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E-ZINE ARTICLE #047
--->NPPNote: The
following article was presented at the Spring 2002 City Impact Roundtable in
Atlanta, Georgia. Over 90 leaders from across the nation who share a citywide
vision gathered to pray, fellowship, and discuss cutting edge issues facing the
Church. Our next gathering will be in conjunction with the Mission America
Annual Meeting in October, 2002
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#047
CITY REACHING INITIATIVES: SUSTAINING
MOMENTUM
by Jack Dennison
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City Reaching Initiatives: Sustaining Momentum
Submitted by Jack Dennison
Community Impact Roundtable
April 10-12, 2002
I have been asked to provide an update on city reaching initiatives and to
describe our latest learning from them. Dozens of initiatives have emerged over
the past decade. The vision has taken root in nearly every community in America
and in most places around the world. While city reaching initiatives are rapidly
and dynamically emerging everywhere around the world I find there is a great
deal of confusion regarding what City Reaching is, what we mean by
transformation, and how we achieve our transformational goals.
A. What is City Reaching and what constitutes a City
Reaching Initiative?
CitiReach International defines city reaching as “the
ongoing process of mobilizing the whole body of Christ in a geographic area to
strategically focus its resources on reaching the whole city with the whole
Gospel, resulting in the transformation of the city and its societies.” This
definition builds upon the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization’s
affirmation and adds a statement regarding the transformational goal of city
reaching initiatives.
The definition includes three fundamental components of the city reaching
strategy; the whole Church, the whole city, and the whole Gospel. Dedication to
mobilizing the whole Church requires the initiative be inclusive
of every believer in its approach. Commitment to the whole city requires that
the initiative be comprehensive in its scope to include all
peoples, problems, and conditions that affect community life. The whole Gospel
requires methods that are holistic in nature requiring a balanced
integration of proclamation and incarnation. A city reaching initiative by
definition must be inclusive in approach, comprehensive in scope, and holistic
in nature.
Are soup kitchens city reaching? Are homeless shelters city reaching? Are
distribution projects of food, materials and media city reaching? At a popular
level many would say “yes”. At a technical level I would say “no”. While these
valuable ministries and many others contribute in meaningful ways to reaching a
city, they do not in and of themselves meet the test of the three fundamental
components of city reaching.
City reaching is not a synonym for every kind of ministry. It is not a modern
day equivalent for the Great Commission. City reaching is a technical term
referring to a new and highly specialized ministry approach that has at its core
a strategy to mobilize the Church to spiritually and socially transform its
community.
We must be clear on what city reaching is so we can do it intentionally and
effectively and we must choose approaches that, if successful, will actually
lead to the transformation of the community. My experience is that many citywide
initiatives are not city reaching initiatives at all because the approach is not
designed to be inclusive of the whole Church, or it is limited to some part
other than the whole of the community and its needs, and it frequently fails to
use an integrated and balanced approach to words and works.
Foggy thinking and limited approaches will not get us to our destination. The
approach we employ to reach cities must be capable of doing that and not every
approach that gets passed off as city reaching is.
B. There is also a lot of foggy thinking regarding the use of the term
transformation.
Critics argue that the conditions of sinlessness or perfection that
transformation implies are unbiblical and impossible. They remind us that
employing an agenda that has as its goal the Christianization of our cites and
nations in a desire to impose biblical values on others is equally unbiblical.
None of this is meant by those who use the word. Transformation is a reference
to two points of time in a cities history; where the city is now and where it
once was. For a growing number of cities the language that best describes the
degree of societal change occurring between those two historic points is
transformation.
When I became a Christian my life was transformed. I wasn’t perfect or without
sin, but I had been undeniably transformed. I moved from spiritual death to
spiritual life and my lifestyle was changed dramatically. I was transformed.
Since then I have been transformed again and again. There have been other
experiences and periods in my life where the work of God has brought such
dramatic and profound change that transformation remains the only word that
could possibly describe the degree of change. And I, like you, hope to be
transformed again and again as our lives are increasingly conformed to the image
of Christ.
Deep and profound change is possible in human beings and is equally possible for
the social organisms that we call cities and communities. George Otis concludes
that it is less important where a city is on the transformation continuum than
where it is compared to where it was.
C. Confusion has also arisen out of the two primary approaches to achieving
our transformational goals.
The first approach emphasizes Divine visitation and revival. In visitation
God acts apart from the Church. He acts on the Church bringing revival and acts
on society bringing spiritual awakening. When God visits a community He comes in
a swift and powerful way that invades every corner of community life and results
in broad and far-reaching societal change. He produces a level of change that no
human effort could produce.
The second approach emphasizes the Church’s obedience to its missional
responsibility. The Church is an apostolic people with an apostolic mission to
transform peoples, places and the culture within which it lives. This approach
emphasizes not Divine visitation, but Divine partnership. God works not a part
from the Church but through it in a joint effort to heal pain, end suffering,
release captives from human and spiritual forces, and to infuse culture with the
transforming power and presence of God. This partnership produces incremental
change that compounds to transformational proportions over time.
The first approach calls the Church to pray for visitation while waiting for His
coming. It is internal in nature and calls people to purity and sanctification.
It is a matter of personal devotion and spiritual preparedness for visitation.
Let’s pray and wait, they say.
The second approach calls the Church to plan for change and go with God into the
harvest field to secure the fruit of its prayerful efforts. It is external in
nature and calls people to create structures for change and commit to selfless
service. Let’s plan and go, they say.
Each is right. We must pray and wait for divine visitation but we must also plan
and go in divine partnership. The problem comes with the tendency to do one or
the other. If we only pray and wait we are disobedient to our call to mission.
If we only plan and go we are oftentimes disappointed by limited results that do
not fulfill our desire for change.
George Otis agrees that these two approaches are not two ends of a continuum
that compete with and are in conflict with one another, but rather are two rails
to the same track. They are two components of transformation that must be
married into a single, cohesive, and dynamic approach that can produce
transformational change in our communities.
So, with all of this confusion how are city reaching
initiatives doing worldwide?
As we coach, resource, and meet leaders from initiatives around the world my
personal conclusion is that most city reaching initiatives are stuck. They have
stalled and show few results and little progress toward genuine community
impact.
We are entering the back half of a decadal window of opportunity regarding the
Church’s call to prayer, unity, and to the city and its transformation. More and
more leaders are asking, “Where are the results?” They ask whether ten years of
effort should have produced results that they are hard pressed to find. One
marketplace leader in a prominent US city said to me, “Ten years of prayer
mobilization has produced no change in this city.” He is not saying that there
isn’t more prayer in the city than ever before, because there is. He is not
saying that Church leaders are not in better relationship with one another than
ever before, because they are. What he is saying is that more prayer and better
relationships should have resulted in observable and undeniable spiritual and
social change in the city, and they have not. As I have shared this with prayer
and city reaching leaders worldwide, with heavy hearts, most agree with the
conclusion … they are stuck. There are few results they can offer as proof of
the effectiveness of city reaching.
Our window of opportunity is closing. We must demonstrate to others that calling
Church leaders into authentic relationship around common vision can actually
make a difference in the life and affairs of a city. A few, not many, just a
few have already concluded that though the vision is divinely inspired the
Church is simply not up to the task and will, once again, be the bottleneck to
the accomplishment of God’s purposes for our cities. It is time to show results
that are observable and undeniable; results that are spiritual and social;
results that make a difference in the lives of people and the affairs of the
city.
George Otis, the leading researcher of the global phenomena of
community transformation writes in the Foreword of City Reaching: On The Road to
Community Transformation,
Some readers may find Jack Dennison’s ideas startling—especially the notion
that God’s ambitions for a community do not end with revival and church growth.
But it is new ideas—or rediscovered old ones—that help us break out of the
spiritual status quo.
Most of our questions about community transformation derive not from a lack
of theology on the subject, but from our lack of experience with it. The
phenomenon is still quite rare in the western world. Few of us have actually
seen a neighborhood or city transformed in all its dimensions. As a
consequence, we’re not sure where to catalog such an experience….
A key question is, Are these results reproducible? Are there certain steps
we can take to attract the transforming power of God into our own community? If
the answer is “no,” then there is nothing more to be done. If divine
visitations are inherently arbitrary, then our approach can only be one of hope.
Faith does not enter the equation.
If, on the other hand, divine visitations are the result of a cause and
effect process, then we must discover the principles involved. We must follow
the divine pre-scription, believing that if we do, God will honor His word and
grace us with His presence….
The good news is that God wants to visit our communities. Indeed He
desires to make them His habitation. But He will not be comfortable in our
midst until we remove offending spiritual roots and cultivate an appetite for
holiness, unity, faith, humility and prayer. In the end, divine visitation is
as much our responsibility as it is God’s.
If God always acted spontaneously there would be little for us to learn. We
could only pray and hope He would come. If, on the other hand, He often follows
an ordered approach in which He uses similar principles and processes over and
over again in one context after another there is much for us to learn. The more
we learn through careful observation and prayerful application the better able
are we to adjust our behavior and align our activity with the activity of God. I
am convinced the latter represents what we experience most often in Divine
interventions. The Good Shepherd wants us to hear His voice, understand His
ways, obey His will, and accomplish His purposes.
Through thoughtful observation and biblical reflection principles have emerged
that define and direct our CitiReach International approach to mobilizing the
Church for community transformation. Principles operationalized become essential
activities.
Essential Activities – that must be applied throughout an initiatives’
development
…
Draw leaders together into relationship with God
and one another increasing the group’s spiritual health and relational vitality.
Prayer mobilization has done much to foster more vital relationship with God and
has produced many positive and beneficial results on the horizontal and
relational levels among leaders and people.
…
Cast a clear, compelling and comprehensive vision for
transformation leading to an awakening of hearts and produces urgency to act.
…
Identify and empower credible and competent spiritual
leaders who shepherd the process of community transformation.
…
Gather necessary information to establish a strategic
plan to guide the Church’s transformational efforts.
…
Make a fresh commitment to individual and corporate
learning around needed skills and effective ministry models.
…
Renew the Church’s commitment to employing the most
effective and highest leverage ministries that produce measurable results
through refocusing and retooling itself for increased effectiveness.
As we experience spiritual and relational health with God and one another, as
our hearts are awakened to God’s urgent call to the city, as leaders are
empowered who have the credibility and competency to weave the Church community
together around common vision, as we gather information that helps us accurately
understand the condition and resources of the Church and the needs of the city,
as we commit to discovering and utilizing the most effective models that will
genuinely make a difference in our city … we will see transformational progress
and change.
By my observation most citywide initiatives get stuck at their commitment to
mobilize prayer and foster relational unity. Prayer has deeply impacted the
Church around the world and many leaders who have experienced the joy of
friendship with peers from diverse backgrounds for the first time in their lives
have left little room for anything else. We have become stuck at the level of
prayer and relationships. Many of these groups have lost momentum and are
loosing participants.
Momentum Builders represent the best practices from cities that are
sustaining momentum and producing results.
Momentum Builder #1 – The Church increases its ministry
effectiveness when it makes regular progress in EACH of the essential activities
by engaging them SIMULTANEOUSLY rather than SEQUENTIALLY. When we approach
matters sequentially we rarely get good enough at what we are doing to believe
we are ready to move to the next level, so we don’t. The result is that we stall
out and loose momentum. Developing initiatives call us to fully commit to the
priority of prayer and relationships (spiritual and relational health and
vitality) but also to additional essential activities. Most initiatives are
stalled at this first level. Simultaneous engagement means that over a twelve
month period a healthy developing initiative will make progress in each of these
areas.
Momentum Builder #2 -- The Church increases its ministry
effectiveness when it PRAYS & GOES. For example, committing to pray for a high
risk neighborhood should be accompanied by a commitment to mobilize and deploy
human and financial resources into that neighborhood to secure the fruit from
our praying. Let’s pray for children in nearby schools and also initiate a
mentoring program that increases their life skills and produces relationships
that can foster spiritual and social change in the individual and their family.
It seems to me that some people treat prayer like magic. When we pray for a
lowering crime rate God doesn’t just make crime disappear like magic, it doesn’t
just evaporate. He sends people to do the hard work of spiritual warfare and
provide compassionate care that results in a reduction of crime. This could
include local churches who adopt a neighborhood for holistic service, law
enforcement that makes a concerted effort to rid the neighborhood of bad guys,
human service agencies who provide job skills training and employment services,
and more. When we announce that a significant reduction in crime is the result
of our prayerful intervention alone we claim responsibility for something we
have had only a partial role in accomplishing. Don’t the efforts of these other
groups represent a dimension of God’s response to our intercession? There is a
whole mix of factors and people that goes into redeeming a neighborhood. The
process may begin in prayer but it does not end there. We must pray and go!
Momentum Builder #3 – The Church increases its ministry
effectiveness when it PARTNERS with other congregations in meeting community
needs. Regional pastoral prayer cells, many of them have been meeting for years
must begin to turn their attention outwardly and collaboratively meet high
priority community needs. When this does not occur within a reasonable period of
time one begins to question the authenticity of those relationships. The Church
has earned the reputation of being concerned only for itself. Others have
concluded this because the answer to every question is to do something else for
ourselves; let’s pray more, lets conduct another citywide prayer and worship
event, lets build another building, lets tell people what we think about this
issue, and so on. It is always about us. If we are going to become an agent of
spiritual and social transformation it is going to have to be about them! It is
time to see regional community based partnerships of congregations spring up
across the city to address high priority community needs.
Momentum Builder #4 – The Church increases its ministry
effectiveness when it collaborates not only with other congregations but also
with other COMMUNITY SECTORS (government, education, law enforcement, etc). It
is important that Church leaders meet with leaders representing the major
sectors of community life. This is done to establish personal relationships with
them, to learn about the city through their perspective and experience and to
pave the way for collaboration with them. Viewing these leaders and groups as
potential colleague creates opportunities for holistic ministry that can make a
difference. Church leaders should build relationships with leaders from the
marketplace, government and education sectors and especially with the Christians
within those sectors.
Momentum Builder #5 – The Church increases its ministry
effectiveness when it responds to an INVITATION FROM OTHERS for help. There is
greater synergy and effectiveness when a school board invites the Church to
begin a mentoring or reading program for its kids than when the Church simply
does it without invitation.
We gain credibility and visibility that opens other doors when we are asked to
do something that the school or police or government considers important to them
and we do it well. Church leaders should meet with the leaders of these sectors
and simply ask, “What do you need done that the Church can help with?” Whatever
the answer, do it! In city after city where the Church does this well the Church
has become a best friend to the city. Doors open wide, collaborations increase
in number, lives are redirected, people gain a favorable impression of the
Church, and bless the Lord, increasing numbers place their faith in Jesus
Christ.
Momentum Builder #6 – The Church increases its ministry
effectiveness when it helps the FAITH-BASED COMMUNITY of the city establish
relationships with one another and with the pastoral community. The faith-based
ministry community has been as disorganized, isolated and competitive as has
been the congregational community. They need help in connecting with one
another, especially those who do similar kinds of ministry in the city. It is
important that the pastoral community be introduced to them since many of these
ministries provide some of the most innovative and effective models available of
holistic ministry. They are also good channels through which the Church can
deploy its spiritual, human and financial resources into transformational
efforts.
Momentum Builder #7 – The Church increases its ministry
effectiveness when RESEARCH is completed that describes the unfinished task of
the Church in the city. I think we have waited too long to begin this crucial
momentum building activity. You cannot make strategic decisions based upon
information you do not have. My experience is that our assumptions and
presuppositions regarding the current condition of the Church and situation of
the city are flawed and inaccurate. We must have accurate and up-to-date
information describing the Church, the city and the spiritual forces influencing
current circumstances in order to make good decisions that can produce real
change.
Momentum Builder #8 – The Church increases its ministry
effectiveness when pastors expose their congregation and congregational
leadership team to VISION MATERIALS AND VISION EXPERIENCES. Pastors should be
preaching and teaching the vision, principles, processes and practices of city
reaching to their congregations and leaders. Pastors are encouraged to utilize
the many means available to expose their congregations to God’s call to the city
and evaluate its implications for their congregation. Congregational leadership
teams should begin to consider the implications of the city reaching vision for
their congregation determining where refocusing and retooling may be required.
Momentum Builder #9 – The Church increases its ministry
effectiveness when leaders of the local initiative employ an outside
CONSULTANT/COACH. The consultant coaches the design of the initiative and works
alongside local leaders in its development. We are convinced that with few
exceptions citywide initiatives maintain a more optimal pace of development,
maintain better focus and progress, and avoid many of the most common pitfalls
when an experienced coach is used. The best learning and most effective
practices are emerging from the grassroots. It is important that practitioners
access the collective experience of the global learning community in leading
their initiative. A coach, with broad experience and connection with
practitioners worldwide helps provide a fail-safe against ineffectiveness and
derailment.
CitiReach International works hard to operationalize the disciplines of the
learning organization. We are diligent observers and committed learners who dig
out the best learning and practices from local initiatives. While an unending
commitment to prayer and relationships (spiritual health and relational
vitality) forms the foundation for city reaching these momentum builders
represent the best practices and building blocks needed for genuine
transformational results.
I trust this analysis and our latest learning will help you guide your city
reaching initiatives into greater health, increased momentum, and ultimately to
demonstrated “no doubt about it” impact of transformational proportions in the
cities of this nation and the world.
Respectfully submitted,
Dr. Jack Dennison
CitiReach International
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