The SIAFU Guidebook

Part I : Assembling God’s Warriors

43

You Are Not What You Appear: Urban Disciples Are the Key to the City’s Healing

See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure. ~ 1 John 3.1-3

Urban Christians have been summarily overlooked and dismissed as key players in the great struggle for souls occurring in the cities of the world.

Actually, though, the answer to the transformation of America’s cities is nothing less than the mobilization, equipping, and releasing of city Christians to penetrate their relationship networks with the Gospel of Christ. As unlikely as it may appear, urban disciples are subject to the same stereotypes and low opinion as Nazareth was in Jesus’ own day. (Recall Nathaniel’s reply to Phillip after being told that Jesus, the Son of Joseph, from Nazareth, was in fact the Messiah, the very one whom Moses and the prophets wrote about.)