baylight church community

Seeking the peace and prosperity of the city – part 1

This past Sunday, we opened up the subject of what it means to love our neighbors and love our cities.  This is a topic that I’ve been thinking about since the summer with the unveiling of the prophetic word and one I feel compelled to bring to the foreground again.  

The passage we looked at was the word God had for His people while in Babylonian exile/captivity.   

Jeremiah 29:4 This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5 “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. 6 Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. 7 Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”

Not exactly what we would expect to hear — especially for a culture that is so foreign to theirs, for an empire that destroyed their religious symbols and holy place.   God not only tells them to plant gardens and make a home there, but he tells them to seek the good of the entire city and to pray for it to prosper!   Really, Lord?

We’ve come a long way from this in our creation of Christian subcultures: Christian organizations, churches, clubs, etc. that are cozily removed from the world and content to be doing what we believe is “God’s work” that, at worst, conveniently leaves behind this notion of city and region-wide transformation or, at best, sees it as optional.   Perhaps nowhere better did I see this amazing sacred and secular divide than in Nairobi, Kenya where there were gigantic mega-churches peppered all throughout the mainly Christian city and Christian mini-vans driving everywhere with advertisements like “The Glory is here…” but yet also there is one of the world’s biggest slum, Kibera (up to 1.2 million squashed inside 1 square mile – compare sunnyvale’s 6,000 people were sq mile).   

To help flesh out the radical implications of this holy calling in what could be viewed as a “secular” or “unholy” place [Babylon], we heard from one Indian brother, J. N. Manokaran, who wrote this in his book Christ and Cities: ”Christians cannot be unconcerned about the cities in which they are living… Seeking the welfare of the city is the active participation in the life of the city. It is not passive endurance for survival in the city. Christians are to be ‘change agents’ and ‘transformation agents’ in the city” (pp.8-9).

This is our introduction into this important topic.   And these are the questions we asked:

1.)     How do you feel about this holy calling?  

    a.    Are you invested in the city you live in; how about the greater South Bay and San Francisco Bay area?

   b.    If not, what is keeping you from investing emotions, energy, time and money into the city/metro area in which God has placed you?

 2.)     What does it look like for you to seek the peace and prosperity of your city/metro area?   

     a.    What would be some next steps God may be wanting you to take in light of this holy calling on your life?

     b.    Who are some people [whom God has already given] who can walk with you in this journey? 

This coming Sunday, we will be hearing from a handful of people who have been praying for and seeking the shalom peace and prosperity of their cities.   It would be great to be able to hear what others are doing — in or out of baylight — so we can begin to expand our imagination for how natural, ordinary and powerful these things could look like in our lives. 

So feel free to list stuff that you know of.  Small steps, big steps, ANY step is welcome because, as God has been showing us as of late, the most powerful steps we can take are the very ones God has prepared for us in this very hour that we faithfully and obediently step into.