Thabiti- thank you for that. I pastor in a church of about 7,000 in South Florida. We are not near much of anything, except sugar cane fields! But I firmly believe I was called here by the Lord. There is very little presence of the Gospel here, though many churches.

I was having some concern about the helpfulness of this "strategic" conversation as well, at least, universally applied. Yes, there is the example in the New Testament from Paul. But why must we force his life's pattern upon every pastor or leader? Mustn't there be at least as many Tituses as there are Pauls?

Where do you draw a line between strategic cities and non-strategic cities? It seems impossible to me.

I look at the UK and there's loads of urban church planting going on but in almost every village in the UK is a dying liberal church... like the village of 5000 people I grew up in that actually has 3 liberal churches and a catholic church but probably hasn't had anything much in the way of Evangelical witness for at least 25 years. And yet it's only a few hundred years since William Carey would walk across the fields to preach there.

In my last year of seminary, I was being advised by some men I respect that I needed to go to a city church and do something strategic, when what I really wanted was to go to some small, old town in New England.

I asked David Wells what he thought, and he very simply and wisely stated, "Even if these men are right that cities are more strategic, that doesn't mean that YOU have to do it." In essence, he advised me to love God and do what I wanted.

I think all of us tend to think what we are doing is more important than it probably is. On the other hand, some of us tend to downplay how important in heaven's sight it is to take that time to write that guy in prison no one else is writing to, or visit that old lady everyone else has forgotten.

Strategic? I know that some denominational officials have to think that stuff through, but for most us, I think our marching orders come straight from Luke 14 -- when you have a feast, invite those who CANNOT PAY YOU BACK.

How strategic is that? Yet that is what Jesus says to do.

Ecclesiastes also does a number on our understanding of what is truly strategic or not, but that would require a whole separate post.

Blessings,
Chris H.
Grace Covenant PCA
Blackburg, VA

Which was all to say, I agree with Thabiti! Sorry, forgot to say that -- good thing he's so gracious!

Chris H.

Dave,
I wholeheartedly agree with you about the need for church planting in the villages in the UK, but I also think we need to think about the need in our evangelical / reformed circles to plant in inner urban areas - we generally do OK in places where there are large nos of students and young professionals with a church background, but into the ethnically diverse areas in the big cities we are struggling - I can see us being virtually extinct in these areas in 15 - 20 years (at least where I live in Birmingham, and also from what I see in London)

Colin Thomas

Colin,

Yeah agreed. I'm in student ministry and it's both pleasant and infuriating that in most student towns there are many good evangelical churches. There is a need to move to the areas you refer to.