Engage with us

ENGAGING THE CITY

Our approach to the world and to our city is rooted in the reality that God himself became one of us in the person of Jesus. One paraphrase of John 1:14 reads, "The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood." Continuing God's mission through Christ for the world, we seek to immerse ourselves in the life of our city and live redemptively within it as a sign that God has begun putting the world back together, inch by inch, making all things new again in Christ. This is the kind of engagment the biblical story calls us into: Wondering and celebrating the city's culture, beauty and diversity, while also lamenting its brokenness, and watching for ways God's Spirit is calling us to participate in its renewal (socially, culturally and spiritually).

I CHOOSE THE CITY

by Francis DuBose

I choose the city…

Not simply to live in it,

to see it,

to hear it;

But to touch it;

yes, to embrace it,

to hold it,

To feel the wild glory of its

pulsating soul,

To move over its wide,

hurried broadways,

To stand stilled and sobered

at the nowhere of its dead-end streets,

To be trapped with it in its

pain and problems,

To be at once chilled by its ill

and covered with its confetti.

I choose the city because I choose God,

Because I choose humanity,

Because I choose the divine-human

struggle–

The struggle which will be won

Not in the serene path through

meadow and wood,

among the bees and birds, and flowers,

But in the city street

Made by the hand of man

Through the gift of God–

Main Street: the final battle field,

The scene of the ultimate struggle,

Where man chooses right

Because he is free to choose wrong.

Babylon, dirty and daring–

Babylon, yes–

Babylon today–

Tomorrow…

The New Jerusalem!

(Francis DuBose, Mystic on Main Street, Chapel Hill, NC: Professional Press, 1993, pp. 78, 79.)