Planting Churches among the City's Poor - Volume 1

12 • P LANTING C HURCHES AMONG THE C ITY ’ S P OOR : V OLUME 1

and justice of the Kingdom of God fleshed out in local churches and viable urban church planting movements. All our vision, prayer, and efforts are concentrated on a particular social group, the “urban poor,” and our commitment to “empower” them through all facets of our work. As a missions organization that was founded on a burden to provide empowerment and liberation through the Gospel for the poor, we have wholeheartedly and unashamedly embraced the term. As I said in the essay, “While the phrase ‘the urban poor’ may be misunderstood or misused, we have chosen to employ it with our own stipulated meanings, informed by biblical theology as well as urban sociology. We employ the term to identify those whom God has commissioned us to serve, as well as to represent God’s prophetic call to proclaim Good News to the poor, both to the church and to our society at large.” Without any doubt or equivocation, we are committed to see the Kingdom come and advance among those who live in the city, and those whose lives are exposed and vulnerable because of a lack of resources, choices, and options because they are poor. Not only has God chosen them to be rich in faith, he has also declared them to be the very heirs of the forever Kingdom of God to come (James 2.5). To plant churches among the urban poor is to touch the very heart of God, to gather those tender sheaves for which he died, those grains that are ripe for harvest (Matt. 9.35-38). This anthology brings together a selected grouping of some of the significant essays, graphics, course outlines, articles, and explanations utilized by urban missionaries that have resulted in planting healthy churches among the city’s poor. They are not necessarily given in a linear order (according to the time in which they were done), but are rather organized and grouped according to the categories of theology and missiology, leading church plant teams, and coaching urban church planters. Anthologies can be unwieldy and not clean collections, and such is the case here. We have gathered from a wide selection of events, venues, research, and reflection to amass this grouping, and we are confident that the overlap in theme will not deter from the importance of the material within this work. The sheer extent of venues and publishings that this work draws from is impressive. The list is broad and diverse. For instance, we have drawn materials for this collection from our booklet for cross-cultural church plant teams called Leading and Feeding Church Planting Teams , and from our conference for team leaders called The Timothy Conference . This