The Urban Mission course is now going on week 4 for the class. I have a good group of students, with a number of them active in ministry to the poor in the city.The students are from Costa Rica, Venezuela, Nicaragua and the US. I find it thrilling to be in conversation about mission with this group of students each week! We have so far tackled the historical perspective on the city, Biblical perspectives for doing urban mission and this past week we looked at some urban sociological understandings of city. I have been developing the course as I go and have been surprised by the amount of work it takes to get ready for a 2 1/2 hour course. I guess the main reason being that I have had to do a lot of translation work, working from English into Spanish. Why is Urban Mission so important for Christian mission?
While the world’s urban population grew very rapidly (from 220 million to 2.8
billion) over the 20th century, the next few decades will see an unprecedented scale
of urban growth in the developing world. This will be particularly notable in Africa
and Asia where the urban population will double between 2000 and 2030: That
is, the accumulated urban growth of these two regions during the whole span of
history will be duplicated in a single generation. By 2030, the towns and cities of
the developing world will make up 80 per cent of urban humanity (UN Report – 2007).
To upload the UN population report click UN Population Report – 2007
Development and Justice 