Our world today is an urban one. Until recently, urbanization had been typical only of Europe and North America, where 80 to 85 per cent of the population lives in cities. Today, however, this trend is universal. In Latin America, 65 percent of the population currently lives in cities; in Africa and Asia, the percentages are 35 and 40 respectively, and rapidly growing.
Since the middle of the 1970's, the balance between the rural and the urban populations of the world has tipped in favor of the urban. The rural-agrarian age, a hallmark of human history since its very beginning, has ended; the era of the urban-industrial society has begun. Nearly 55 percent of the world population or some 2.5 billion people live in cities today, usually in huge metropolitan centers. While the world population as a whole is increasing at a rate of 1.9 percent, or 85 million people per year, that of the cities is growing at a rate three to four times faster.
This means that Adventist mission today is not only a mission to the millions; it is a mission in and for the cities. If the church fails in communicating the gospel to the cities, it fails in its whole mandate, for the world into which we are sent today is an urban world.
A neglected field
Seventh-day Adventists face a problem here, however. Our church arose and developed as a movement of the American frontier. Its character, values, attitudes, and outlook bear the stamp of mid-nineteenth-century rural America. It is rather ill-equipped, therefore—culturally, mentally, and theologically—to respond to the particular needs and challenges of the cities. For the modern city is not just a huge conglomerate of people; it is a whole new way of life. It is a culture of its own, with its own mood and mentality, its own language and life style. Ministry in the city, therefore, means crossing cultural boundaries—not just once, but continually, because of the dynamic pluralism that characterizes the modern city. And unless we are prepared to do so mentally, socially, and theologically there will be no effective ministry.
There is no virtue in hiding the fact that until now, the Adventist Church as a whole has not yet faced these challenges of the city realistically, and that, with very few exceptions, no serious, creative attempts have been made to reach the cities with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
I do not mean that the church has not spent money on evangelistic centers or campaigns or programs or "metro missions." But our mission in general has been oriented to people of a rural location, or of a rural mentality. Although there are a few (very few) cities in the world with a significant Adventist presence and ministry, such as Sao Paulo, Manila, Sydney, or Los Angeles, the 200 million people in North America, and the 2.5 billion people in the world living in the cities today, constitute perhaps the most neglected field of Adventist mission and evangelism.
Rapid growth of other churches and religious groups in many cities around the world indicates that the city per se is not resistant to the gospel, as many Adventists presume. But the cities' receptivity to the gospel is a typically urban receptivity, which requires a new vision and a new attitude on our part. Only then shall we really see the kind of doors the Lord has opened and be able to develop strategies and structures that will make for an effective ministry.
Our Jonah syndrome
The Adventist attitude toward the cities, particularly in North America, can best be characterized by the term "Jonah syndrome": "Away from the cities, away from the cities, these centers of wickedness and symbols of evil." We are constantly told that we cannot get close to God unless we are surrounded by nature, that we cannot even hear His voice in the man-made environment of brick and glass and steel. Cities are the symbols of man's revolt against God, and the object of His wrath. Safety and salvation, therefore, are found in the country.
Not only does this "Jonah syndrome" affect our theology, but it also shapes our whole missionary outlook and methodology. As recently as 1978, the Annual Council adopted a statement called "Country Living," in which Adventists are urged to leave the cities and buy a few acres of land out in the country where, uncontaminated by centers of evil and corruption, they may prepare themselves for the coining of Christ. And, if one had to work in the cities, then at least one should not live there where the wiles of the devil ensnare us in his web. Only one or two people spoke out against the adoption of this document!
It is this view of the cities as "pools of evil" and "symbols of man's revolt against God," much like Sodom and Babel, that makes it impossible for Seventh-day Adventists to develop an effective ministry in the cities. It prevents us from doing what Christ Himself has urged us to do, after His own example, namely, to become one with the people to whom we are sent, to declare our selves in solidarity with their plight, and to identify with their needs and inner most quests. People will hear and receive the gospel only when they see it embodied in the flesh and blood of believers, and when they experience it through fellowship with real people who live and work and suffer with them in the same situations of life.
Mission to the cities can never be accomplished, therefore, by a few "specialists" who "work the cities from out side" only, but by dedicated believers who dare to live in the cities, even move there, in order to win people to Christ and to build His church. But this re quires a radical change in our thinking about the cities, a change that is undoubtedly our greatest and most urgent need today.
"Out of the cities"
But, so the objection goes, has not Ellen White herself urged us to get out of the cities and to approach them by proxy, from the outside? Yes, she did. Wrote she: " 'Out of the cities, out of the cities!'...; 'this is the message the Lord has been giving me. . . . We are not to establish ourselves in the wicked cities, where the enemy is served in every way, and where God is so often forgot ten.'" —Life Sketches, pp. 409, 410.
When Ellen White wrote these words, the frontier church was living in expectation of the immediate arrival of the Son of God. The missionary task had been accomplished. The cities had been warned, but had rejected the message. There was no reason, it was believed, to stay in the cities for a missionary pur pose. Ellen White was concerned, moreover—as we all ought to be—that believers might be contaminated by the mentality of pleasure-seeking and self-gratification, the busy-ness and restless ness, the secularism and materialism so characteristic of the city population.
In those days, also, only 10 to 15 per cent of the population in North America lived in cities; the mood and mentality were in essence still rural. Today, how ever, 85 percent of the people in America, and 55 percent of the world population, lives in cities. The mood and mentality of the city has become the mood and mentality of the whole nation, irrespective of where one lives! Today, the city is our way of life, our culture, our human destiny.
It is also the world, therefore, into which we are sent with the gospel, for God loves the cities, those conglomerates of people and centers of creativity. It was love that compelled Him to send His Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him (John 3:16, 17). And, as the Father has sent Christ into the world, in the same manner does Christ also send us into the world, this city-world of ours, so that people may be reconciled to God and that His kingdom may be established in the cities (chap.17:18).
A new attitude
When Ellen White, in her later years, realized this missionary challenge of the cities, she did not grow tired of emphasizing that the church was totally wrong in neglecting to work in the cities, where millions of people were living and dying without Christ. Whenever she speaks of the cities, therefore, not as centers of wickedness only, but also as the objects of God's love and of His mission, she urges believers to move into the cities, these neglected fields, and to mingle with the people there in order to win them to Christ. Writes she: "Why should not families who know the present truth settle in these cities ... to set up there the standard of Christ?" —Christian Service, p. 180.
In a moving passage, in which she describes the church and its mission under the symbol of salt, she writes:
Salt must be mingled with the substance to which it is added; it must penetrate and infuse in order to preserve. So it is through personal contact and association that men are reached by the saving power of the gospel. . . . Personal influence is a power. ... He [Jesus] reached the hearts of the people by going among them as one who desired their good. He sought them in the public streets, in private houses. ... He met them at their daily vocations, and manifested an interest in their secular affairs. . . . Christ's method alone will give true success in reaching the people. . . . We should do as Christ did. —Ibid., p. 119.
Ellen White, therefore, urged the believers not to move away from the cities, but rather to stay there and mingle with the people "at their daily vocations ...and secular affairs," to visit their neighbors, to set up church schools and restaurants and vocational training centers, in order to reach people with the gospel. (See 5T 382; 7T 37, 112; 8T 34; 9T 25, 101; CH 547-556; AA 158, 159; 2SM 403, 404.)
This attitude toward the cities on the part of Ellen White may at first seem contradictory. On the one hand, we hear her plea to get out of the cities; and on the other hand, she is urging the believers to stay, even to move in. On the one hand she tells us not to set up institutions in the cities; and on the other, she counsels us to set up church schools, clinics, restaurants, and vocational training centers.
This ambivalent attitude toward the city is exactly what is needed today in order to accomplish an effective work in the cities. We should not try to solve the tension between these two seeming opposites, but try to live with both in a creative tension. For this ambivalence is rooted in the double meaning that the city also has in Scripture. There, too, we hear of the utter rejection of the cities as centers of evil and symbols of man's revolt against God. It is rather significant that, according to Scripture, the "invention" of the first city is attributed to Cain, the brother-murderer. Cities are clearly seen in Scripture as symbols of human pride and arrogance, of man's revolt against God, of oppression and all kinds of wickedness (Sodom, Gomorrah, Tyre, Nineveh, Babel, et cetera). The prophetic judgments of such prophets as Isaiah and Ezekiel against these cities are well known. They find their climax in the prophetic description of God's judgment over Babylon, that most wicked city of all, representing all human pride and greed and selfishness and immorality and blasphemy and evil, wherever it is found.
On the other hand, however, there is in Scripture also the notion of the city as a symbol of God's presence and power and protection; of man's refuge and redemption, security and salvation. Over against Babel stands Jerusalem, the city of peace. Psalm 122:3-7 is only one pas sage of many in Scripture that extols these qualities of the city. In this passage the city has become the fulfillment of the desire of all ages—safety and security, peace and salvation.
These aspects of the city, too, will find their climax at the end of time, when the New Jerusalem, that splendid city whose founder and builder is God, will descend from heaven, adorned as a bride, to be come the center of the new earth. It is rather significant that the center of the new earth is not a garden, not a new paradise, but a city, a very huge city in fact, where God dwells to receive the glory and honor of the nations (Rev. 21:24-26). Thus every city has the potential of becoming a place of refuge and redemption or a pool of evil and oppression. Our modern cities reflect both aspects.
Let us remember also that it was the cities of the ancient world that first accepted Christianity, not the country! The early church was a city movement. The country dwellers remained for centuries under the spell of their nature worship. Even today, the word paganus (a country dweller) signifies a person who has not heard the gospel or accepted Jesus Christ—a pagan, a heathen.
The Reformation and the Millerite movement, likewise, were city movements. And in many countries of the world, Adventism also first developed in the cities, where people had greater social and religious freedom, and where they were much more open to change than in the country. It is precisely this dynamic pluralism, this differentiation of life, this personal freedom and openness to change, that offer the church wide-open doors for an effective ministry in the cities.
In the city, but not of the city
A rejection of the cities as mere "pools of evil" or "centers of wickedness," and the general counsel to leave these places summarily, are not only un-Biblical, they are a denial of the very mandate of mission and of the very purpose for which this church has been called into existence. Yes, the message of rejection and withdrawal is found in Scripture and in the writings of Ellen White. But it is not the whole message! Both in Scripture and in the writings of Ellen White this message of rejection is balanced, challenged, and corrected by the word that God loves the cities and that He has sent the church, in Christ's stead, not to condemn the cities, but to save them (see John 3:16-18).
It would be foolish to deny the threats and dangers of this urban world to our spirituality. However, the solution is not a withdrawal from the cities, but rather a closer walk with God, a greater dependence on His Spirit, as well as a deeper involvement on the part of the whole people of God in mission to reach the cities for Christ and to penetrate and infuse the life and thought of the cities with the gospel.
The evil forces may be more intensely at work in the cities than in the country; but so are the angels and the Spirit of God, who is constantly at work to reconcile people to Himself and make them His disciples. To that very end, Jesus Himself prayed to His Father, not to take His followers out of this urban world, but to protect them from evil (John 17:15).
Thus the call to come out of the city should be sounded more clearly today than in the days of the prophets or even of Ellen White. But it is a call to leave behind all worldliness, immorality, and selfishness, all evil and the sphere of its influence—not a call to isolate ourselves from concentrations of people, for whom Christ died and whom God loves.
That sphere of evil, moreover, is not limited to what we geographically and sociologically identify as a city. That sphere of evil surrounds and tempts us everywhere in this world. For the whole world lies in the power of evil. But, thank God, all power in heaven and on earth belongs to Christ. On that basis, He bids us not to leave the cities, but to stay there, even move there, to make disciples of all classes, castes, communities, and people.
How true it is what Ellen White wrote in 1910: "The work in the cities is the essential work for this time. When the cities are worked as God would have them, the result will be the setting in operation of a mighty movement such as we have not yet witnessed." —Medical Ministry, p. 304.
Really, the love of God leaves us no choice.
