Stay in the City, by Mark R. Gornik and Maria Liu Wong

As Mark R. Gornik and Maria Liu Wong point out, "the twenty-first century is an age of urban Christianity. . . . Specialized terms like 'urban ministry' no longer fit a world where Christian presence and ministry are simply urban by default."  In Stay in the City: How Christian Faith Is Flourishing in an Urban World, Gornik and Wong tell stories of city-based ministry, giving hope for the growth and vitality of Christianity in our urban centers and across the globe.

Gornik and Wong, who train Christian leaders at the City Seminary of New York, see reason for their hope.  They see ministries that have "stayed in the city and responded to God, enacting and proclaiming the Gospel."  In churches in New York and other cities, they see that "instead of a place where faith struggles and dies, the twenty-first-century city is where the church comes to grow and thrive." 

They give a lot of attention to immigrant churches.  In cities like New York, with large pockets of immigrants, many large churches and active ministries draw on specific immigrant populations.  The authors even suggest that just as, in the middle of the twentieth century, the children of Swedish and Norwegian immigrants in the Midwest spurred a national movement for the gospel, perhaps "Nigerians, Latinos, Koreans, and others from around the world" will lead "whole new movements . . . to shape generations to come, across ethnic and cultural lines."

My only issue with the book is the implication in the title and throughout the book that Christians are not staying in the city, and the further implication that ministry in the city is somehow a higher calling than ministry elsewhere.  Through the latter half of the twentieth century it was certainly true that Christians were leaving city centers.  The growth of the suburbs led many urban churches to abandon the neighborhoods where they had been rooted.  But the opposite is frequently the case today, as young adults choose to live in urban centers and immigrant groups establish their own communities in the city. 

Cities have their problems, of course, but, as Gornik and Wong point out, they have huge cultural, economic, and practical benefits.  They say the "vocation of urban Christians" is "a calling to be present with and open to God in the local context, attending to what is in front of us with all of our senses."  Yet this is true for every Christian everywhere.  Their focus is on city dwellers, but what about Christians in rural towns that are seeing declining populations and dying churches?  The principle of presence and of "find[ing] our vocation in the place we believe God wants us to serve" applies no matter where we are, urban, suburban, or rural.

Gornik and Wong's strong point is the many stories, however brief, of exciting Christian work being done in New York and other cities.  Wherever Christians live, they will be inspired to look around their communities, develop relationships, and take some risks as they seek to love and serve God and his children.


Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!