Had a good time today spending time with some city center ministry guys. My introduction to city center ministry was through Tim Keller’s work at Redeemer Pres. in NYC and part of me immediately fell in love with it when I first saw it. Tim Keller’s preaching ministry (via mp3s) helped me through a very difficult time in my life and really helped to shape a lot of my theology over the last few years.

I grew up on urban ministry but not of the city center variety. I grew up in the “inner city” back before “city centers” were popular in the image of Seinfeld and Friends. The inner city was a place were the poor, the immigrant, the drug addict and the welfare mom were ghettoed. The theology I absorbed was a mixture of the Dutch Reformed transformational variety, some African American spirituality, and some liberation theology. Part of what this gave me was an implicit suspicion of the powerful and the wealthy. This made for some dissonance when I worked as a missionary in the Dominican Republic where I was forced to recognize myself as the powerful and wealthy.

Part of Tim Keller’s missiology is a pretty savvy approach towards cultural transformation by evangelizing the world’s culture shapers. Keller rightly notes that culture flows from the cities into the rest of the culture making the evangelization of the creative class a key strategic priority.

Part of me reacts to this tactic because of my upbringing. Another part of my has to recognize and appreciate the strategy. Keller’s cultural exegesis is correct and lately I’ve been reflecting on the value of culture. I’ve been reading more history lately and appreciating the fact that people are products of their cultures and stellar achievements are at least as indebted to their cultural context as they are to individual talent or creativity. Greats saints, leaders, contributors come out of great cultures. Culture making is our primary task as a species given to us in what I was taught as “the cultural mandate.”

Part of cultural exegesis is the listen to cues of what the culture values. When I listen carefully to learn a cultural value system I listen carefully for what passes for badges, awards or letters of recommendation. With city center people the values are almost always accomplishments in the broader culture. This comes through clearly in Keller’s critique of NYC culture and more broadly in world city center culture. People are afforded status in the broader cultural economy by what they have done or the positions they have attained or the amount of money they control. These are common values for our culture but the position of the city center in American (and world) culture are accentuated. The church values those who the world values.

I have to be very careful with this because I don’t want get cheap, glib and stupid with this and it is easy to do. Famous people are people too and we ought not to indulge in a sort of reverse fame bigotry, yet it is such and easy system for us to get involved with. If members of the Sacramento Kings started attending my church (bad as the Kings are this year) it would afford my church a status in the community and afford me a status among other pastors. That fact would be attached to me in the communities I live within and it would be noticed and passed along.

Two passages come to mind. Paul noting to the Corinthian Christians that they are his letters of recommendation. Given what was going on the in the Corinthian church morally and conflict they were experiencing with Paul it is a pretty amazing statement on his part.

The second passage is Jesus offering his own credentials to his cousin, John the Baptist who was doubting in his prison cell about who Jesus was. No doubt John in prison had deep wonderings how he could be there if cousin Jesus really was the Messiah come to release Israel from her slavery. Jesus’ answer of course was all about release but not exactly the kind of release that John had envisioned. The deaf hear, the blind see, and the good news is preached to the poor. If John had a copy of the Luke 4 Nazareth manifesto he might have asked about the prisoner. Nevertheless the intent of Jesus’ message was clear. Jesus brings release to the underclass and the little one. Mary’s revolutionary song brings good news to the poor.

I don’t have a problem squaring these messages with the reality of being powerful and wealthy. The book of Revelation shows how the wealthy and powerful themselves can be prisoners to the same world system that imprisons the poor and the weak. The merchants wail when the whore of Babylon is brought down.

Tim Keller’s body of work is also clear that gospel conversion results in sacrificial service to the poor and the powerless, yet it must also contain a certain dis-ease with the ways of the whore of Babylon. The system of the world is directly linked to the relational polarity of the age of decay, and the idols of this world always rob, always steal, always cheat, always lie. As in the Screwtape letters the demons feed on us and the beast the whore is riding finally affords no permanent mount. The beast serves the dragon and the dragon is not about sharing glory or power.

One of the things I’ve learned along the way is that both the poor and the wealthy, the weak and the powerful tend to be imprisoned by the same system. The poor would love to be wealthy and powerful if given the chance, and those who have been poor are not necessarily better stewards of wealth and power than those who received it by virtue of birth or cultural location. At the core of the gospel is a humility born of the profession that there is finally one owners and all of us are recipients of his generosity and fulness. The age to come is energized by the relational polarity of the Father: your wellbeing at my expense.