Cape Town, the urban poor and church planting
Spent quite a bit of time listening to and interacting with Al Barth, from the Redeemer Church Planting Centre this past week. If you are familiar with Tim Keller and Redeemer at all you, you would know that they place a big emphasis on church planting in major cities.
You can read some of their thinking here.
I think we need to consider how one of their major emphasises affect South Africa and especially Cape Town.
One of the major reasons for planting in the cities, according to Redeemer, is that traditionally Christians have fled the cities to the safety of the suburbs. In most world cities the urban poor live in the inner cities. As a result when Christians abandon the inner city they take with them the skills, resources and tools for gospel ministry. And as a result evangelical ministry among the urban poor is traditionally very weak. Evangelicals need to recapture a vision for the city and the urban poor and be intentional about planting new churches, and moving back into the city.
Now in Cape Town we have a rather unique situation in that most of the urban poor do not live in the inner city. Because of our apartheid dynamics, around the city centre moving out and away we have the suburbs and THEN outside of that we have the townships and Cape Flats – the areas where the majority of the urban poor live.
There are urban poor within the city centre, however, in common with many cities these are mainly immigrant communities. In our case, mainly from other parts of Africa.
What does this mean for Cape Town? Planting in the city centre will not have a direct impact on reaching the urban poor? We must therefore be careful in using this argument as a reason to plant in the city centre. A contextual church planting strategy for Cape Town, must realise that planting in the city centre is not going to create a church that reaches the urban poor in the same way as planting in New York will.
I believe that we ought to focus on planting multi-ethnic churches in the city centres (and here many of Redeemer’s arguement are as crucial for Cape Town as anywhere else), who are then intentional and missional in reaching out to the urban poor, who live beyond the suburbs.
~ by John on June 10, 2009.
Posted in Cape Town, Church Planting, Life
Tags: Al Barth, Cape Town, Church Planting, Contextualization, Redeemer Church Planting Centre, Tim Keller, Urban Poor
I actually just met with Mark Reynolds in New York. I found Redeemer’s church planting philosophy very interesting. I love the fact that they even support church plants that are of differing denominations.
How did you find out about Redeemer? This may show my lack of education, but where exactly is Cape Town? Also, how did you get into church planting?
Yes I love the fact that Redeemer is bigger than any denomination.
I found out about Redeemer through the internet, Tim Keller’s book, other blogs etc.
Cape Town is at the Southern tip of Africa, in South Africa.
I am not really into church planting in one sense as I have never really planted. But I got into church planting through listening to Acts 29 and reading books like Total Church. Am currently involved with a community which is planting a church in Cape Town central.