“In cities, you have more image of God per square inch than anywhere else in the world.” – Tim Keller

At the most basic level, this is why Christians have to be in the cities.  This is the reason the church has to focus on the urban areas of our country and our world.  There are some amazing trends present in our cities today that we will discuss later in this post.  But at the core, the reason that we must go to the cities is that there is simply an incredible number of people living there.  Just to give you one statistic, “between 1970 and 2000, the population of urban dwellers grew from 1.3 billion to 2.8 billion, while the number of cities with over 1 million inhabitants grew from 161 to 402 (World Christian Encyclopedia).  It is easy to look at a statistic and just see numbers, but we must remember that these numbers represent people.  These numbers represent human souls who Christ came to redeem for the sake of His glory to a life lived in fellowship and service to Him.

This is certainly not to say that other parts of the country (rural and suburban) are not important.  It is simply to say that when you look at the shear numbers of people in urban areas, the church must be focused on loving and sharing the Gospel with people in the cities if we are to ever reach the world for Christ.  Tim Keller said it well in a post on the “City to City” blog of his church’s website:

“It is, then, a matter of emphasis — as in, the church doesn’t emphasize city ministry enough. Even mathematically, it is obvious that cities are woefully under-served by the church. For example, Georgia and South Carolina, combined, have an estimated population of 15 million, while the New York City metro area has a population of 18-19 million. Ask nearly any evangelical denomination — do you have as many churches in the NYC area as you do in Georgia and South Carolina all together? Then ask for the numbers. Then ask why two states with a smaller population would have (in most cases) many times more churches than New York. Is that fair?”

Christians, called to love and serve a hurt and dying world, must focus on where the people live.  This is at the heart of why we focus on the cities.

But there are other reasons as well.  As Roger Greenway, a missiologist focused on ministry in urban areas says, “Cities are the centers of political power, economic activity, communications, scientific research, academic instruction, and moral and religious influence.  Whatever happens in cities affects entire nations.”  Cities are at the very center of where worldviews are created.  To neglect the cities would be to miss an incredible opportunity to be a redemptive voice in our world today.

Finally, there is another reason why we must focus on the cities.  The cities of our world today are full of broken people, suffering under the weight of the sinfulness of humanity.  If you can think of an issue of injustice in our world today, it takes place in the major urban areas of our country.  Poverty, racism, discrimination, lack of education, child abuse, drug addiction, sex trafficking, and too many other injustices to mention, occur in the urban areas of our country every single day.  Scripture is clear that God hates injustice (Isaiah 10:1-3).  Scripture is clear that we serve a God who is committed to the cause of the poor and oppressed (Psalm 140:12).  And Scripture is clear, that God’s people have an obligation to love and serve the most needy amongst us and to seek justice for all people (James 1:27).  If we are to take these seriously, then we can not neglect the cities.