is one of the most socially unjust places internationally, the church must also be active in promoting social justice. It must defend the marginalised, call for distributive justice, and combat corruption.
Of course, this service must be tailored to the church’s financial capacity. And it shouldn’t be done at the expense of proclaiming the gospel, which has priority over all social issues, no matter how pressing. This isn’t true because the spiritual is somehow more important than the physical, but because the eternal is more important than the temporal.
