In his article, What Is God’s Global Urban Mission?, author Tim Keller (2010) has written some provoking thoughts to stimulate discussion in advance of the Lausanne conference held in Cape Town in 2010. Keller first gives a brief Biblical definition of the word “city” and overview of God’s urban mission in Biblical and early church times. Skipping a few thousand years, Keller then jumps to the present opportunities and challenges for Christian mission in today’s megacities. Keller concludes that contextualized and networked urban churches can work together towards reaching the city’s tipping point for transformational change.
It should be every urban minister’s life goal to see this tipping point reached, even if not in his own lifetime. All effort should go into achieving this goal. Studies have shown that if a neighborhood’s population changes by approximately 10%, it will drastically change the culture of that neighborhood. Thus, the hypothesis is that if roughly 10% of a city’s population consists of active and compassionate Christians, city-wide change may be experienced at the cultural level. Such change, however, only happens with intentionality by the leaders of this gospel movement.
In Hanoi, a rough estimate of the number of local Christians totals to about 4,000, which is approximately 0.07% of the city’s population (estimated at 6 million). Adding another 2,000 foreigners attending international and Korean churches increases the percentage to just about 0.1%. The church would need to grow one-hundred fold if it were to become a cultural change agent. With the government’s plans for Hanoi to become a megacity by 2030, humanly speaking the goal would be to reach one million people with the Gospel by that time, a factor of 250 compared to today’s numbers.
Leaving the numbers up to the Holy Spirit to work out, Christian leaders in Hanoi rather need to work together to create a gospel ecosystem which Keller describes. This will provide the right environment for change and growth needed for city-wide transformation. Keller breaks this down into five components:
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- New churches, the core of the ecosystem, which must be “gospel-centered, urban, missional /evangelistic, balanced, growing, and self-replicating”(Keller 2010);
- Networks and systems of evangelism and leadership development;
- Networks and organizations of cultural leaders (i.e. business, government, academia, arts and media);
- Agencies and initiatives to serve the peace and the poor of the city, as well as church alliances and institutions serving families;
- Overlapping networks of city leaders.
Such efforts lie more within the realm of our abilities, while looking to God for infusing this ecosystem to do the impossible. As one of the urban ministers in Hanoi, I am willing and intent to commit my efforts and energy. As part of our Love Hanoi campaign, we are currently working towards forming and shaping such networks and initiatives for the betterment of the city. The church in Hanoi is young, eager to learn, and already collaborating for evangelism, church planting and outreach. My hope is to contribute a larger picture of a holistic, city-wide vision that seeks the peace and prosperity of the whole city.
