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A Theology of Our City
Over the years many of us from the Fusion community along with our friends and neighbors outside of Fusion have found a common passion for our City. We are specifically here to make a transformation within the downtown, midtown areas of Oklahoma City. Unapologetically, our neighborhoods and those living in the urban center of our city are our strongest heartbeat.
PROV.1.20-21 Wisdom cries out in the street; in the squares she raises her voice. At the busiest corner she cries out; at the entrance of the city gates she speaks.
We see neighborhoods where we know and share life together. Sharing a love for public spaces helps us get out of our often walled off lives.
Public spaces force us to think about and interact with people we don’t necessarily know. Public spaces mitigate class difference—they are neither my turf nor your turf. And so they force us to relate to each other as equals . . . The necessity of sharing creates the opportunity for learning about and practicing love. Eric Jacobsen in “Sidewalks in the Kingdom”
People must take a degree of public responsibility for each other even if they have no ties to each other. Jane Jacobs in “The Death and Life of Great American Cities
Just as it is difficult to imagine the concept of family independent of the home, it is near impossible to imagine community independent of the town square or the local pub. Duany, Plater-Zyberk, and Speck in “Suburban Nation”
We see the urban center of our city containing beauty to be encouraged and brokenness to be healed.
. . . there are no simple solutions to how we are to live in and with our cities, but the one thing we must not do is ignore them. We must figure out how to work out our discipleship to Christ in the specific context of our cities. We must CONFRONT THE PROBLEMS of the city, such as overcrowding, addiction, and declining schools, and not run away from them to the sanitized world of the suburbs. And we also must ENJOY OUR CITIES for the cultural performances, civic art, and opportunities for human interaction that they provide.
We see our lives deeply rooted within the urban center of this city joining God in His continued work of redemption.
There is a naiveté in ignoring the city and trying to replace it with a sanitized and private world of Christian culture. And there is an arrogance in trying to shape cities into our institutional vision of what justice and righteousness should look like. A good place for (us) to start would be to simply recognize (our) city and how God might already be using (our) city for the purpose of redemption. Eric Jacobsen in “Sidewalks in the Kingdom”
ACTS.13.44 - The next Sabbath almost the whole city gathered to hear the word of the Lord.
Our desire to see this city flourish and know life in the Kingdom does not lead us to traditional ways of “evangelism”---but relationally living among all people of the city. This city is not a project---it is our home. This city is full of people who are spiritually thirsty---we pray that our community might be the living Message they will one day share with us.
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