Erich Bridges
IMB

My son wants to go to school next year in New York City.

In midtown Manhattan, no less — the Big Apple, the belly of the beast, the postmodern Babylon.

“Are you crazy?” a few friends asked (or implied) when I told them we would be visiting a school located there. No, I’m not crazy, although I had a few second thoughts driving through the Lincoln Tunnel into New York’s frantic traffic.

If my son ventures there, the big, bad city will present quite a challenge for him — more challenge than I could have handled at his age. But I envy him. He will attend an exciting Christian college that prepares young minds to confront the world as it is.

And he will experience the world as it is rapidly becoming: urban.

Five cities in two years
Over the past two years, I’ve had the opportunity to visit and profile five great cities on four continents: Buenos Aires, London, Nairobi, Mumbai and Jakarta (combined population: up to 70 million people). The purpose of the project was to grapple with the realities of declaring the Christian Gospel to a global population that is now more than 50 percent urban for the first time in history.

To review some of the numbers:

* A projected 88 percent of population growth over the next generation will occur in cities in the developing world. Half of India’s billion-plus people will live in cities by 2020.

* Urban dwellers will double to 6.4 billion by mid-century — 70 percent of humanity — according to United Nations forecasts.

* Nearly 80 percent of South America’s 380 million people live in cities. A third of Argentina’s population, for instance, lives in greater Buenos Aires.

Whether cities fit into the fast-multiplying category of 500,000 to 1 million people, “mega” size (1 million or more) or “super-mega” (above 10 million), they tend to share common characteristics. They attract the young, the rich, the poor, students, job seekers, minorities, immigrants, refugees. Cities speak many languages and encompass many cultures and religions. Sometimes different people groups within cities mix and meld. Sometimes they form distinct, exclusive communities — cities within cities.

Each city unique
In London, called “a world in one city,” you can hear more than 300 languages spoken. The city is home to at least 50 non-indigenous communities of 10,000 or more people each. Mumbai, approaching 20 million people, plays host to India’s Bollywood movie stars, its richest business tycoons — and Dharavi, reputedly Asia’s largest slum. Hindus dominate Mumbai, but 2 million Muslims live there, as well as members of nearly every caste, religion and people group in India. Nairobi is a hub and magnet for all of east Africa, attracting immigrants and refugees from every major people in the region. One area of the city, “Little Mogadishu,” functions as a kind of capital in exile for Somalia, Kenya’s anarchic neighbor.

Cities are aggressively secular — and zealously religious.

“Secularism is the predominant ‘religion’ of the city, but every other ‘ism’ is here in strong force,” says a Southern Baptist missionary in London. “The largest Sikh and Hindu temples outside of India are in west London. London is the Islamic capital of Europe. Satanism and all kinds of mystic practices are also alive and well.”

Cities are hectic, fragmented and violent. Despite their large numbers, city dwellers often live in isolation and fear. They are hard to reach — physically and spiritually — in their locked offices and high-rise apartments guarded by vigilant doormen.

People disconnected
“In a big city, the spiritual strongholds are loneliness and fear,” says missionary Randy Whittall, Southern Baptist team leader for Buenos Aires. “It may seem crazy to think about being lonely when you’re surrounded by 13 million people, but they are.”

How are Christians responding to the challenge of postmodern cities? Not very well, at least so far.

Responding with fear
Local churches in the cities I visited tend to be tradition-bound, fearful of reaching beyond their comfort zones, overly dependent on buildings and property (prohibitively expensive in major cities). Mission organizations and other Christian ministries talk about “reaching the cities,” but struggle to find effective ways to do it. Missionaries in many countries have focused for generations on reaching rural regions untouched by the Gospel. While they have toiled in the hinterlands, cities have mushroomed.

“We still have the mindset of rural missions,” observes Whittall. “But the mission of the 21st century, however much we don’t like it, is going to be in the Beijings, the New Delhis, the massive, polluted, crowded urban areas where billions of people live.”

The secret to success
What works in such places varies, but smaller tends to be better.

The effective urban Christian workers I met cultivate global prayer networks and pursue city-spanning “seed-sowing” (Gospel distribution), to be sure. But they follow up with focused community ministries among specific people groups, winning hearts and minds for the Gospel — as in Jakarta, London and Nairobi. They start small cell groups and house or apartment churches that multiply over time, as in Buenos Aires and Jakarta. They intensively train committed local believers to make disciples, who in turn train others, as in Nairobi.

In Mumbai, the faithful discipleship of just two Muslim-background followers of Christ by a Southern Baptist worker has sparked the beginning of many worship groups among Muslims in the city.

“I wouldn’t say so much that we’re failing [in the cities] as that we’ve never tried,” says the worker in Mumbai. “We can talk about the problems, the poverty and corruption and politicians. But it all goes back to the darkness they live in. They need Jesus Christ.”

Whatever it takes, it’s time to try.

View coverage in the five cities:
Jakarta
Mumbai
Nairobi
London
Buenos Aires

Erich Bridges
imb

Venture into Jakarta’s “Grapes” neighborhood after dark and you might not live to see daylight.

When the sun goes down on this rowdy slum, the families there take cover while criminals take to the streets. Gang-run nightclubs open for business. Prostitutes perch on barstools and stand in doorways. Liquor flows and drugs change hands. On especially lively nights, knives flash.

Mornings, however, belong to the kids.

From the open windows of a formerly abandoned building, you can hear their voices: 30 or so children laugh, sing with their volunteer teachers and work on learning activities. Their hand-drawn pictures adorn the walls of the little school. After finishing one last song, they give thanks to God and dig into plates of fruit before heading home.

All the families of Grapes are Muslim. Most are poor. Parents who have jobs tend to work for the clubs. Some send their children out to beg during the day. Odds are none of these kids would attend school if this one didn’t exist. Their parents can’t afford school uniforms, much less books.

Here they pay what they can — but they pay something. The little school belongs to the community. In fact, government officials have recognized it as a model of community-based education. The children of Grapes now have at least a chance of advancing to more schooling.

A community effort
“We started the school,” says ‘Lucinda Arroyo,’ a Southern Baptist worker in Indonesia’s capital city. “But they’re the ones who fixed up the building, plugged the leaks and built the tables.”

Indonesian sisters “Shirley” and “Ann,” both college students, love coming to teach at Grapes. “This activity has opened my eyes that there is another side of living in Jakarta,” Shirley says. “Jesus blessed me so much. Why should I waste my time going to the mall? Why not help them? We want to show them that we, as Christians, care.”

Christians caring about the families of Grapes began with basketball. Even that is typically beyond poor Jakarta youths, since organized leagues charge for teams, court fees and such. Enter Lucinda, her husband, Rick, and their ministry team. They offered to teach Grapes young people basketball basics, rent a court and challenge local school squads to play games.

It took some doing. One basketball court owner raised rental fees twice; he didn’t want slum kids practicing on his property. Grapes parents also were suspicious. “They thought we were going to steal their kids,” Rick says.

That all changed when the Grapes kids actually beat one of the top school teams in the area.

“It was like a movie,” Rick recalls. “The kids were intimidated at first, but they ended up winning. The parents went crazy. That’s how we started the school. They wanted something more, and by then we had made inroads in the community.”

Laboratory of hope
Grapes has become a laboratory of sorts for community ministry in Jakarta. The Arroyos believe the model can be adapted for lots of places in the sprawling urban area. Communities need schools. Other neighborhoods need relief from the chronic flooding that torments the city. Countless Jakartans need job skills (Click “menu” in the window above to see “Shoemaker for Jesus” video).

“Community centers get us into neighborhoods,” Rick explains. “They are bridges. People ask, ‘Who are you? Why are you here? What can you do for me?’ This gives you the right to share [your faith]. ”

That’s only one part of their overall vision for the city. It begins with round-the-clock prayer and massive distribution of God’s Word throughout Jakarta. It culminates with the start of cell churches — up to 24,000 of them, if the team’s ambitious dream is realized (Click on menu in the window above to see “I thought I was going to die” video). That would put a cell group within reach of every group of 500 people in Jakarta — home to an estimated 12 million people. The greater metro region contains up to 20 million, according to some estimates.

For inspiration, they look to Nehemiah, the humble cupbearer of Old Testament renown. If Nehemiah could organize the rebuilding of the pulverized wall around ancient Jerusalem in 52 days, they believe modern-day followers of Christ can evangelize the city of Jakarta.

Their vision: “Jakarta becomes a city of God, because there will be a true movement of God so that communities are changed and thousands of new believing fellowships started.”

Yet to be reached
Jakarta, like all of Indonesia, is overwhelmingly Muslim. Yet Protestants count more than 500 churches in the city. Evangelical missionaries and ministries have been at work in Jakarta for at least half a century.

So why hasn’t the city been reached with the Gospel?

When Rick arrived in Jakarta a decade ago to teach urban evangelism, he put that question to his Indonesian seminary students. “They basically said, ‘There’s no vision’” — no single, unifying purpose and strategy to push the church to get it done.

Now he shares the Nehemiah vision with believers across the city. He’s under no illusions about the magnitude of the job.

“It’s a huge task; I’m often overwhelmed,” he admits. “As far as a challenge for the Gospel and the need for God’s love, Jakarta is it. This is the biggest city in a nation of 240 million people. That’s a lot of people you can influence.”

City of extremes
The task goes beyond sheer numerical size. There’s ethnic and cultural diversity: Han Chinese, Javanese, Sundanese, indigenous Betawi and members of nearly all of the 300 distinct people groups of Indonesia. Ancient Hindu tradition still influences society, mingling with the Islam that has dominated the region since the 13th century. More than 2,600 mosques and 5,800 Muslim prayer centers saturate the city, along with numerous Buddhist and Hindu temples.

“Jakarta is a city of extremes,” Rick says. “You’ve got the extremely rich and the extremely poor, the top leaders and the illiterate, the most fanatical Islam and the most nominal. It’s the most modern city and the most poverty-stricken.”

Other challenges include massive traffic jams (one forecast warns of total gridlock by 2011). There’s also a lot of fear: Ethnic Chinese fear periodic attacks by indigenous Indonesians. Christians fear persecution from Muslims. Churches shy away from stepping out of their cultural-religious comfort zone.

Too much to overcome? If hope can bloom amid the hopelessness of Grapes, the Arroyos and their co-workers think it can bloom anywhere — and everywhere — in Jakarta.

One day, they believe, Jakarta will be a city of God.

Names in quotation marks have changed.

Mumbai: Seeking truth in the ‘City of Gold’

Erich Bridges
International Mission Board

Television writer Sankalp Tak steers his late-model compact through the streets of Mumbai, India’s largest city, dodging waves of cars and motorized rickshaws to park behind a nondescript warehouse.

Inside: barely controlled chaos — like Mumbai itself.

It’s the set of a TV comedy about upscale students at a fictional Indian college. Production crew members rush to break down one scene and set up the next. The director huddles with the producer and cameramen while the actors practice their lines and check their makeup in hand mirrors.

Everyone greets Tak, age 27. He’s one of the creative forces behind the production, which airs four nights a week on India’s Star One network. He auditioned about 1,000 actors to cast the show and used to spend all day, every day, on the set as a creative director before he switched to scriptwriting.

Tak misses the daily craziness — but not too much.

“Politics is not a virtue in this business,” he says. “You have to be aggressive, even heartless sometimes, to handle the chaos on the set or push someone who’s already worked to 10 or 11 to go until 2 a.m.”

Bollywood stays busy
“Bollywood,” a combination of Hollywood and Bombay (Mumbai’s former name), is the film side of the city’s media business. It churns out hundreds of movies a year. The television side stays just as busy feeding the ravenous appetite of millions of Indian viewers for soaps, dramas and comedies.

“There’s no glamour behind the camera,” Tak confides with a weary grin. Still, he savors being young and successful in a nation where so many people struggle just to live.

But has Tak, a Hindu, found his true purpose in life?

“No, I’m still searching for the meaning,” he admits. “I mean, if you have to leave everything and go sit in the Himalayas to be spiritually satisfied, that doesn’t work. It’s not practical.”

Mumbaikars, as the city’s inhabitants call themselves, are nothing if not practical. It’s a survival skill. The city’s frantic speed doesn’t allow a lot of time for thinking about meaning. Even some Hindu worshippers zip through their pujas (worship or prayers) at roadside temples without getting off their idling motorcycles.

Tak’s show resumed shooting only a day after the deadly terror attacks that struck the city last November. Much of the city’s relentless commerce went on uninterrupted as police shot it out with the terrorists. For many who weren’t at the places where hundreds of people actually bled and died, the attacks seemed “filmy.” That’s a word you hear a lot in Mumbai, where the line between Bollywood fantasy and daily reality sometimes blurs.

“I was at home watching it all on television,” Tak recalls. “Everybody thought, ‘Is this a film? Is this a movie?’”

Tycoons and pavement dwellers
Show business — despite its quasi-religious status among the countless fans who idolize Bollywood stars — is first and foremost a multibillion-dollar business. And Mumbai has been all about business since its early days.

Opportunity: It’s why people from all over India keep coming to Mumbai, India’s money center and business capital. Hundreds arrive each day, most carrying their belongings in tattered bags.

Greater Mumbai already strains to the breaking point under the weight of more than 19 million human beings. But people keep pushing their way in. Some dream of fame and fortune. Many simply hope for a better life than they had in the parched farms and jobless villages they came from.

A few will find it. The rest will do whatever it takes for their daily bread.

The city is impossibly crowded — more than 70,000 people per square mile, on average, jammed together into a landfilled peninsula jutting into the Arabian Sea on India’s west coast. Living space, even a single room, costs far beyond what most migrants can afford. So thousands live on the streets. “Pavement dwellers,” they’re called.

Ten families occupy a sidewalk at a busy intersection in West Andheri, one of Mumbai’s huge suburbs. They dwell under dingy tarps tied to a fence. Their children sleep among the bags containing their possessions and some pots and pans for cooking. Sometimes police harass the ragtag group or ask for bribes. Municipal authorities periodically clear the area, but the pavement dwellers eventually return.

“People mistreat us,” angrily declares Shanta Bai, one of the women. “They say, ‘You people are dirty. You are poor.’ But what can we do? We have no land. We have no water. That’s why we came to Mumbai. If you want to put us in jail, go ahead!”

Slum dwellers, who comprise at least half of the city’s entire population, have slightly better accommodations. Harish and his family, immigrants from Nepal, live on “disputed land” — no one is quite sure who owns it. Until that question is settled, the trash-strewn clearing next to a construction site belongs to the squatter families. The women clean the apartments of the affluent people who live in high-rises around them. Some of the men find work at the building site.

Harish’s family of eight lives in two small, tidy rooms with concrete floors and corrugated tin walls. They sleep in one room, cook and eat in another. They share the area with a handful of other families, an unreliable water pump and a one-room schoolhouse.

“Our doors are always open to each other,” Harish says. “Slum people are also human beings.”

It seems almost livable — until monsoon rains come and flood the area with disease-laden sewer water. Then the families remember they are essentially refugees, even if they’ve been there for years.

Maximum darkness
“People come to Mumbai with big dreams,” says Arshad Kunnummal, a young executive in the city. “Unfortunately, not all of them succeed. But the striving is always there.”

The city mixes New York’s money and manic energy, Los Angeles’ glitz and guns, Shanghai’s entrepreneurs and restless masses, Mexico City’s size and organized crime — with plenty of Calcutta’s poverty stirred in.
Mumbai’s nickname among Indians is “Maximum City” — maximum people, maximum wealth, maximum poverty, maximum traffic, maximum crime, maximum entertainment.

Followers of Christ in the city add another: maximum darkness.

Most of Mumbai’s millions “are so multi-generationally saturated in darkness and tradition that they don’t know how to look for light,” says a Christian worker.

Hindus are the vast majority. But the city also is home to 2 million Muslims, as well as Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsees and members of every caste and virtually every people group in India.

Professing Christians of all varieties, including the city’s centuries-old Roman Catholic community, comprise about 5 percent of the population. Evangelical believers, however, account for just 0.15 percent.

“You see the church expanding only in the slums today, but not much among the well-educated people,” says Christian leader Ivan Raskino. “The sad thing is that Mumbai is expanding much more than the church.”

Why? Rapid population growth among Hindus and Muslims, for one thing. Mumbai’s go-go pace, for another. Christians also labor under the weight of the city’s history.

Mammon’s stronghold
Old Bombay was dominated over the ages by Muslim Mogul conquerors, the Portuguese and the British, among others. Catholic missionaries during the Portuguese era spread the faith but left a legacy of forced conversions, intolerance of other religions and “rice Christians” bribed to adopt Christianity.

Bombay reached its zenith as a great world trading center under British rule, which also fostered religious freedom. But the colonial legacy has been an albatross around the neck of Protestant Christians since India gained independence in 1947. Many urban Indians admire Christ, but not the Westernized, non-indigenous churches where He is worshipped.

But Mumbai’s Christians also bear some responsibility for their own marginalization.

The existing churches are a “big barrier” to growth, says a Christian worker. “They’ve been in survival mode as a minority for generations. If somebody happens to bring somebody, that’s a good thing, but it doesn’t happen very often.”

The ancient spiritual strongholds of religious idolatry still exert influence in the city. But so does the stronghold of greed, which fully bloomed in the 19th-century colonial era as Bombay became the money-obsessed “City of Gold.”

“Forget about (the Hindu god) Shiva” as an opponent of truth, Raskino advises. “Mammon is still the big stronghold in Mumbai. In traditional, middle-class Indian families, daughters are prostituting themselves on the side. Why? Because they want money. Values are being sacrificed for gain. And it started in the very foundations of Bombay.”

How can the Gospel penetrate such a bastion of darkness?

“If we (Christians) get our hearts right with God, if we draw close to each other, really humble ourselves and cry out to Him for the city, God will answer us,” says Raskino.

India’s national motto, which appears on every rupee coin and note, is “Truth alone triumphs.” It comes from Hindu verses written some 4,000 years ago.

May truth triumph in Mumbai, while there is still time.

Act

Pray for Mumbai using four virtual prayerwalks

• Inside Mumbai: Koli Originals
• Inside Mumbai: Reality
• Inside Mumbai: Created Equal
• Inside Mumbai: Transportation

See more about Mumbai on the Web

• imb.org
• mReport
• South Asian peoples

Get involved in sharing Christ in Mumbai and other cities in South Asia. Visit www.go2southasia.org.
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Pulling Dandora from the dump

Erich Bridges
International Mission Board

You smell it long before you see it, but you’ve got to see it to believe it.

The municipal dump at Dandora, just south of Nairobi proper, stretches 30 acres. Thirty acres of smoking, untreated garbage, snaking like a miniature mountain range through the public housing and shantytowns where some 600,000 people live.

2,000 tons a day
Every day, scores of ragtag trucks arrive to dump another 2,000 tons of refuse onto the stinking pile — city trash, industrial and agricultural waste, you name it. A witch’s brew of chemicals, poison and pollution seep into the surrounding soil, air and water, spreading disease and dangers — particularly among Dandora’s children.

The sicknesses include intestinal parasites, skin rashes, eye infections and tuberculosis. Recent tests on 328 children and adolescents living near the dump showed 154 of them were suffering from respiratory problems.

“This is where Nairobi throws its trash,” says Kenyan Baptist leader Shem Okello, standing on the edge of the dumpsite.

Scavengers
Okello watches a woman weigh plastic containers, scavenged from the pile, on a scale mounted to a makeshift wooden frame. Several thousand Dandora residents — mostly poor women — survive by selling anything of value they can find in the dump.

The city government periodically promises to close the dump, but it’s still there. The scavengers and jackleg garbage haulers who make a living off it hope it stays put.

“We pray it will not go,” says the woman at the scale, bargaining with a buyer for her plastic.

They must be the only ones who want it. It’s a curse on everyone else.

Raw deal
The dump symbolizes how the more affluent precincts of Nairobi deal with places like Dandora — out of sight (or smell), out of mind.

“Around here, people get a raw deal,” says Billy Oyugi, associate pastor of Dandora Baptist Church. “The main challenge we face here is poverty. A subset of that is the challenge of seeing bright young people who, because of poverty, cannot further their education.”

The typical Dandora family, Oyugi says, consists of a mother, a father (often absent) and five children living in two rooms. There’s little access to medical care; you get sick, you pray to get better. Few jobs. Bad, dangerous schools. Hunger, crime, drugs, alcoholism, prostitution.

Oyugi knows the score: He grew up in Dandora. His father was an alcoholic he rarely saw. Oyugi got into drugs, gambling and the other trouble slum youths easily find. But his mother was a strong Christian. She enlisted him in a Christian child sponsorship program that helped him get an education — and learn that another, ever-present Father loved him.

“One day my sponsor sent me a lovely Christmas card, the first I’d ever received in my life,” he remembers. “When I opened it, I knew somebody cared about me. I knew that day there was hope in my life.”

Beacon of light
Today, Oyugi and others at Dandora Baptist share hope with their neighbors — especially children and young people, who constitute more than 60 percent of Dandora’s population. The church, which sits on a dusty square in the area, is a beacon of light in the smoky miasma of Dandora.

It operates a medical clinic, helps HIV/AIDS patients, teaches job skills to young people and heads of households, sponsors a school and child development center for hundreds of needy children. “Our teachers are missionaries,” Oyugi stresses.

The congregation also sponsors home churches in each district of Dandora and runs a “Jesus Training Center” that offers a six-month course for believers.

“We have done missions all over Kenya,” Oyugi reports. “Our purpose is not just to reach the lost but to teach our members to do evangelism and discipleship. We rejoice when we see one of them discovering what God intends for them to do and just getting on with it.”

‘I want to be an example’
Especially young people. Like Catherine, now 20, a daughter of Dandora. She grew up on a tough street, burdened by constant violence. She was expected to follow the pattern — young, single motherhood, drugs and other self-destructive behaviors.

Instead, she broke the pattern with the help of God and Dandora Baptist Church. Now she aspires to be a lawyer. She belongs to “Groups of Hope,” a band of young Christian adults who encourage each other and reach out to youth in local schools.

“I want to be an example to other girls in the community,” she says. “How can I motivate them?”

You already are, Catherine.

(Printable version)

See more stories and photos on Nairobi:

Overview: Healing Africa’s wounded urban heart

WorldView: The next Nairobi

Believers tell stories of hope in Nairobi’s hopeless slums

Risky business: Christians quietly penetrate Nairobi’s executive class

Answered prayers open hearts among South Asians in Nairobi

Cruising ‘Litttle Mogadishu’: crossing barriers to Gospel among Somalis

Caroline Anderson
International Mission Board

Sixty modern-day Pauls singing on Mars Hill draw a crowd of Athens tourists snapping pictures and shooting video of the impromptu worship circle. As the students’ voices rise over the city of 4 million, a Persian man on the fringes presses forward to ask for a copy of the lyrics.“Do you understand what’s going on?” Jerry Southern asks. The man replies: “Yes, you are Christians.”

As Southern segues from the song’s lyrics to the story of Christ, the Persian interrupts. Motioning to his daughter, he instructs her to tape record their discussion for later review.

“God sometimes takes me from America and a guy from Iran and we meet in Greece,” says Southern, who is Baptist Collegiate Union minister at Georgia Southern University. “That’s God’s timing.”

Proclaiming ‘the unknown God’
The Persian man is among one of more than 43 people groups that heard the Gospel through a weeklong International World Changers missions trip this past spring. Abandoning typical spring break plans, students from Tennessee, Georgia and Mississippi converged in the Mediterranean, ministering alongside Southern Baptist workers to proclaim a God as unknown to Athenians as He was in the Apostle Paul’s days 2,000 years ago.

In Athens, past meets present and biblical meets secular. The city is the home of Socrates, the Olympics and Greek salad. It’s also a modern metropolis with pockets of its history remaining as renovation work on the Acropolis can be seen from McDonald’s and the subway runs beneath ancient ruins.

Churches dot the downtown skyline of this historical city. Their bells chime daily. But faith is not personal for most modern-day Greeks. Many identify with the Eastern Orthodox Church — a connection sustained through Easter and Christmas masses.

“They need to experience God,” Athens worker “Scott Wicker” told the student missions volunteers. “We need you to help us do that.”

Through trash collection, drama, movie production, basketball, English lessons, Gypsy ministry and a coffeehouse, the IWC ministry teams answered that call to help Athenians — Greek and immigrant — experience the God still unknown to many.

Street sweeping for souls
Donning orange vests and carrying trash pickup tongs, one group of IWCers took to the streets to draw conversations about their faith. The team filled a need for targeted neighborhoods as Athenian city workers held a trash, metro and bus strike the week of the mission trip.

Many conversations took place over black garbage bags. One woman asked IWCers: “You came all this way to tell me about Jesus?”

Curiosity was an entry point as the short-term trash collectors handed out Bibles to shop keepers and residents. Holding open the Book’s cover, IWCers pointed out the Orthodox Church’s seal of approval to avoid being seen as Protestant heretics. For many, it’s the first modern Greek Bible they have read.

Driving through Athens’ winding streets, trash pick-up claws also became a distribution tool as team members passed Bibles through car windows using the mechanical hands. Getting dirty through trash collection and later through pick-up basketball games, the ministry team gave “trash talk” new meaning in reaching Athenian neighborhoods.

Actions, then words
Guitar riffs from Lifehouse’s song Everything filled town squares throughout Athens as IWC drama teams traveled the city performing the “Redeemer” drama. The skit is an 11-minute wordless portrayal of man’s relationship with God. As the music faded, students fanned out into the applauding crowd to start conversations about the drama’s meaning.

Despite the language barrier, students used high school and college studies in Spanish, French and German to share God’s love with Athenians. In one setting, students found a native French speaker with tears trickling down his face. Calling over another IWC French major to interpret, they shared the message of the cross.

Worship leader Sam Banfield also crossed the language barrier using his German language skills.

“God continues to show me how He uses us,” Banfield said. “I never thought I would use German (after college), and here I am speaking to an Iranian man in German.”

Mission to minorities
A single light bulb illuminates the crowded cement-block room where Roma (Gypsy) families and their newfound American friends watch a Greek version of a film about Jesus’ life.

Children’s attention spans are notoriously short, but tonight all eyes watch the film. The group celebrates the moment of Jesus rising from the dead with a round of applause.

One worker who focuses on Gypsy ministry has seen six Roma make decisions of faith in several months’ time. All six have agreed to be baptized soon.

Throughout the week, IWCers assisted the worker’s mission by playing baseball, singing and dancing with the children. The youth returned the love with flower petals and slips of paper inscribed with the word agape (love). These Roma children are illiterate; one child wrote the word for others to copy.

Most Roma make a living selling produce and flowers. Many live in poverty, but their greatest need is hope through salvation in Christ.

Vision casting
Hundreds of immigrants find refuge from war, poverty and injustice within Greece’s borders. One IWC team spent the week handing out food and clothes at a refugee center.

The last two nights of the trip, IWCers transformed the center into a coffeehouse — converting the florescent-lighted, tiled room with floor lamps, throw pillows and square tables. As other teams ministered during the week, they invited newfound friends to come for an extended conversation and free coffee.

The games, songs, testimonies and movies shared over coffee deepened the students’ relationships with Greeks and immigrants. The first night, a man accepted Christ. The other contacts provided fertile ground for future IWCers.

“IWC is our top strategic partner,” Wicker says. “Every year they give us a push.”

Through annual trips to Athens — first through the 2004 Olympics outreach and now through ministry-building efforts — IWC teams strengthen the ministry in Athens. This past summer an IWC team served through refugee youth camps, soccer camps, a construction project and a nursing home ministry.

“I would encourage a church that hasn’t found its niche [in missions] to use IWC to make strategic partnerships on the field,” Wicker says.

Name is quotation marks has been changed.

Act
• Go: International World Changers is a ministry of the International Mission Board, providing student groups with packaged missions opportunities. Check out upcoming opportunities.

• Learn more about ministry in Central and Eastern Europe.

(Printable version)

Erich Bridges
International Mission Board

On a crisp October day in London’s Trafalgar Square, the solemn marble monuments of Great Britain’s former empire gaze upon a curious scene:It’s “Simcha on the Square,” a celebration of 350 years of Jewish life in London. Thousands gather — and not just English Jews and gentiles eager to enjoy kosher food and traditional music. The crowd includes people of nearly every conceivable appearance: turban-wearing Sikhs, Indians, Chinese, Africans, Rastafarians, hipsters, bikers. They dance or tap their toes to the beat of performances by “the Jewish Elvis” and “K-Groove,” a Klezmer-reggae-jazz band.

Multicultural bliss, at least for an afternoon.

Welcome to the new London. Bowler-hat London no longer exists. Nor does the London of Shakespeare, of Charles Dickens or even the 20th-century London of the Beatles. Sure, millions of tourists still visit the great sites of the old city. They still ride the double-decker red buses and flock to watch the queen and the changing of the guard.

But London is no longer really an English city; it is a world city. Set to host the 2012 Summer Olympics, it now proclaims itself the “capital of the world” — and for good reason.

‘A world in one city’
With a population of some 8.5 million people (estimates range as high as 14 million for the greater metro region), London vies with Paris as the largest city in Western Europe. Much of the world’s high-powered finance flows through its gleaming office towers and great investment houses.

Population numbers and dollars, however, don’t tell the true tale of London’s global reach.

As a coverage by The Guardian newspaper confirmed in 2005, London has become “a world in one city” (see the stories and maps at www.guardian.co.uk/britain/london/0,,1394802,00.html).

London “is uncharted territory,” wrote Guardian reporter Leo Benedictus. “Never have so many different kinds of people tried living together in the same place before. …

“Altogether, more than 300 languages are spoken by the people of London, and the city has at least 50 non-indigenous communities with populations of 10,000 or more. Virtually every race, nation, culture and religion in the world can claim at least a handful of Londoners.”

Never-ending wave of newcomers
Since its earliest beginnings as Londinium, a Roman garrison town built in 43 A.D., this great metropolis has attracted pilgrims, missionaries, immigrants, traders, colonial subjects and invaders. But the human waves that have washed over London in the last generation or two have brought the greatest cultural change since the Normans invaded in 1066.

A few glimpses:

 Emerge from the London Underground train station in Southall and you’ll think you’re in New Delhi. Temples, mosques, South Asian restaurants and markets dominate the area. On some streets there isn’t a white face in sight. Parts of Hackney feel like Ho Chi Minh City; parts of Wembley feel like Mogadishu. Other areas look and sound like Moscow (at least 250,000 Russians live in Britain) or Istanbul (more than 150,000 Turks and Kurds).

 The largest Sikh and Hindu temples outside India are in London. Hundreds of mosques serve as many as 1.3 million Muslim Londoners.

 An estimated 600,000 Poles have flooded London over the last several years, the largest of successive waves of Russians, Albanians, Bulgarians and other Eastern Europeans streaming into the city.

Some of London’s ethnic communities are insulated, even isolated. Others freely mix and mingle with white Britons and other immigrants. Their children mingle even more, creating new cultural variations.

“When we first arrived in London, you’d see teens from many different nations walking home from school and hanging out — all calling themselves ‘Brits’ — not English, but ‘Brits,’” says missionary “Patrick Sims, ” the Southern Baptist International Mission Board’s city strategist and team leader for London. “Now there’s been a move to forming gangs. Drugs and crime are on the rise. We can’t tackle that issue on a large scale, but we can come alongside teenagers and share the hope of Christ.”

According to the International Mission Board’s 2008 Annual Statistical Report, London is one of 172 urban centers around the world where missionaries such as Sims are working to start churches. Much of the work involves strategic partnerships between Southern Baptist missionaries, local Baptists and other Great Commission Christians. In 2007 alone such collaboration allowed missionaries to begin church-planting strategies in nine previously unengaged cities.

The urban emphasis is critical, because more than 80 percent of the 172 urban centers engaged by Southern Baptists and their partners are considered to be unreached (less than 2 percent evangelical).

Mixing bowl of nations
How did London become a mixing bowl of nations?

Large groups of South Asians and West Indians arrived from England’s former colonies after World War II to rebuild the city and provide labor for its new industries. Friendly immigration policies and generous social services have attracted many more groups from far-flung places. Countless “asylum seekers” have come seeking safety, sanctuary or economic opportunities. More recently, the European Union’s open-border policies have encouraged hordes of job-seeking citizens from EU member states.

Changes: Thrill or threat?
Some Anglo Londoners love the exploding cultural diversity and see it as an exciting rebirth. Some are indifferent. Others worry about increases in crime and poverty that have come with massive immigration. They resent the pressure on England’s social services — and fear losing jobs to foreigners.

Many Londoners express deep concern about homegrown Islamic terrorism, which showed itself most violently in the 2005 Underground train bombings that killed hundreds of innocents.

Others see London quickly losing whatever is left of its heritage to enforced political correctness and unchecked multiculturalism. They fear London is becoming “Londonistan” — a shiny, Disneyesque collection of tourist attractions surrounded by separate, increasingly radicalized ethnic “no go” zones.

Reaching the city of the future
The siege mentality even seeps into London’s churches, where Christians already contend with one of the most secularized societies in Europe. While 58 percent of Londoners claimed to be “Christian” in the 2001 census, here’s a more realistic estimate: 80 percent have had no personal encounter with Jesus Christ, and only a small minority follow Him as Lord.

The reality is that London has changed forever. In a globalized world, former mayor Ken Livingstone observed, “This city is the future” — for better or worse. You can embrace it, deny it, fear it or fight it.

Haunted by voices of London
Patrick Sims, the IMB London strategist, embraces it. London’s new reality is why God called him there. Passing through the city one day on the way home from an overseas trip, he visited a friend who lived there.

“As we walked the streets of London, I bet I heard 65 languages,” he recalls. “When I got back home, I was waking up at night hearing those voices and seeing those faces from all over the world. It was as if God said, ‘You don’t have to go to the world; the world has come to you. The world is in London and that is where I want you to be.’”

Sims and his wife, “Sarah,” followed the divine voice back to London. Today they lead a team of missionaries dedicated to reaching the lost people of the city — particularly members of the least-evangelized people groups with populations above 100,000.

“We want to create forms of church that are relevant, reproducible and multiplying for every people segment of London — and beyond,” he explains. “We say ‘and beyond’ because I’m trying to start a rumor that London is the final frontier. The whole world is here, and we can openly share the Gospel. London has five airports, one of which is the largest in the world, sending and bringing people to and from every corner of the globe.”

Topple the strongholds
Their strategy: first and foremost, fervent and ongoing prayer to topple the old and new spiritual strongholds of the city — secularism, exhausted state religious institutions, competing faiths, paganism, Satanism, New Age mysticism.

Next, they’re reaching into communities by making friends and meeting needs through services such as teaching English. They’re working with local partners such as Boyd Williams, a visionary Baptist pastor in Southall and Mark Melluish, evangelistic Anglican vicar of St. Paul’s Church in Ealing, west London.

Melluish, in his mid-40s, belies the stereotype of the doddering vicar left behind by changing times. He grew up a typically unchurched modern Brit, but when he gave his life to Jesus as a young man, he wanted to make a difference. Arriving at St. Paul’s 15 years ago, he found a dying parish of 60 people — all over age 60. Today the church attracts more than 1,000 regulars, including hundreds of children, by proclaiming and demonstrating the saving love of Christ.

Teasing apart the tangle
How did they do it in a jumbled-up community of middle-class Anglo workers, jobless poor people, Poles, Hindus and Muslims?

“We meet people of all different backgrounds and faiths,” Melluish says. “Not only do we minister to people in poverty; we’re able to reach them with a language school. We do job fairs. We help put people in jobs. We go into the schools. We even bought the coffee shop down on the high street so we’ve got a ‘front door’ to ensure people have got a way in. And it works.

“(London) is a diverse community. The church has to see that and adapt to it, not be fearful of it. We’ve got to be all things to all people so that we might share Christ. How can we reach them? By being absolutely outrageous with the love of God, we can cross all boundaries. Get out on the street and do stuff.”

That’s the attitude that will reach the new London and — as new disciples of all creeds and colors there are won to Christ — the world. One missionary even likens the city to heaven, where, as the Book of Revelation says, members of all tribes and tongues will one day worship before God’s throne.

“They’re gonna be there,” she says. “So living in London is a chance to practice heaven on earth.”

Names in quotation marks have been changed.

Pray

• for influential leaders in many of London’s unreached communities to become followers of Christ and lead others to Him.
• for wisdom and discernment for IMB workers and their partners as they seek the most effective ways to reach the lost of London.
• that Southern Baptists truly called by God to serve Him in London will answer His call.
• for protection from spiritual oppression for Christian workers. Many struggle with discouragement and depression because of spiritual opposition from many directions: secularism, paganism, unresponsiveness and hostility from others, hectic schedules, conflict and confusion.

Act
Interested in serving in London or mobilizing your church to partner with the IMB mission team and London Baptists? Contact Brittany Conner at bconner@imb.org.

(Printable version)

Past urban glitter to miles of shacks

Katherine Kipp
Union University

Miles of shacks built from bits of tin, wood and cardboard hunch shoulder to shoulder amid subsistent living conditions, often exacerbated by the AIDS/HIV epidemic. A stone’s throw away, large shopping malls and suburban homes loom large. Cape Town, clinging to the tip of Africa, stands as a microcosm of the wealth and poverty of South Africa.

It is the wealthiest country in Africa, but that wealth is disproportionately held at the top end of the financial spectrum. The richest 6 percent of South Africans earn 40 percent of all income received, while the poorest 40 percent earn a mere 4 percent.

The facts of life in South Africa

Consider these facts about the disparity in South Africa:

– The average white household earns six times the income of the average black household.

– Unemployment is six times higher in black communities -– more than 41 percent do not have jobs.

– 57 percent of South Africans live below the poverty level, earning approximately $120 per month; more than half earn less than $500 a year.

– HIV/AIDS infects more than 28 percent of the country’s people; nine of 10 cases afflict people living in townships around the cities.

– Only 52 percent in South Africa complete school.

Shacks small enough to fit comfortably inside the average American kitchen offer little to no protection from the elements in townships and squatter camps surrounding Cape Town.

Children wander aimlessly in the streets, playing in the dust with sticks. Teenagers hang out in streets teeming with gang violence and drug abuse. Most men roam the streets looking for work or raiding trash cans for anything usable. Many turn to alcohol.

Living conditions fuel pandemic

These conditions spawn substance abuse, prostitution, sexual abuse and teenage pregnancies, all of which proliferate the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

The townships are a holdover from the apartheid system, in which the white South African government restricted people to residential “islands.” When apartheid ended, so did most of the government services in the townships. People moved together as communities and built squatters’ camps wherever they could find vacant land, usually around the townships.

Less than five minutes away, white people with incomes of $10,000 or more dominate the city’s wealthy side. Only about 7 percent of the residents are unemployed and fewer than 10 percent are infected by HIV/AIDS. Also, 82 percent of these South Africans complete school.

In these affluent neighborhoods, people live in spacious homes with an average of two rooms per person. There are plenty of clean, beautifully decorated stores and restaurants, many with waterfront views. Barred windows and gates around suburban houses are reminders of the crime that has escalated in Cape Town as the city has grown from 700,000 to more than 4 million people.

Here, missionaries partner with local Christians in a desperate struggle to share the hope of the Gospel amid the realities of a seemingly hopeless situation.

Act

• Pray: See the latest requests from Central, Eastern and Southern Africa.
• Find out more about IMB missionaries’ work in South Africa.
• Learn how to present the True Love Waits materials — an approach to challenge teenagers and college students to make a commitment to sexual abstinence until marriage — and find opportunities in your own community or as a volunteer overseas to share these truths with youth and parents. Order materials and learn more.