The type of leader who plants an urban church looks different than the one who plants a rural one.
This is a relatively unimpressive statement for obvious reasons. After all, those who would want to live on a 20 acre piece of land and raise chickens are typically not the same type of people who would want to live in an 800 square foot high rise and prune a banzai tree or a Chia pet. (Remember when that was a thing?)
This is kind of like someone who asks you if they can ask you a question, when by virtue of asking you that question, they’ve already asked you a question. Or, as the great philosopher and comedian Steve Martin said, “A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.”
What makes something obvious anyway? And who determines what constitutes as common knowledge?
Okay, before I cause you to have an existential breakdown, let me get to the point of this nonsense.
The Point
In the past few months, I’ve been traveling quite a bit talking about church planting, leadership, and discipleship. I’ve been sharing from my latest book that I co-authored with Ed Stetzer, Planting Missional Churches, as well as from the latest research we conducted on church planting and multiplication. You can download that research for free here.
As a result, I’ve had the privilege and blessing to meet with church planters and pastors in major metropolitan cities like New York, Houston, and Los Angeles. And I’ve noticed something.
The type of leader who plants a church in New York is different than the type of leader who plants in Houston or Los Angeles.
It’s not that they necessarily look different, or require distinctive theological education, but there’s definitely a difference. It’s almost…intangible.
It’s kind of like when someone asks a happily married couple how to tell if someone is the one. The answer is often, “You just know when you know.”
What Makes Cities Different?
While each of those cities may share many more similarities with one another, than with a small town in rural Kentucky, they are actually quite distinct in culture. Now I understand that in each of those cities you will find many of the same occupations, services, and systemic issues, but there’s one thing that makes each of them unique. And it’s this one thing that deeply shapes the identity, culture, and ethos of the city.
It’s the history of the city.
Not only have I noticed this while teaching and coaching different pastors and leaders in each of those cities, but this is something that I’ve also discovered after pastoring and living in six major cities in three separate countries.
The history of a city shapes the ideology, norms, issues, and nuances of perspectives, but it does so subtly. It’s hard to pinpoint these differences for someone who has lived in that city for their entire life. It’s often only when you move away and experience something different that you finally recognize the intangibles of that city that you were once unaware of.
So I want to encourage you to do two things to better grasp the unique nuances of the city that you’re living and pastoring in. By doing these two things, you will grow in your ability to minister to and pray for those in your church and your city.
- Learn the history of your city and the major events that have shaped it (i.e. battles, public scandals, riots, and social issues)
- Get to know pastors of other cities and visit them
What are your thoughts?