Tithe like Nehemiah and Change your Community tagged: , , , , , ,

Tithe like Nehemiah and Change your Community

Posted by in Church & Missions

In my last post I strongly affirmed the need to champion the cause of urban missions, whether at home or abroad (done right, urban ministry at home leads to ministry abroad), and to set apart those who are called to such a task. For a moment, forget the image of the city dweller living in a megalopolis. Of the 50% of the world’s population who live in cities, the majority of those live in cities around the quarter million mark. For the purpose of this post, if you don’t live on the farm but live within some proximity of people who are corporately joined together, you are in some kind of city. The way in which many individuals and organizations conduct missions sadly leaves the local church sidelined. We need to focus on plans which don’t simply pull out the future talent of a local church, but plans that are sustainable and help promote healthy sending churches as well as health missions projects and church plants. We need to come up with real solutions for how local churches can impact those dark areas of their city. We need to focus on how Nehemiah tithed.

Tithe Your People

Ray Bakke says that Nehemiah’s solution to the problem or rebuilding Jerusalem “was audacious and creative. He went to the small towns and suburbs where the people lived and asked for a human tithe, one out of every ten, to come and live in Jerusalem–the big bad city” (Bakke, Theology as Big as the City, 110. You can find the biblical reference in Nehemiah 11:1-2.).

Perhaps the idea of moving to a city should be literally practiced (I would argue in some cases it should), but we can also look at this more locally. I have lived in a number of small towns who had the proverbial “other side of the tracks.” These areas were poorer, more dangerous and more ethnic than where most of the church goers lived. In these contexts moving to the next larger city would almost be an act of hypocrisy, particularly if they only moved to the safer, richer, more ethnically homogeneous suburbs. In these small towns the churches needed to move a few people across the tracts to incarnate the gospel there and build bridges with their neighbors. If you move in more than ten percent, then it looks like some kind of invasion which inadvertently drives the prices up forcing out the poor people. The trend of young, affluent urbanites moving back into down town areas is part of the reason why the suburbs are becoming more diverse racially and economically. When one works overseas as a missionary much thought goes into where they live, particularly when the team is small and the city is large. Why, when the church has so many resources and such a high concentration and ratio of Christians do they not encourage–if not help–their people to expand into unreached nooks of their own towns and counties?

Commission the Laity

In order to reach into every neighborhood in your suburb, city, town, or county we must incorporate the full body of Christ. These people must be commissioned and sent outward. Many people think that their greatest act of ministry is drag their lost friends to church. This act affirms that the world out there is bad, and the world in here is good; work done outside the church is just to hold us over till we can come back to sacred space; and work done in the church pleases God while we hope he turns a blind eye to those who choose second best and work as farmers, doctors, truckers, teachers, etc. People need to see that their daily work is to be both service to God and mission–Church should be the side effect of these two done well.

Commissioning the laity

  • Affirms the inherent worth of all believers to accomplish the purposes of God.
  • Denies the platonic dualism between ministry and secular work so often found western Christianity which equates serving God with doing something in church or on a mission trip.
  • Mobilizes a largely untapped resource and engages the community in their space: the street, the neighborhood, the workplace.
  • Affirms that God’s mission is to claim the whole earth for his glory, churches, schools, businesses, shops, streets, neighborhoods, etc.
  • Changes the local church from a place where overripe stock come to be fed yet again, to a training ground for workers actively engaging in the great commission.
  • Reaches people and places that are otherwise not reachable through church programs.

I remember a mission trip I took with SEBTS to New York City. After spending some time going through the city, we went to the top of the Empire State Building and looked out. I saw high-rise after high-rise of people. We could fully fund a few missionaries who we send out from our church. We could try to plant traditional churches there. There is a problem, however, in finding space, and paying for any space we might find. These methods are simply too costly and too slow. What we need to reach a city like NYC, is an army of trained and commissioned laity who have jobs as bankers, programmers, secretaries, teachers and the like, to intentionally move into different buildings and offices.

If you look at your community, no matter how small or large, there are probably those places untouched by gospel witness. Will we commute the gospel into those neighborhoods as though they are untouchables? Will we affix speakers to the steeples (like the mosques here have) and hope the mystical power of the Bible will somehow transform the community? The early church did not wait for people to experience a calling before sending them out. They chose from among themselves people who should go, commissioned them, and sent them out. Do we have the courage to do the same?