Resources
Audio & Video
Why should we cross, cultural and racial barriers, and to what end? Why should diversity be important to the church? How does the gospel speak into these questions? And how do we develop a relationship across the divide?
Continuing the conversation we had last year about Collaborating For Mission in a Global City, these are some questions Rev Celia Apeagyei-Collins addressed from her vast experience of working with a diverse people group. She witnessed people discovering the joy of being at a place where they learn to appreciate their differences and eliminate tensions and find a way for missional collaboration.
What Greta Thunberg, Luka Sabbat, James Charles, Billie Eilish, have in common - besides millions of followers across social media platforms? They consider themselves to be authentic, they care deeply about human rights, prising equality, inclusion and diversity, and technology is a central part of their upbringing. They also consider creativity to be a life skill and form of personal expression. Gen Zers (born between mid-1990s and mid-2000s) represent around 8% of London’s population. The question is How do we engage with them?
“Irrelevant,” “unappealing,” “outdated” are often responses we’ll hear when asking the society about the Christian faith and the church. Why is that so and how do we as churches can engage with culture in a meaningful way?
In this City Lab Webinar, Dan Strange helped us to delve into the “magnetic points” common to everyone - the connections between the desires and yearnings of our culture and the person of Jesus. We’ll leave with insights for answering the question of how we can equip our churches to present Jesus to our neighbours in meaningful ways, attracting their lives with his magnetic power.
Neil Powell talks about Gospel collaboration for the city at the Exponential Europe Roundtable 2020: "Igniting a culture of multiplication."
Rev Dr. Joel Edwards speaks on how we understand both the challenges and opportunities for working across cultural barriers to most effectively reach our communities.
City Lab session with Alan Hirsch exploring two foundational ideas essential to mission in post-Christian urban contexts, church in the missional mode and church as a movement.
Articles
City consciousness is about recognition and awareness of our connectedness as the church of Jesus Christ in the city. It is a proactive awareness of what God is doing and saying to his church in the city and our city's nature, culture, and state. It is loving the city and seeking its shalom. It is about local engagement from a citywide perspective. It is an acknowledging that it takes all to reach all. It is about equipping the disciples to be an instrument of the gospel transformation of the city.
Neil Powell explains how cities are complex systems, and therefore their problems require complex solutions. Which is easier, to count the number of jelly beans in a jar or to find ways to reach cities like London, Moscow, and Madrid with the gospel?
Luiz Santana shares his experience as a participant of the first ever Incubator cohort delivered entirely online. This blog was originally posted on the London Church Planting Academy blog, and is republished here with their kind permission.
The following is a response from Pete Nicholas to How to Reach the West Again, Timothy Keller and City to City’s book on starting a new missionary encounter with Western culture. RCTC invited ministers from around the world to respond to, extend, and engage that vision. This article was first posted on Redeemer City to City blog, and is republished here with their kind permission.
Recommended Books
A Place for God is a book exploring the age-old ‘big questions’ in light of our rapidly changing culture, featuring a foreword by Timothy Keller.
Together for the City tells the story of a group of churches from a variety of denominations, all in one city, who decided to work together in partnership in a way we never had before. We believed that we could do so much more together than we ever could on our own, and 2020birmingham was the name we gave to our gospel vision. A vision to see twenty new churches in ten years, in the UK’s second largest city.
This book has been developed in partnership with London City Mission and Redeemer City to City, and is flexible enough to be used whatever your urban context. Use this book to guide your prayers during your personal quiet times; equip church members to pray meaningfully for your city; help you prepare expressive public intercessions for church; fuel your church prayer meeting; initiate and take part in a city-wide prayer movement.
Whether it's TV boxsets, Instagram stories or historical novels, we all consume culture. So it's important that we are neither bewitched by it buying into everything it tells us or bewildered by it, lashing out in judgment or retreating into a Christian bubble. Daniel Strange encourages Christians to engage with everything they watch, read and play in a positive and discerning way. He also teaches Christians how to think and speak about culture in a way that plugs into a bigger and better reality, the story of King Jesus, and his cosmic plan for the world.