2008 City Impact Roundtable, Boston
Ray Bakke, Plenary 1
April 14, 2008
This is my forth-ninth year in ministry. I grew up in a Norwegian community north of Seattle. It was mono-cultural – Swedes were cross-cultural. We went to a Lutheran Church with the cemetery alongside. My father me a historical charismatic. He introduced me to the alumni association, the family I had never met, in the church cemetery. I’m always reminded of this when I sing the fourth stanza of The Church’s One Foundation. “And mystic sweet communion with those whose race is run.”
There were about thirty of us in the church. I had the same Sunday School teacher for eight years. There was a seamless road from the sanctuary to the community. It was not unusual to adjourn Sunday School to put in hay for a sick neighbor, even if he didn’t go to the church. It was basic to love God and serve the world. I knew missionaries as those who came to show slides. I thought I wanted to teach U.S. History and be a coach. Friends suggested that I go to Moody for a year. There I met the girl who would become my wife. The urban riots hadn’t occurred yet. I went back to Seattle and lived with the Inter Varsity director. It took nine years to get a B.A. At age 23, I became interim pastor of a church. I felt called to pastoral ministry. There were no seminaries in the Seattle area, so moved back to go to Trinity.
We went to Trinity, and moved into a one-mile square of 60,000 people. This became my calling, my agenda for years. The mid- sixties were convulsive years. It was 100 years after Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. The black church was reminding black people they were still not free. As a white person, I knew I would be a minority if I lived in the city. What would I bring to a city in a sea of black and brown folks? The majority of the world’s population is yellow, black and brown. We experienced this personally early on. My son was the only white kid on his basketball team. The high school in my community was teaching 11 languages. That community taught me a lot.
In 1965, we had the anti-Vietnam movements. It was a violent time. The biggest disappointment to me was the failure of my church. I was not prepared for the church’s evacuation of the city. White fright – white flight. Those who taught me the S.S. chorus “red and yellow, black and white, all are precious in his sight” that the bible is inerrant - they ran to the suburbs.
Even Moody Church – when they accepted the first black member, 1200 members left that church. My wife had black roommate. She had asked Moody for a black roommate. On choir tour, they stayed in a pastor’s home in every location. It was obvious that someone had called ahead to say there was a black person on the choir. Even ten years later, some churches wouldn’t allow the choir to come with a black member. African Americans were steered to evening school, not the day school.
It’s painful to see families you love, institutions you love, be racist. I came across Stephen Rhoades, a UCC Sociologist. He wrote Why evangelicals Cannot Survive in Cities. The problem is they take the Bible literally. The Bible is a rural book. He constructed a hierarchy of scripture. God’s favorite people are shepherds, second are vinedressers, last, city residents. We had memorized lots of scriptures for quizzing. The problem is you are swallowing an anti-urban bias without knowing it.
This was a crisis for my wife and me. If Christians are going to evacuate the cities, we decided to stay. We lived in rented apartments for twenty years, educated our children in public schools, lived on food stamps when necessary. We decided we had to live with the poor. Jesus’ incarnation was not just a motto. He was an Asian baby born in a barn who became an African refugee, came back to be buried in a borrowed grave. If anyone understands crack babies, fetal alcohol syndrome babies, etc. I read scripture with different eye. In the Bible – I was shocked. The challenge from Stephen Rose was phenomenal for me. I took Hebrew, and learned that the word city is mentioned 1900 times. The virgin birth mentioned twice. I would believe the virgin birth if it was mentioned once. But look at this – cities are mentioned 1900 times. There are 1250 uses of the word city in scripture. I looked to see if those texts were negative or positive. Some cities are mentioned once, others hundreds of time. There are 51 texts on Sodom and Gomorrah, 34 in the Old Testament, 17 in the New. I could see principles. Was it destroyed because it had homosexual sin? Or was it because they had wealth, surplus, but didn’t care for poor and needy? Do you know any city where the wealthy are getting wealthier and the poor getting poorer? I started looking at case studies. If you take the Jerusalem texts, from David taking over the city to the end of the New Testament, it’s a paradigm city for heaven. If you take those texts, 1100 years of biblical history, you find hundreds of models of urban history. It’s God tying to reach a city. There is no one model, no one way to do it, no one generation that can claim ”reachedness.”
I started looking at careers, i.e. Joseph in Gen. 13. What did he do? He urbanized the economy of Egypt. He moved people into cities, fed them by government grant. Is he a socialist or capitalist? He’s a blend. I studied Daniel, market place ministry. I was shocked to discover there were 5 books from Iraq and Iran, none from the U.S. Imagine giving terrorists 5 books in our Bible. Jonah and Daniel, and from Iraq and Iran, Ezra, Esther and Nehemiah. Daniel served in Iraq. If God could use people like that in those kinds of places, he could work in my city, which is also corrupt.
Scripture began to come into play. Strangers in Exile by Fredrick Norwood. I started studying refugees of scripture, followed that theme. God has used strangers and exiles from Abraham to our day. I did independent studies with my professors at Trinity. With Longnecker, I studied refugees in Babylon, who invented the synagogue. The poor Jews in Alexandria – imagine translating into koine’ Greek. It became the urban Bible. When God shifts people around the world, He is educating them. They are not victims. They are on mission.
I found a used book in London Why Jesus Never Wrote a Book. It was an essay of Mark 3:14. He chose twelve that he might be with them. That’s when I decided the incarnation was more than a message. It’s a model. God wanted to change the universe. He had 3 years to do it. How? Incarnation. He spent 50% of his time with 12 people. I was trained to do programs. I didn’t have a theology of place. In these texts, I developed a theology of place. In scripture people are connected to family and place, like Saul of Tarsus. You find corporate solidarity and theology. Kaiser put me on to presence of population, community identification.
When God wanted to speak to us, he did it thru two cultures. In about 2/3 of the Bible, God spoke through culture. It is a doctrine of community. In the New Testament, he spoke through Greek, doctrine of the uniqueness of the individual. It is a biblical balanced view of the uniqueness of community and individuality. Deut 22 grabs you; it seems so unfair. If a guy rapes a girl in the country, you stone the guy. If he rapes her in the city, you stone them both. Deuteronomy is the most urban book in the Old Testament. It is teaching that the community would have responded if she had cried for help. Because she didn’t cry, she’s culpable. Today we can’t fathom that system. If we don’t recover that system, we abandon the cities. We toss neighborhoods away like old paper cups. We’ve lost that Biblical sense of community. As evangelicals, we have also become functional unitarians. We only value the work of the second person of the trinity. We don’t value the creator that much. We don’t have an environmental stewarding theology of the earth. There is a whole-orbed multiple cultures of scripture. The word Bible comes from the Greek word books. It’s a divine library. We can speak to multiple cities and multiple personalities of cities.
Scripture was very important. I’ve written about this. I have about 1200 articles in the Thomas Nelson Word and Study Bible. There are essays, side bars, etc. I was part of a team edited by Hendricks from Dallas. You can study this online, study the cities in scripture. A Theology as Big as the City. My answer is yes.
I think the watershed is of those who have a missiology for the city and those who have a missiology of the city. Many have a passion for the city because that’s where the people are. I agree with Calvin – he pastored the city, not just a church. Is 40:11 says he rules, but also gently leads those with young. We have a tough and tender God. You aren’t just a pastor in a community; you chaplain the community. I had to bring that holistic theology to. Ezekiel 16. It’s urban theology. God is speaking to Jerusalem. He said, your sister city in the north is Samaria with her daughters. Your sister city in the south and her daughters. I looked at that and say Chicago’s sister city as Milwaukee. On the south, Memphis is Chicago’s sister city. We sued Milwaukee for polluting our water. But Chicago dumped on cities in the south. This is something James Dobson hasn’t talked about yet. There is a need to think of the roots of the city. Chicago was the biggest Polish city in the world until Warsaw bypassed us more recently.
My first vow was to study the biblical theology of the city. It’s still going on. I teach Church History, so I teach on urban movements. If I draw a little map – Chicago with a lake and a river. In 1966 we dug more dirt than Panama Canal, reversed the flow of the river. When you look at this, you see a tale of two cities. We have a lakefront where the wealthy are alienated and protected. Then there are “the pigs on the river” - Poles, Italians, Greeks, Slovaks. I studied my city, and concluded from scripture that if I couldn’t love a city I couldn’t pastor there. It would drain me, not feed me. I had to know the city to love it. Chicago was alien to everything I grew up with. It was dirty, noisy, bad politics. It’s a one-party city. (Jesus rode a donkey, not an elephant.) The slogan was “vote early, vote often.” Every 4 years cemeteries would rise up and vote. Chicago is an amazing place. I went to school there for 35 years. I focused on 2 neighborhoods. My kids went to an inner city school. In their high school, all these nations were present in one building. While I watched my kids in that school, I got involved (as a pastor). I was reading church growth literature - I decided it was apartheid theology. Even the gangs are homogenous groups. Homogeneous groups grow even without Holy Spirit. I used to take my students to the school, to city hall, to prisons. I felt like in 35 years I build a lab, built relationships, and watched God at work.
Chicago history is fascinating. It looked old the day it was new – people came from the old country. As a pastor, I asked myself how I could get my head around Europe so I could learn Chicago. I decided to learn one culture a year. There were 5200 miles of streets in my city. I decided to take different routes home, do a windshield survey of my city. I used a formal and informal way to study a city. Formal is to go down to the Historical Society. I always call there first. Reid Carpenter and I were classmates at Moody. I called the Pittsburgh Historical Society and asked, “Could you recommend 6 books on the city demography, Sociology, Economics, religious traditions, etc. Pastors there weren’t aware of those books. Every university in the world has a Sociology Department. They have studies. You can find those studies.
The second way, the informal way, is networking. As an ordained Baptist minister, I realized that we have a reputation for stealing other churches S.S. kids – it’s a terrible reputation. I understood Chicago as a Catholic city. I decided to go visit as many parishes and churches of the Archdiocese as I could. I dedicated 1 day a week, visited churches, and introduced myself as needing their help. I asked them what was the most important lesson they had learned as a pastor in the city. I didn’t want to challenge theology. I came as a learner. I need your help. I started with Catholic priests. This led me to Chicago’s Catholics. Bill Hybels’ church is not the largest church in Chicago. St. Ignatius had a much larger church there. Now those churches had passed their peak. Why were churches big back then? There were helpful books, Catholic literature on Catholics in Chicago, Catholics in Milwaukee. Back in the 60s, there were people getting concerned – government funding was failing, This was true in Seattle and Chicago.
I’m going to draw a box. It’s a neighborhood. How do you study a neighborhood? Why doesn’t the money the government is sending do anything? Bronx, Detroit, inner city Chicago - How do you begin? There were 44 churches in the neighborhood, but I didn’t start there. I looked at medical facilities. 51% of every dollar the government spends on the poor, it gives not to the poor but to the systems that serve the poor, and that is largely the medical. How many medical people live in the neighborhood? Those dollars go to the suburbs where they live. Education: at that time, 500,000 kids in school. School personnel was unionized. It as a $2.6 billion budget. How many of them live in the city? Almost nobody. The educational system in America puts dollars into a funnel that goes out to the suburbs. Is it succeeding or failing? That’s a trick question. Is it succeeding at what it was designed to do? It’s a great employer. Before you dismantle this, you’d better decided where those jobs are going to go, and who is going to pay for them. I also studied policy, fire, streets & sanitation, parks, libraries, ports, jails, etc. Most of these people don’t live in the city. Its dollars in, dollars out. Communities are dis-empowered. I studied banks. But red-lining came in. People drew line around the neighborhood. No more 30 year mortgages in this neighborhood. Someone saw a black face on the street and thought this community would become a community of color. So banks stop mortgages and home improvement loans. Slum landlords come in; neighborhoods turn over in short time. The bank keeps taking money from people who live there, but builds suburban shopping malls. The cruelest irony is that the poor are funding their own demise. Golden arches, fast foods, etc. come in. Poor people spend up to 40% more for food because chain stores moved out. What did they get for their dollar? Lots of sugar, salt, fat. What do they miss? Protein, calcium, vitamin C. So they are sick; their bones fail, My mom lived to age 90, and worked until she was 85, but I’m pastoring people who are 50 and look old.
We looked at businesses in the community. It’s often ethnic. Jobs are more the sweat shop variety, i.e. Puerto Ricans. Wages were $4 an hour to undocumented workers. Sounds like a good deal to them. The difference is split between the pimp who supplies the workers and the employer. Sweat shops are springing up in my community. My people were involved, trying to get a job. They started to realize there is a minimum wage. The moment they say anything to the employer, they are out of a job and there is a new group working next week.
I studied churches: all but one or two of the pastors live outside the neighborhoods so their kids can go to other schools. There is enough money, legitimate dollars, flowing through this ghetto to keep the City of Rockford doing well. There were 80,000 people in this ghetto. In America poverty is not about the absence of money but about the absence of power. If you are going to pastor these people, you have to start to work with the community. It takes 20 years to turn around a community.
Other things I’ve learned. When you ask urban people who they are, they tell you what they do. I’m a teacher, I work in a factory. What that means is to get to know them you don’t go to their home; you go to their workplace. That was re-orientation to me. In the city, you have to go to where they work. Then you understand the world in which they live. I came to realize that the most impractical courses from seminary were the practical ones where they teach contextualization of scripture, prescriptive theology – how to prepare a sermon, how to pastor a church. We were taught tools to help us understand exegesis. It is painful for me to see mission agencies that prepare their missionaries for ministry throw people into cities without adequate preparation. The urban equivalent to language learning is learning a community. When they were from another language, I asked for a book I could read about their community that I could read. They taught me a lot. Paul Knutson, a Lutheran fellow pastor, took me to the police station and told them to treat me well. In my country, we are taught that we are peers with police. Domestic violence accounts for 70% of police calls. The police don’t know how to deal with this. This pastor had a system in his church to work with the police dept. Police would ask the person if they wanted jail or “the Reverend.” Most chose the church. I never had a class a Trinity that told me we could do that. They are waiting for someone to help them. It takes time. But if Jesus spent all that time with the likes of Peter and others who fled at the cross, why are we too busy to network our way into communities.
I was close to burnout in my 30s. I ran across some colleagues, and we began to meet monthly to pray. We met for years until I moved to the west coast. Their names are in my book. We set dates a year ahead. It was high commitment, not task oriented. We were already busy. But we learned our congregations didn’t keep us accountable. We needed a support group, a covenant group. The largest was 14. We buried each other. We also put each other back together. Twice a year we went on 24-hour retreats. Mayor Washington of Chicago – his pastor was in that group.
We were connected politically. We met in the Board room of Amoco (wife of the CEO was in our group.) We met to care for each other, to grow, to read books together, brainstorm, and learn how to love Chicago more than before. This is the group that taught me what seminaries could not teach. I had studied historically from the early church to the present, studied movements, including the Catholic Church, the Wilberforce Group, Salvation in the Slums, networks coming out of Glasgow, the Salvation Army. I knew I had to have a group like the Pittsburg Experiment, to love each other, care for each other, not to do more tasks. Our wives and kids learned to struggle with the city. We had some brutal experiences. Every one in my family was beaten at some point; my wife was robbed. We didn’t overprotect our kids. When they were 8 years old, our game was to drop them off somewhere in the city with enough money to make it home by the subway. If they could get home by 5, they would get a milkshake. The kids are now in ministry in interesting ways. My wife teaches at Moody. Now we have black kids in our home, so we listen to different music. My wife talks about the “conversion of her ears.” Any culture is acceptable. She is now an Ethno-musicologist. She was worship coordinator for the Lausanne conference in Manila.
The city has been our teacher. We have been enriched. We’re not victims. If God is calling you, your kids are included. Don’t apologize for your mission. Cityreachers, be encouraged.
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City Impact Roundtable means round table. That is, sessions are geared for sharing, networking and discussing around round tables. Thus, we observe…
6 Principles for City Impact Roundtables
- Peer-to-peer relationships
- Insights
- Listen prayerfully – draw others out
- Write things down - journal, critique what you heard
- Consider applications to your ministry setting
- Affirm others (especially character qualities)
On Monday evening, these were shared responses to questions discussed around the tables.
What is the difference between mission to the city and theology of the city?
- To the city is like carrying water to the city. It’s necessary. But it’s better to help the city dig wells.
- Mission to the city is looking at how to fix it. Theology is being one with, ownership, incarnational. Mission to is a 9 – 5 experience. Theology is 24/7.
- To the city is more like drive-by hit and run evangelism vs. incarnational, sacrificial
- Theology builds the program one by one internally
- Mission to: View the city as a negative to tolerate whereas theology of the city sees it as something God created with the potential of being a blessing
- One flows out of the other. Mission means working cross culturally, so when you come in first, you minister to it, but the long term goal is to become part of it, so you are no longer missional, but part of the city.
- Theology is looking for the redemptive gift in our city. Mission is more a responsibility of what we do after we learn what the redemptive gift is. Theology is about him, mission about doing what he says.
- The two concepts work together. Each city has a dna, a destiny, lost to darkness. The darkness can be a clue to its dna, it’s destiny. Merge the two and have greater impact.
- Mission is the outsider coming in with missional focus, whereas theology is more appreciative inquiry, seeing the context, fitting into the context. One is short term, the other long term.
- Ministry to the city is removed, involves some fear, with short term trips going to other areas, not to our own city. Doing drive-by church in the old neighborhood. Theology of the city is incarnational, experiencing life in the city. We talked about power. The best power we can give rich or poor alike is discipleship. If we disciple them well, they will have more power.
- Mission to the city is wonderful. It depends on definitions. If you do mission to the city the right way, become friends to pastors there, and connect them to other pastors, it becomes our city, and can be a good thing, on-going transformational thing for the city.
- In the Boston area we started with the freeway. Freeways divide the city. Mission to the city is sort of a split, dualism,,i.e. evangelism vs. social concern. Urban – suburban. Theology of the city is more holistic and contextual.
- To the city: building a church vs. theology: building God’s kingdom. Passing through instead of possessing the land. Mission to – paternalism, we offer you; you have nothing to offer us. Seeing value in urban dwellers.
To exegete my city, What questions need to be asked? Who do I need to interview?
Responses:
- What are redemptive gifts are in our city? Ask older, wise people in the city.
- What are the pains? i.e. AIDS, suicide. The problems? i.e. water, sanitation. Who are the people? What are the powers? Good and bad powers. Strongholds. What is the potential? Redemptive gift.
- Who do I ask? Police, politicians, pastors and professionals, also peasants (mothers of children in the nursery, newest people in the city, college professors, historians, librarians, city fathers, power brokers.
- What history stands in the way? What are the roots? Fruits? Social ills and needs. Culture, sin, crime, suffering
- Ask youth what are their dreams for the community.
- Who: those who work in utilities, medical institutions, realtors, entertainment, other sacred institutions
- Where are the pools of Bethesda - things that are working well? What are particular injustices perceived?
- Who: social service providers, emergency room staff
- What to ask: history of the city, points of pain.
- Who: the angriest you can find, the disenfranchised, people you are afraid to talk to
- What can we do together better than we can do apart. If the kingdom of God broke
out here, what would it look like in 5 years? Who: Some who are already doing this
but don’t use the same vocabulary as we do.
- What have you learned about our city? Who else do you believe we should talk with?
- What are the things in the city that break the heart of God? Where are the kids? They have insight from ground level. What is keeping the church from being unified in the city? Jesus prayer in John 15 wasn’t that the poor would be fed, but that the church would be unified. What iniatives have not worked or have done damage in the past?
- Who: industry leaders, youth, school administers, long time resident believers who have been praying for the city for years.
- What are the real problems vs. perceived problems?
- Ask the Mayor, Health Dept, police, those gathering data on your city.
- What is the relationship of community to local government – how are these things inter-related?
- I’d go to EGC and ask 2 questions: What questions need to be asked? Who do I need to ask?
- Professional researcher: study the assets of the community, people, associations, resources. McKnight and Kretzman, Building Communities from the Inside Out. There is a binder for studying urban communities.
Glenn: For good research on a city, stop at Emmanuel Gospel Center table. They have been doing it for a long time.
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Prior to Plenary Session 2, participants discussed around the table the 3 questions they would like to ask Dr. Ray Bakke. Here is the Q & A response:
Re: “white flight” - What do you think is the role of the suburban church in the urban setting?
Bakke: Now they are the extensions of the city. In the Clinton era, policy changed in the country. Cities understood that they had to survive. Cities are doing infilled housing. The services are based on property taxes. The city rezones to high-rises, turning the city into a cube so you can tax the air space. They are gated communities in the cites, like the Hancock Center with thousands living in it, unchurched. In a normal town there would be one church per thousand. We’re getting high-rise, gated communities who lock out the priests, pastors and policemen and politicians which is why crime is moving in. It also means the poor are being expelled from the city by gentrification. In Seattle, they are basically using stadiums to attract suburbanites back in - gentrifying and condo-izing, so families and seniors will move out. The system is changing. As companies suburbanize, i.e. Microsoft, the community around Microsoft is changing. Over 30% of kids go home to other language homes. I preached in a church in Decatur, GA. There were 34 nations in their membership. One suburban church had 55 flags in the balcony because there are that many nations in the membership. They have almost ¼ of the nations of the world in one building. We are seeing ethnicity, often Asian driven, sometimes Latin, where the suburbs are inheriting the poor in some areas. Suburbs will be the front line now. White flight no longer happens the same way. The suburban church must open its eyes.
What are your ideas on potential seating of congregational leaders?
Bakke: The doctrine of the trinity. Trinity is a working partnership. God the Creator selected you before the foundations of the world. Christ is the sacrifice for you, and the Holy Spirit seals you until the day of redemption. We are never more like God than when living in a partnership relationship. Any reading of scripture and the New Testament church has to say, “You are in partnership with me.” I’m sad today about people operating in silos. They come into the city to promote their own stuff rather than learn. They are on a 3-year leash – the grant will run out. They don’t have time to network or partner or learn anything. I’m going to the Michael Jordans of leadership and asking them to teach me what they know. Ours is a peer learning doctoral program. That seems to be working for some. Tony Danhelka and I are working together in the Chicago area. Bill Hybels and the largest black church are now meeting quarterly. It took 2 years to set up. If you come as a neutral person you have credibility to call the meeting, but if you are viewed as competition it’s hard to get collaboration going. Listen your way into relationships, build on trust. That takes time. We need that in every city.
Yesterday you described what sounded like strip mining, taking resources from the community? How much did you get involved in politics?
Bakke: Yes, you have to get involved. We talked about housing. 27 families had houses burned one year. There were 1300 fires in my parish one year, 400 in one summer. We had rat bites in cribs in homes of poor people. You find Christians that have become slum owners – they had invested in those homes. We stacked up slumlord documents and the judge threw out every case. Finally, one stood up and asked, “Your Honor, where is the justice in this courtroom? We’ve seen you side with slumlords all day.” The judge replied, “This is not a court of justice; this is a court of law. If you want justice, change the law. “ The book of Esther has 4 streams of justice. When a law was signed to kill the Jews, the law needed to get changed. Esther got to be a replacement wife for a pagan king to access power and change the law. We need that theology. God is calling lay people to move into the black holes of society. If Esther hadn’t done her job, Nehemiah couldn’t have gotten his government grant to do redevelopment, and Ezra wouldn’t have been able to get the temple rebuilt. You don’t plant ministry in the city – you plant businesses. Hayford trained 64 church planting teams to do it in Manila. Cities need economic development to fund the pastors, like kindergartens in the slums. You have to be able to generate income to support the ministry. You have to get involved in politics to do this. You need an Esther on your team. In Chicago you can’t touch anything without getting to know the Aldermen. I invited them, and the Fire Chief and Police Chief, to our church to thank them for protecting us. I apologized to those agencies for not thanking them. I invited every school principal. We did it on the last Sunday of the month, with a community dinner. No church had ever thanked them. I believe people of good faith can work with people of good will. How can we work with you? I believe in common grace institutions. Luther and Calvin understood that. The market place is there for us to touch or equip. The issues come down through history. Moses had to raise his hands as they were fighting a battle. Years later, Haman was fighting the descendants of that battle. Sin was personal, then became tribal, and finally became state law - 1000 years of progressive sin. Esther shows that sin can be systemic, written in bad law. A footnote on Luther, his observation on Exodus 31. “The poor need beauty (unemployed, on food stamps). Moses pastored a migrant group for 40 years. God gives them an art committee. The poor need beauty as much as they need bread because they live in ugliness.” Luther.
We have to get over our hang-up on working with politicians. Sin makes it difficult but not impossible.
Given the injustice of society, is there a need for intentional reconciliation between the powered and unempowered?
Bakke: The Lausanne Covenant addresses justice. It’s the only document like it ever; the genius of John Stott slipped it in there. We need to stand with those who suffer injustice. It is unique in missiology covenants. Gary Haugen of the Int’l Justice Mission, a Harvard Law School grad, is lining up Christian attorneys, judges, and politicians to work as consultants for justice globally. Many have signed the covenant but aren’t living it out. We have to recruit business people. I have a rich brother and a poor brother. The rich one did my income tax for some years. He said something is wrong with a country that taxes my preacher brothers more than me. You can’t just tell people to cope and pray.
Would you explain what culmination looks like to you in theology of the city?
Bakke: I’ve read Rev. 21, the last chapter. We win! So long, Babylon, I’ll miss you. I believe in the redeemed city. The story begins in a garden, ends in a city. 7There are 7 characteristics of the city God is building. It’s a city where children don’t die young. City dwellers plant their food and eat their produce, live in houses. The lamb and wolf eat together. There is an absence of violence. Isaiah is saying this to people going back to rebuild Jerusalem, giving them a blueprint. “I’m building heaven, a city, a happy city, with houses, where people live long.” If that’s God’s vision for the future, and Holy Spirit is in me, that’s what I want my city to look like. I want to work on those agendas. Isaiah 17-25 is the blueprint. I want to see that kind of city happen.
Since you have left Chicago, what is it like today? You have long experience there. What are issues that are changing or emerging?
Bakke: I was taught everything there. I owe that city so much. It’s my adopted city. But it’s an industrial city changing to a tech city. I invested 35-40 years, but had this burden for Pacific Rim cities. I think God has wired the world from an Atlantic Rim world to Pacific Rim world, i.e. World War II and Vietnam. 3 of the 4 largest countries are there. Islam is great there. I decided to move to the platform where Boeing, Microsoft, and Starbucks are based. The baseball team has Ichiro Suzuki. Hongcouver is just north of Seattle. We used to be the back door of Europe; now we’re the front door of Asia. We started a Pacific Rim think tank to see how we could help pastors in Asia. That’s where the biggest migration in the world is happening, 100,000 a day moving. It was a surprise to find that every year 30 million Chinese move from the rural areas to urban, inside China. That is the equivalent of every Canadian moving every year. Chinese pastors have no clue about how to deal with that. So I moved out there to see what we could learn and how we could help. I do think, as I’ve studied the Jewish Diaspora, that the Chinese have moved everywhere. There are 1 million Japanese in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The former president of Peru comes from an old Spanish family. The world is being wired for an Asian Pentecost. The match may be lit and Asia comes to Christ. We’ve been trying to get people into China. God is scattering Asia all over the world. China has the third largest population of Christians in the world. They will pass the Russians and become the second largest Christian population. When China becomes the main power, it may have largest population of Christians in the world. Who would have expected that? Now these giant cities need a new way to be approached. God is setting the table.
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Beginning Plenary 2, Dr. Bakke
I want to read Psalm 107:1-8. Yesterday was to the city; today is to the cities.
Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever.
Let the redeemed of the Lord say this-- those he redeemed from the hand of the foe,
those he gathered from the lands, from east and west, from north and south.
Some wandered in desert wastelands, finding no way to a city where they could settle.
They were hungry and thirsty, and their lives ebbed away.
Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress. He led them by a straight way to a city where they could settle. Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for men,
That they might go to a city for habitation… People discourage coming to cities. I say let them come. I think the Lord is bringing them to the cities. It might be the best inoculation against Islam (unlike Europe) – the very people who pushed Islam out of Spain are Catholics. Maybe letting all the Mexicans come here will help discourage Islam. Let the Lord’s work happen. The roots of missions are the migrant stream.
52 nations in the British Empire now live in London. The Empire Strikes Back! East end London is mostly Asian. The south is mostly black. The Westminster area is Arab. Paris used to rule 46 countries. Now 90% are Algerians. Marseille is 31% African. The world is in motion.
Mega cities in Africa are growing. A Sociology text on China describes floating Chinese. They have left the rural area but don’t have permanent addresses yet - an estimated 100 million.
How do we define city? In old days, Robert Park, Burgess, Houser, etc. were defining cities by places. So many square miles. Pittsburg “City at the point.” We’ve had to change the definition of cities. The unique office of the city is to increase the variety, velocity, extent and human intercourse. Cities are now defined not only as a place but as a process. A city is a cultural political economic hub. That hub has moved to intersections of freeways. I asked a French scholar what is the largest city in France. He answered, “Genmarbar - Genoa to Marseilles to Barcelona.” France is turning south, the new urbanized France. I put it this way: When a city gets to a million people it goes regional and often global. When I was appointed to Lausanne in 1979, I combined these two. A mega-city has international significance and is 1 million people. Now I also say the city is a magnifier and a magnet. As a magnet, Boston is a place sucking in the resources of the world. It is a presence, a dynamic context. But Boston is also evangelistic, broadcasting the influence, going global in influence. Johnny Carson, a rural kid from Nebraska went to Hollywood. Urbanization is the city as a place. Urbanism is the lifestyle of the city being propagated out into the small towns of the Midwest.
The challenges of the city are sociological - all the world views, languages, cultures. It’s like a time-lapse camera, a huge challenge. It is infinitely more complex than other environments. There are psychological challenges – remember Genovese, the women in NYC who was being stabbed, calling out, no one came to her help. A study said people in cities are different from rural people. City people are affected by overload. The body is made to survive by turning inward. The more people packed in, the less we communicate. We can’t relate to everyone. A city lends itself to being a silo, protecting our own space to cope. You can’t rescue everyone around you, so you put boundaries around you. IPods do this. In a small town where people read the same newspaper and watch same channels, you can do mass evangelism. In cities, people are re-segregating around media, being wired in different orbits. With gated communities, 24 hour work hours, pastors don’t have access to their people.
The missional challenge. Billy Graham used to pack the Seattle stadium. This week it’s the Dalai Lama. That’s a sea change. I think, as a seminarian, we have to teach pastors how to use the Koran in evangelism. Jesus is mentioned 93 times. Pastors in Indonesia use the Koran in evangelism. There’s enough gospel in it to use it.
The financial challenge: The cost of doing ministry in the city is great. Overseas missions standards are lower cost, but living downtown in Japan is expensive.
The theological challenge. People don’t have grounding in the theology of the city.
The personal challenge is no one in my neighborhood is like me. The majority are non-white. My youngest grandson is adopted, Elijah Ray. I was talking with him before bedtime. I said, “You’ve been playing with Brit all day.” He said, “Brit is my friend. He’s not the same as me –he’s pink. But our poop is the same.”
Yesterday I told about going to a church. It had a $14,000 annual budget. There were 11 people and a pastor. Most of the middle class had left. I had to read the Bible differently. In Walt Kaiser’s class at Trinity i.e. Moses’ mom was a public-aid mom, an illegal; she put her baby in the river and raised him on public aid. Luther helped me become a story teller. People remember stories. C.S. Lewis taught us – The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I studied taverns in my community. My approach to the pub is to introduce myself to them as the new pastor. Pub after pub says to me, “Reverend, I’m trying to run a business. They come in to buy a couple of beers and pour out their hearts to me. I’m not a pastor.” So I give them my card and tell them to have the customers call me. We did the same with the gay community. I told them that I am so heterosexual I know nothing about them. I asked two of them (with the deacon’s permission) to take me into the gay world, give me books I could read to learn the language so I can learn. Risk taking is what Jesus did. You don’t become anti-biblical, but you have to be open to life-long learning.
When I finished at Trinity, I wanted to go to Y ale, but went to McCormick where they had the old liberal social work school and had the libraries of the Salvation Army and history of the World Council of Churches efforts. Number 21-23 says God can make asses tell the truth. I need to listen to them. I out-liberaled them. We got along well. I started asking, who else knows about cities in the world? East Harlem Parish – I got in touch with them. Ask questions, keep learning, growing, read. John Stott came to town. I asked who he knew in London. I got in touch with his referrals. These people were pioneering. I got in touch with the Assemblies of God, asking who is passionately working in missions. I asked, what are you learning? What are you reading? Vintage takes time, like good wine. Remember, Moses had to practice with sheep in a bad neighborhood for 40 years before God trusted people in a bad neighborhood to his leadership. In 1973, Billy Graham came to Chicago. I looked around at the pastors who came to a breakfast, perhaps 2000. I saw the Who’s Who of Chicago pastors. Billy could call us together. No one before had the capacity to call together evangelicals, Pentecostals and Catholics. I admired that, never dreaming that I would ever work with the Lausanne Committee, but I sat there thinking “I wish Billy would …” I don’t have the power to call these pastors. I’ve done nothing. The problem is we come to his event-driven crusade, but afterwards we go home to our silo. I wish he would come and say, “You pastors are all so busy, but if I brought my team here for a few days, would you teach them what you are learning in the city. Would you show me best practices? What is the church doing?” I knew I would never be asked, but I began to dream, and 5 years later, the Billy Graham Center called and asked if I would work with Lausanne. I didn’t think I would fit; I’m too radical. But I was invited. I discovered my power in the Lausanne Movement. (1) I had been a pastor, so when I came to a city I was out of the trenches. (2) I came as a teacher/learner, not a promoter of my program. With the help of World Vision, Leighton Ford, John Stott, I had the blessing of calling Catholic bishops to the table. If you had to prove God was alive in your city, what would you point to to prove it? The Methodist bishop and the others had their favorites. I told them, “I know you are all busy, but if I came for a 3-day consultation next year in a neutral environment like the YMCA…” I discovered the power of convening. I was not a competitor, selling a program. I said I would be the learner. I offered to talk about cities in scripture, but basically I came to learn about their city. I set the table because of how Billy Graham answered when I asked him a question: “I made a vow 40 years ago that I would never speak negative of another ministry or pastor (publicly). Even if I’m right, the devil will use it to divide the body.” Billy told me to be a body builder.
This may shock you, but I read Sin and Salvation where Brunner tells a story. How could the same German context produce an Albert Schweitzer and a Hitler at the same time? He described sin. I’m standing in downtown Athens, looking up at the acropolis; the sun is setting, and I see that ruin and say “What a magnificent ruin.” Oxymoron? The Turks blew it up. But it is beautiful as a ruin, and I can imagine what it was, and what it would be if they rebuilt it. I drove by Wesley’s church. When I go by a Methodist church, I don’t say how awful. I’m inclined to say what a magnificent ruin. They evangelized America for 150 years. These days there aren’t many new babies in those churches.
The majority of people who lived and died in Israel never saw a miracle. The UCC church is Jonathan Edwards gone to seed. I give thanks for Edwards, and don’t knock the church.
Billy graham was willing to identify with some of the ruins. We live in 3 time zones. There is frozenness in some churches. I go to these churches and remind them of their history. I want to learn from that. I believe in renewal. They can throw me out, but I won’t throw them out. During Vietnam I realized crusade evangelism was doing the same thing as Vietnam. It was dangerous, so we pulled out the ground troops and lost the war. They defeated us in 10 years. I think it was because we reverted to technological strategy. Billy Graham – the strategy is like having a barrel of water in the front of the church and inviting people to jump in. It’s mass evangelism, like the gospel blimp. We have a biological world of family, geographic world of neighbors, a recreational world, a work world. You have to become incarnate. Stop thinking come-structure church – do go-structure church.
In Lausanne, there is beauty, the gift in bringing evangelicals from the free background and the liturgical background together. Then Lausanne brought missiologists together with evangelists. It created a network for people to meet each other. Then World Vision came alongside with a support system. It was a servant organization, helping, telling us God could do great things if we didn’t care who got the credit. They allowed their organizations to come together. In Lausanne, when we worked together, we were a network, and could go anywhere. The Capital of Europe is in an innocuous place called Brussels. Is it Flemish? French? The gift of having no budget is you’re no threat to others. The symbols are important. Neutral spaces, neutral conveners are very important.
Work with signs of hope. Go to the city and ask, “How could you prove that God is alive in your city?” Would you bring it as a case study where we could share it? Not to promote my stuff or other people’s stuff. Listening, learning. Go to a seminary or Bible school in that city, saying “You have a stake in this discussion. You need to teach this stuff.” I still believe it works.
To re-enter my own city, I called an African America. I said, “I’d like to spend 2 days a week – re-enter Seattle through your eyes.” For 3 months, he told me where to go. I needed that. Otherwise I would have gone to people I know. I needed to hear from another perspective. It’s another way of networking into relationships and integrity. You don’t get much done in program, but give yourself time to learn the city. An Episcopal pastor in Pittsburg was reluctant to come. “I’m tired of getting beaten to death by evangelicals, but I realize we used to beat up on them when we were strong.”
In 1984, I discovered I’d been wrong about some things. I had gone to 50 cities, came out of a Cairo retreat with pastors. They were sitting at tables like this. What would God want to do in Cairo? They dreamed together, shared, and then I told them to go back to the tables and identify 10 things that would be barriers to this. It is the largest city in Africa, part Coptic, evangelical, Muslim, etc. One group was laughing. “We’re too old to cry, so we’re laughing. We have discovered all 10 barriers to effective evangelism in Cairo are not in the city; they are in our church. Our bishop would call us liberal if we did this. Our deacons wouldn’t fund this.” With that little window, I began to analyze 50 cities. In 1984 I wrote my major article in the International Bulletin of Missions published by Jerry Anderson at Yale. I went public with this. My research shows that 90% of the barriers to our ministry in cities are not in the city but in our churches and organizations. I had thought if you gave people the right motivation and information, they would change the world. There are factors of intimidation. Pastor from outside gets to Manila and finds all the churches have different languages and Bibles. He knows his is right. He hovers over his people who have moved to the city. He can’t partner with others.
I think of a favella in Brazil. A couple from the rural area moved there. Hymie goes to a construction site, working with village people. His wife Rosa, dressed up a bit, goes downtown to an office, working in a clerically intensive metro center of high tech Brazil. She cleans the offices, but notices that if she could learn keyboard (on her lunch hour) she could be better employed, so she starts dressing up more. When she comes home, she is no longer the village wife. Like south side blacks in Chicago are house blacks. Blacks work in the white world. They are servants. When they go home they, like
Rosa and Hymie aren’t communicating very well now. He drinks so he can control his world. He gets high on the spirits. They go to the pastor who was trained in the village. The city is transforming the family, the culture. These people are survivors. If you study time and culture, consider Banfield, chapter 3. He reminded me that the poor cannot set goals because they can’t control the future. The only way to think creatively forward is to think creatively backwards. It takes about 5 years.
Study on the homeless concludes you can only help 15% of the homeless with rescue mission style food and beds. 85% have layered addictions, often starting with sexual abuse as a child; unwrapping is necessary. Discipleship is huge. We are promoting adoption in our family. We have little Africans growing up in our families. Most have abuse backgrounds, addictive backgrounds (smoking, drugs). No school system can handle some of these problem kids. We have a harvest of brain-damaged children. They are in the cities because that’s where the services are. We have to build bridges to people in need. I study malls to understand the neighborhood. The supermarket has changed everything – 24 hour days, thousands of choices. 30 years ago, the unions said 6 p.m. was the end of the work day. Then we look at the church schedule. What time? Language? How did the supermarket get in touch with community and the church did not? Think of the underground Atlanta mall. Malls are designed to include, not exclude. I send my students into the mall and ask them to tell me why this mall works. What would your church look like if it were as serious about serving people as this mall? The drug people had to move because of the smelly fish mall in Seattle. Churches need to learn from institutions that are teaching us how to learn from diversity.
In 1913-14 the Germans invented the submarine. They were sinking our ships in the North Atlantic. The British and Americans were alarmed. Seas were dangerous. U-boat. Someone asked Will Rogers what we should do. He said, “We should boil he ocean. It seems to me if you would heat up the sea, the subs would rise to the surface and you could capture them.” He was asked, “How?” He responded, “I’ve given you the solution. You work out the details!”
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2008 City Impact Roundtable, Boston
Ray Bakke, Plenary 3
April 16, 2008
Ray expressed his appreciation to re-connect with friends, dipping back into Boston after many years of being away. Doug and Judy Hall have been faithful here for many years. “A long obedience in the same direction” describes them. We saw afresh yesterday new things (on a Boston ministry tour).
The context in which I operate is a dramatically changed world. If you take our history from 1779 to the census in 1990: now over 50% of the cities have a million or more people. It took us 200 years in America. China does 20 million plus cities every year, systematically moving people. 60% of the church in China has been rural. This impacts them. I asked a Campus Crusade worker in Beijing how he does campus evangelism. He said, “I go in the dorm, knock on the door. A student will of students I talk to become believers. 7 of 10 are Christian.
We talked about the journey to the city the first day, how Chicago became a laboratory, fleshed out my theology, helped me to read scripture with integrity. But when I examined the roots of my city, I saw migrant streams coming to my neighborhood. In my one-mile square, over ¼ of the world’s nations lived. My parish had to be globally significant.
I also studied the functioning doctrine of the trinity. Evangelicals have been saying for years, just preach the gospel and get them saved. I feel they only consider one person of the trinity. I called that functional unitaritarian. You’re never more like God than when you live in community. Augustus dealt with the trinity. Another African had coined the word trinity about the year 200. He recognized the three persons who were fully God. Augustine wrote the best book on it. Some have said that God was so lonely he had to make the human race for companionship. God with a need? Especially love? That is a high view of human race but a flawed view of God. Augustine described the trinity as a divine love affair. The Spirit and the Son were involved in creation.
The head of U.S. Genome is a Christian. Science believes in the big bang. The earth, he is convinced, was created 4 billion years ago. God isn’t in a hurry. Walt Kaiser used to say, “When God finally got around to creating …” God wasn’t time bound. The time between creation of the heavens and the earth -- much time passed. Are galaxies part of the redemptive plan? Those who say “just focus on Christ” have a sense of urgency. I believe there is urgency, but what does it say about God when I say I have to get it all done now when God spent 10 billion years making things. The macro picture becomes important.
The trinity is a partnership. Father, Son and Spirit is model for family. Father, mother, child. We get whole idea of egalitarian role of the family from the trinity. You wouldn’t say there is a hierarchy in the trinity. How can you say lay people are less holy on Monday than you are on Sunday?
I was on a Chicago Planning Committee, part of a little task group thinking about ghettos, but I also thought about Lake Michigan. The Great Lakes contain 20% of the fresh water on the planet. If you don’t put scrubbers on the polluters, it goes into the lake and the food chain. Milwaukee, Chicago, others. I couldn’t get evangelicals to realize that if you damage the food chain and the unborn babies’ chain – you don’t seem to think it’s a problem if you have delayed abortions. There is no creation theology for many evangelicals. So a human being needs to be health and needs a community. A healthy family contributes to a healthy community.
Manny Ortiz, Bill Leslie and I were invited to the Billy Graham Team. They asked what we should do about the city. Manny said “I think they should repent.” The meeting continued. It was a healthy discussion. I suggested they put $30 million in accounts that could be used in poor neighborhoods. One of the trustees said, “When you talk about urban evangelism, urban concern, justice, renewal, I get nervous. Isn’t that the social gospel?” First I breathed a quick prayer, and then asked where he lived. It was a nice suburb. I asked why he lived there. “It a nice, safe neighborhood. I travel a lot.” After awhile I said, “Every reason you give is a social reason. I get the impression that if your neighborhood didn’t have those, you would move. You and I believe they are important. My neighborhood doesn’t have that. We have stolen cars, so my insurance went up 10%. State Farm assesses by zip code. I pay a tax for a crime.” He’s talking about being a good steward. I’m being taxed because of a police department that doesn’t do its job. I said, “If anyone believes in the social gospel it’s you.” It changed the whole conversation. I try to build bridges.
Then there is the missions phenomenon. Missionaries crossed oceans, deserts, jungles and got the gospel to the ends of the earth. In the last 100 years, take 1900 to 2000: in 1900, we could say 80% of the world’s Christians were white, northern, western, in either North America or Europe. In 2000 approximately 80% of the world’s active Christians are non-white, non-northern, and non-western. They live in South America and African nations. This is the most macro shift. But I suspect that about 80% of the resources - informational and institutional and financial - are still in the west. So the new missions reality is how do we in a faithful and non-paternalistic way give resources to where the church is growing fastest, where there is no economy, places like Haiti and Addis Abbaba. I have list of 54 cities. My whole concept of brother has to change, go global. The foreign policy issue includes no school, no drinkable water, and no social systems such as we enjoy. If that’s where the body of Christ is -- Scripture says do good to all, especially those of the household of faith. All those texts on poverty, i.e. “see to it that the poor get justice, not just mercy.” I lobbied Congress for food aid. I learned that all that U.S. aid – we surplus our farmers to give them a good price. They get price supports. We don’t call it aid to dependent farmers, but it is price support. When the price falls in the world, our government buys the wheat, dairy, etc. When a family in Ethiopia is in need, we dump quantities in Ethiopia. We save some lives but we kill every farmer in Ethiopia who grows wheat. The body is now global. The cities are networked. What we buy here comes from sweatshops there, some of our brothers and sisters there. Our hermeneutic needs to change. 60% of God’s earth is in Asia.
Urbanization. In 1900 only 8% lived in cities. Now its over 50%. That’s a Teutonic shift.
Let me move to a bit of sharing where my head is these days. We have an unusual family. We grew up as Norwegian peasants. We have a family story. When my brother Dennis got a scholarship to Harvard, my dad tried to talk him out of it. He said he’d never heard of it, and wasn’t sure it was a good school. He wasn’t sure it would be good for my younger brother, who had already gone to a university. He went to Harvard, and then to Washington D.C. He started the biggest energy company in the world. My mom is a bag lady at Safeway. She retired at 85 earning $6.50 an hour, with a billionaire son. I baptized both my younger brothers. One is a poor Baptist preacher like me, the other a billionaire. He made it into Forbes and Inc Magazine in 2000. He lost a lot in the Enron collapse, though his company didn’t go bankrupt. But back in 1983 we took a walk in a Chicago alley. He said he would have more money than he needed, so he would give away 99%. He created the Mustard Seed Foundation.
We were thinking that almost every foundation gives money only in the U.S. We decided to give the majority overseas. Most foundations are wonderful family foundations. When you go to The Gathering, most are wealthy Christians who love to give to the Billys (i.e. Billy Graham, Bill Bright) of the world. Build the buildings. Most give sustaining grants. We said, “Let’s give to cities, to women’s businesses, startup grants instead of giving the money to the servers who say, ‘give me money so I can serve people’ give the money to people – empowerment. If churches would spend their money for a project, we’ll match it. But if they don’t think it’s important enough, we won’t fund it either.” So we’ve given away about $70 million in 170 countries, mostly urban. We’re developing grassroots grants around the world. The irony – I’ve committed my life to living with and serving the poor, living in poverty, and God makes my brother wealthy. The incongruities of this are astounding.
I began to think about seminary overseas, and about the American schools that have recruited people to come here to get a degree, get them to Moody, Wheaton, Gordon, Fuller. What we discover is 70% don’t go back. George Wilson got furious. He said 90% don’t go back. We have stopped funding seminaries. What we did as a family was decide to support 55 seminaries around the world. What I’m trying to do now is an experiment.
We moved to west coast in 2000. I’d been doing conferences and had this think tank. You can’t do everything. I was going to focus on Asia. A pastor came into my life in 2001 and said he wanted to give me a school. It was $225,000 in debt, and they had 32 marks against it by the Accrediting Association. He wanted me to take it over, and I said no. My friend Jon Sharpe said, “Don’t say no yet.” He called, had Dave McKenna, Hayford gathered around, saying “We need this school.” McKenna said he would be the Founding Board Chair. He’d been President of Seattle Pacific, raised money for Asbury. So we put it in 4th Presbyterian Church. We pay $1600 a month for a city center campus, with freeway onramps, a large auditorium, the biggest pipe organ. A lecture hall is $250 a day; a classroom is $35 a week. So we’re trying to make it an international school. I called my network around the world and asked if they would like to send students. It’s an urban-based curriculum. The City of Seattle has built a billion dollar library, cited public building of the year. We march all our incoming students across the street to get their photo ID. Back in Uganda they download digitized libraries, soon to include Oxford. This is the first generation able to do this. Every student now has over 100 journals in their laptops at the ends of the earth. We have 250 students now. We’re offering courses in different languages. Part of the French faculty, Glenn Smith is the Lausanne Coordinator who replaced me. He did his doctorate at Northern. We began to research the French countries and cities (top 40). We now have faculty who are focusing on French resources. We have Chinese faculty, 40 students in China last weekend, Hong Kong. Brad Smith came in as a student and brought in staff to be students. It was our second year; it was chaos, I learned we had an accrediting review. Bad news. We don’t know what we are doing. One of my students said, “Brad can do that.” We gave Brad a doctorate, and he produced all the volumes that got us accredited. We grew our President and gave him the doctorate for doing all this work for us. Same for the Dean, same for others, growing them internally.
We got a new team from Microsoft to come and study us. They came with 11 pages of names. They said we couldn’t use those names. They said, “You should be called Paradox University. What you are trying to do to the powerful and the powerless, be accredited in the US. and empower globally. But you can’t call yourself that, so just call yourself Bakke. I said, “But I’m still living.” They said, “You’ll be dead soon enough.” Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Gordon –all named for families.
We said we didn’t want to complete with MDiv’s. So we are a graduate school. We want to be a business school to work on farthest parts of the planet. That also means Indian reservations. We’re looking for a business degree – we don’t have much to offer. We are interviewing people.
This has been an interesting experience. I’m looking for partner seminaries. I went to the oldest black seminary, 164 years this year, in Wilburforce, OH. They don’t have a doctoral program. They have a brilliant president. I had worked with her at Eastern, and had her on our Board of Regents. I asked if we could join and be their doctoral program.
I have a Trinitarian computer- it says Dell, Microsoft and Intel - we could be Bakke Graduate University an____. ATS in Manila is a partner school. We want to create an international accredited American degree so people don’t have to leave their country to get a doctorate. The business school is already approved for MA and MBA.
In the providence of God, when I moved to the west coast, I realized the least and lost folks were American Indians. Blacks are pretty suburbanized now. There are still ghettos and problems, but out west, its the Indian reservations. There are 500 in the U.S. and 35 tribal colleges. The President of a tribal college near me in Washington is building a 100 acre campus on an island. Cheryl and I have become good friends. I invited Richard Twiss and a Chief (the tribe used to own Seattle) to come to graduation. The first Indian graduate with a doctorate will do a dance to the four winds. People who hate Americans are loving American Indians – so Richard Twiss is being invited. He has addressed thousands in stadiums all over the world in his native dress. He’ll do the graduation speech, with an Indian drum under his robe. We can produce a Christian curriculum for Native Americans.
I love the people at Fuller. I said I don’t want to compete with other seminaries, so I asked if we could be an arm, take a risk. It was a surprise to me, a farm kid, to become an urban person in the first place. Then to be profoundly placed in Chicago and tapped to become global. I’m 70 next month. This is a new agenda, but not really. It is connected to some of what you are feeling. I have 250 doctoral students in 7 countries. It’s an accredited, 7 year old school. I drafted someone from Azusa, a former missionary in Brazil with Young Life.
If you have growing churches in poverty areas you’ll have beggar churches and a brain drain. I’ve watched what happens when kids grow up in Pasadena while Dad is getting his degrees. When they go back they are in debt. Often they have to leave their kids because the kids want to stay. If they go back, they want to work for Campus Crusade, they want a car and want to be paid at the level of missionaries. I love these people who are doing this, but it’s not a sustainable mission if we continue to absorb 70% of the people who come here to study. We are 4½ % of world’s population. How do we do that sustainably? Help me to think about that. That’s where my head is.
Then our own family. We made a commitment to adopt, so we now have a little flock of adopted kids. My brother’s kids have adopted as well. So we have this tremendous need at home, as grandparents, as helicopter grandparents. We struggle with that. We’re trying to steward that. So the issues of being family are huge. When the gap between kids, the range of our family, has kids coming out of orphanages in Ethiopia growing up as cousins of kids of privilege (my brother’s kids). So we created the Mustard Seed Foundation with a junior board. In our family, all 13-18 year olds are given 1% of what we will give away, $100,000, learning how to give grants. Last year they gave away a quarter of a million. One black grandkid was on the junior board. He called me one day. “Do you have the grant? This is for Paul Littlefork for the Asian games. Should I support this, sponsor this at the board meeting? Churches want to print tracts in languages for countries that are coming where they don’t allow missionaries.” He was talking about Koala Lumpur. He’s reading a grant request from there. Then he said, “Grandpa, churches are putting in $5000. We need to match that.” Later he called. “They broke into the church and stole the drum set. You can’t have church without a drum set.” He got $5000 matching for a black church in Florida.
It is an awesome thing to have these macro things going on and then have these kids. We take them on urban plunges. One grandson went to the University on a football scholarship. He takes the junior board – last year to Los Angeles, this year to New York. Kids from privilege and adoption are going together.
I have the privilege of living this long. I’m thinking, I had no idea I’d have a rich brother, no idea there would be a foundation and a board that some day would have black people stewarding money from the inside. So it won’t be white patronizing black. I hope to live long enough to see that. These are some of the surprises of the journey. I hope it doesn’t bother you that I get personal that way.
Go to the website for Bakke Graduate University. If you love Christ and the city and churches, check it out. www/MSFDN.org is Mustard Seed Foundation. The U.S. and Latin America Mission Director is my son Brian. Woody is the one that keeps adopting kids. The vision continues. I have no idea where it leads. But I wanted to leave you with that.
God leads in mysterious ways, and helps me understand the suffering of John 9.
I give walking tours, history tours, and gangster tours of cities. I would encourage you to master your city. Know everything about it, interpret it. Let people know God loves them. Connect its streams. Give yourself to study. The Catholic Cardinal came to our Lutheran church on Reformation Sunday. The previous Cardinal was a friend. I asked him if he was converted. He said, “Not only converted, I have southern Baptist credentials. I can’t tell you how many times I sneaked into Sunday School classes on contest days for the free ice cream.” When he came to Chicago, he invited Protestant leaders together and had us sing “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.” He was taken by cancer, but his successor, Francis George, came in. He spoke in Spanish. He learned Spanish in Yakima, WA. But he came to my wife’s church and said, “I want you to know that we all know now that Luther was right. Salvation is by faith alone. Works are important as a demonstration that you have faith.” It’s no longer valid for me to keep them out of our meetings. Go to them. Thank them all for faithfulness under pressure. I do that with the Orthodox. They haven’t changed since the 4th century. I asked a monk in Egypt, a bishop, “Do you have summer robes?” He said, “We used to have wonderful, colorful robes. That was the 9th century. Then the Muslims made us dress in ugly way so others wouldn’t follow us.” They wear them as a mark of faithfulness. They have 13 crosses on the skull cap. Anthony felt that Satan could attack the mind in 13 locations, so he put the crosses on.
In Washington, we have Dundas birds and alpine trees. They live under the snow 9-10 months, come out and bloom, and then disappear under the snow. I admire the alpine, bent and twisted. It reminds me of the Eastern Church. Under Soviet oppression, it was bent out of shape with cultural and attitude issues. I’d be bent and twisted if I’d lived under that. I urge you as a city person to build bridges to people like that. The oldest churches in Christendom are our new neighbors. King Hussein said, “You know that Christians are the glue of the Middle East, and if they are forced out of this region, the moderate Muslims will be soon behind.”
The Syrian Orthothodox clergy asked me to get Billy Graham to stand with them in Damascus. The Pope went there. I wish they had gone together. Don’t write off these folks. Build bridges to them. One Armenian bishop spent 11 years in total darkness in prison. He said, “You westerners think of the great commission means to go laterally. We Orthodox don’t have the luxury of travel. Our passports don’t work that way. Our great commission is faithfulness to the next generation.” Its tradition passed on with faithfulness to the next generation. Vertical. In their case 17 centuries. Could we not complement one another? These are things you learn when you get out of your silo and see the church as the body of Christ.
To God be the glory, to the earth peace, to the round table courage.
