Missões Urbanas

Themelios: Volume 28, No. 2, Spring 2003 The Church and the City (Manuel Ortiz)

The Church and the City

The Church and the City

Foi prdito por Rafael Salas que no final do seculo 20 o mundo

It was predicted by Rafael Sales that by the end of the 20th century the world would experience radical and overwhelming change with the majority of people living in urban central, primarily in the cities of Asia, Africa, Latin America.

Themelios: Volume 28, No. 2, Spring 2003

Robert C. Linthicum, City of God, City of Satan: A Biblical Thoelogy of the Urban Church (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1991), 17.

Harvey Cox goes further when he says, “future historians will record the 20th century as that century in which the whole world became one immense city.

Themelios: Volume 28, No. 2, Spring 2003

Harvey Cox, The Secular City: Secularization and Urbanization in Theological Perspective (London: SCM Press, 1966), 273

Urban growth is more than a sociological reality, it is the fullfiment of God’s intentions since the beginning of time.

Genesis 1:28 ESV

28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

Was nothing more than a mandate to build the city.

The Church as mission

In this century there must be a greater engagement between the church and the city. in the early 20th century the church and the city were distant in their concerns and mission.

Why must the church be engaged in mission?

Fisrt there is a theological reason - The church is the community of the kingdom of God.

Themelios: Volume 28, No. 2, Spring 2003 The Church as Mission

The Church can never possess the King so as to monopolise the Kingdom. The Church is communities resulting from the preaching of the Kingdom. They serve the Kingdom as symbols which show imperfectly what the Kingdom is like. The Church is to bring to visibility for the world fellowship with Christ as King and obedience to him. The Church is to be ‘God’s colony in man’s world, God’s experimental garden on earth’. She is a sign of the world to come and at the same time a guarantee of its coming.6

The church is the people of God in society. It is also the agent of the Kingdom. God will use the church as King, Prophet and Priest to bring societal transformation.

We are priests and therefore pray and intercede for our community.

Matthew 27:51 ESV

51 And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split.