A New Kind of Urban Christian

Tim Keller is senior pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church. Redeemer is a church in the heart of Manhatten that has flourished where other churches have wilted. Keller is a creative missional thinker. An article by him about mission in the city is up at Christianity Today. I highly commed it.

Excerpt:

My first strategic point is simple: More Christians should live long-term in cities. Historians point out that by A.D. 300, the urban populations of the Roman Empire were largely Christian, while the countryside was pagan. (Indeed, the word pagan originally meant someone from the countryside—its use as a synonym for a non-Christian dates from this era.) The same was true during the first millennium A.D. in Europe—the cities were Christian, but the broad population across the countryside was pagan. The lesson from both eras is that when cities are Christian, even if the majority of the population is pagan, society is headed on a Christian trajectory. Why? As the city goes, so goes the culture. Cultural trends tend to be generated in the city and flow outward to the rest of society.

Read it here