After surveys in some fifty cities it was clear that 85-90% of all major barriers to effective urban ministry are not in the cities at all-they are inside our churches. The schism in the church that has pitted social and personal ministries against each other in the city is a tragic legacy of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy early in the twentieth century, still marginalizes the church's ministry in the rapidly urbanizing developing world. The church must learn how to go up to the urban powerful and down to the urban powerless with equal integrity

--Ray Bakke, A Theology as Big as the City

Yesterday we went on Mission Waco's annual "Walk for the Homeless", which covers several urban ministries in Waco that work with the poor. It's main purpose is to raise awareness and mobilize the middle class. This is my 3rd or 4th year on the walk, so much of the info and discussions I heard weren't too unique for me. However, I did go on the walk with a new set of shoes to walk in. For instead of my typical flip-flops, I was in my mud-covered boots...going on the walk this year as a resident of World Hunger Relief. The context of my worldview is slightly different.

As we walked and listened to the various statistics regarding the plight of the poor and their tendency to migrate to the cities (for the first time in history, over half of the world's population lives in cities), I struggled to bring these two seemingly different worlds together--that of my urban experience with Mission Waco/Talitha Koum/Church Under the Bridge vs. that of my growing experience here at the farm. Is there a way to remedy these two different lifestyles? Can they be brought together somehow?

My initial thoughts seem to affirm the possibility, though the actual method is still unclear. For now, as I continue to become more and more enmeshed in rural life, I find myself constantly comparing my two different life experiences.

Any answer, I think, that will come from this hope of mine will likely come through Christ, as manifest in his body, the church. So as I read the quote at the top of the page, I'm disheartened but also challenged to try to find some sort of balance--b/w rural and urban with Christ (through the church) somehow tying things together.

If this sounds completely confusing and incoherent, just imagine what it looks like in my head!

Maybe I should just shut up and go milk the goats.