URBAN MISSIONS
GoForth National Missions Conference 2008
GoForth is the triennial National Missions Conference (NMC) in Singapore. GoForth NMC 2008 theme was God’s Glory in the East: Our Asian Missions Challenge. This was held on 16-19 July 2008 at the Suntec City Convention Centre. The plenary speakers were Dr Ajith Fernando, National Director of Youth for Christ Sri Lanka, Rev. Dr. Loren Cunningham, Founder of Youth With A Mission, Rev. Morley Lee, General Secretary of Chinese Coordination Centre of World Evangelism (CCCOWE) and Rev. Dr. David Wang, President - Emeritus of Asian Outreach.
This year’s conference saw participants from 24 countries. 146 Singapore churches and close to 50 mission agencies and represented. Over 600 conference volunteers were involved. The conference featured eleven full-day specialist seminars, 58 workshops, missions exhibitions, a Chinese track, an English track, a Kids track and an Outreach track. The Outreach track saw over 100 teams go for short-term missions straight after the conference.
Hope Church (Singapore) was the church with the largest registration for GoForth NMC 2008. Several church members served as conference volunteers. Pastor Ben served as Vice-Chairman of GoForth NMC 2008. He was also a panel speaker on the Thursday morning plenary on Urban Missions. This issue of Advance features an excerpt of his message at the GoForth NMC 2008.
Introduction
Today more and more churches do missions in village, typically in the two-thirds world that are often poverty stricken. For example it is common for a church to run an orphanage. Cities may be seen as too comfortable for missionaries. It may be seen as a good life. Truth is the city also has poor. There is spiritual bankruptcy in a city too.
In Genesis 4, Cain went out from God’s presence and built the first city. Cities became the habitat of fallen people and cities have become places where people seek significance outside of God’s presence.
Our new mission frontier today is not the tropical jungle of lions and safari hats but the urban jungle. Our cities are the stage of drama between the principalities and powers and the forces of good within the church. We live in a city called Singapore.
Our church started with planting churches in Asia. Since 1998 we started planting churches around the world. We focus on planting churches in cities.
Let me highlight some lessons we have learnt from urban church planting.
1. The Singaporean is an urban dweller
I was born in a small town. Now I reside in Singapore, a city state. Most churches here can be considered as urban churches.
In fact Singaporeans are accustomed to a very clean city and where everything works. Not many of us may thrive in the two-thirds world with laidback lifestyles, round-about communication, red-tape, slowness, time delays, inefficiency, non-progressive attitudes and even corruption. Not many of us can live without air conditioners. Not many may enjoy showering in a river.
Singapore is a city state. We are a city church. We are urban dwellers.
2. The international job market is growing with education as the single largest vocation
Teaching English as a Foreign/Second Language is a viable industry overseas. Our teams teach Conversational English and discover that the demand for Business English is growing.
Also, teaching Mandarin as Second Language is growing. One of our leaders is going to Peru next month. She has been studying at the Chinese Chamber of Commerce for a Diploma in Chinese Teaching. She goes for 2 evening classes for 1 year.
Teaching mathematics is also a growing industry. For example the city of Bellevue near Seattle uses the Singapore math school curriculum. The Singapore brand can be helpful.
3. The capital city may not always be the most spiritually responsive place to start missions work
We learnt this the hard way. We started planting churches with the administrative capitals in the country.
The administrative capital in a country can be different from the business or commercial capital. For example there is Pretoria and Johannesburg in South Africa and Guayaquil and Quito in Ecuador.
The business capital may be a better option for tent makers who are business-owners. It is important we do the ‘Country and People Profiling’ as part of our missions strategy.
We must consider where people are responding to Christ.
4. The middle classes are an effective means of reaching the city
The middle classes often have greater mobility, both up and down the social spectrum. They usually speak English which is an advantage for our church planters.
Our team in Santiago, Chile takes effort to rent a house near a subway station and in a neighbourhood that our contacts will come. Interestingly the Santiago subway system is modeled after the Singapore subway system.
5. The bridging strategy is to start with an international service
One strategy is to start with English service pitching to internationals and bilingual locals. The second phase can be starting a local worship service in the local or native language. We have experimented this in South America.
The Assembly of God USA is one denomination that uses this approach across the continent of Europe.
6. The urban approach is a longer term & more comprehensive mission strategy
The city has a hinterland. It’s called the entire country. For instance university students come from towns and villages to cities for further education.
We as God’s Church have got to reach the nations. We got to reach every nation. We start with global cities, next to cities with regional influence then towns then villages or shires.
In our North America missions, we target regional or hub cities for church planting due to the population and immigrants. Immigrants can be responsive to the Gospel. Then there are 700,000 international students in the US.
In summary, these are some things we have learnt on urban missions.
In summary, today over 4 billion people are still far from Christ. Many of them live in the city or will be moving into one.
We got to ask: ‘What is God up to in the world?’ Since God has been bringing people to cities for a century, obviously God is bringing people to where they can be reached.
Remember the apostle Paul. He always had a base for churching an entire region. That base was called “the city”. From the base, from the city, the Gospel spread to the whole region. That was his church planting strategy.
Paul started church planting from a city called Antioch. Interestingly, Singapore has been prophesied as, “The Antioch of Asia”.
It is clear you and I need to respond to God's love for the cities. It is clear we need to embrace more of the urban in our focus.
Pastor Ben KC Lee
Hope Church (Singapore)
