Growing up in small-town West Virginia, I was very distrustful of the modern city. I had my trees, my mountains and rivers, and I liked them. I still like them. Honestly, I love them. For the longest time, however, I thought that to love the city was to forsake my first true love. After spending the past year in Louisville, Ky, which has the population of roughly one-half of my home state in its “metro area,” I’ve come to realize just how absolutely wrong I was. It’s been showing just how wrong I’ve been about a few things, actually.

Take for instance urban ministry. I’ve never been against it, in fact, I’ve been a fan of Tim Keller and others like him for awhile now. The problem for me was that I didn’t think I could ever be called to it. What did I know about urban culture? The longest I’ve ever been in a big city was a week that I spent in New York City- and most of that time was spent trying to figure out how I could get the pastor’s daughter to spend more time with me back home. Not because I was saved, mind you. I wasn’t. I just thought she was cute at the time. Anyways, needless to say, that seems to be like a pretty shoddy training field if God wanted me to do urban ministry.

So, of course, here I am- now 7 years removed from my New York experience- and I’m living in an urban setting, attending a church whose motto is “in the city, for the city.” The verdict? I absolutely love it. What can I say? I’ve caught their vision for gospel transformation- for us as individuals (personal transformation), for us as a community of believers (communal transformation), and for the city of Louisville, and in particular the Germantown neighborhood (urban transformation). It is holistic Christianity. A group of artists, theologues, businessmen and women, liberals, conservatives, old, young- all under the banner of the Gospel, wanting to be conformed to His image in personal holiness, and yearning to take the message of salvation by faith alone into the dirtiest alleyways or the nicest of residential housing.

Let’s face it. That’s a lot to take in for a small-town kid like myself. A bit like trying to sip from a water hydrant on full blast really. But it’s been an amazing tool for transformation in my own life. I’ve learned a lot about community, serving the body, and personal holiness in the last year or so. And I have a lot more to learn.

One of the elders at the church I attend is Chad Lewis. I was able to grab some coffee with Chad earlier this summer and just chat a bit about life and God, which are two of my favorite subjects to talk about (especially when in conjunction with one another). I was talking to Chad about the tug between ministering to people in my home-state as one of their own and ministering in an urban environment. I would love to do both. Chad assured me that, obviously, both are necessary and needed for the Kingdom. He gave me a few book titles to consider picking up, and I was finally able to get around to getting one of them. The other day I picked up “Sidewalks in the Kingdom: New Urbanism and the Christian Faith” by Presbyterian pastor Eric O. Jacobsen. It’s been an incredible read so far, adding yet more fuel to the fire urban ministry. I don’t really have a way to close this post, but I will give an extended quote from his book. The context is the Holy Spirit as the primary agent of character formation through spiritual fruit:

“Could there be a connection, then, between the eternal city as the form of our redeemed existence and the temporal city as the crucible in which character is formed for that eternal existence? Certainly, we see this negatively in people’s decisions to reject the city. Cities force us to live, work, and play near people to whom we may need to show love, gentleness, and kindness. In the suburbian idal of a large home surrounded by a large lot, we don’t ever have to see others, let alone interact with them. Cities are filled with physical, historical, and relational contingencies that require patience and self-control on our part. The suburban trend is to inflict standardized houses and standardized stores on an area, irrespective of regional history or local ethos, in order to maximize efficiency of the builder and the spending power of the consumer.
Of course, cities do not guarantee the development of fruits of the spirit. In fact, the opposite is what we tend to expect. Cities stereotypically are known as impersonal, cold, and hostile environments. While some of these impressions are well deserved and accurate, many of them are false generalizations based on anecdotal evidence. After all, you are more likely to be greeted by name at the corner coffee shop on your block in New York City than you would be by the teenage employee at the Starbucks at the strip mall that is two miles from your housing subdivision. Nevertheless, the point is that the conditions of city life create opportunities for the fruits of the spirit to grow if one is in fact being directed by the Holy Spirit.”

The author, of course, does not entertain the idea that the Holy Spirit is not able to work in the lives of people who don’t live in cities, either. The broader context makes as much clear. But I wanted to share that quote because it is profoundly reflective of my experience while in Louisville. And I didn’t have to give up my love of nature to admit that.