Tim Keller on How churches reach cities

Here’s a 17+ minute video of Tim Keller talking at Lausanne about how you reach cities by

By contextual churches, he speaks of planting a church that fits in your context. As part of that talk he gave these marks to becoming contextual

A multicultural church has to be extremely culturally sensitive. Your church must expect cultural and racial tensions and accusations of insensitivity. It will always be present.
Help people integrate work and faith. People go to cities to work.
Must have urban sensibility: comfortable with change, disorder,
Evangelism in cities needs to reach different cultures and people. One script does not fit all.
City Churches need to be famous in its care for the poor.
Artists must be taken seriously.
Relationships are extremely important for ministry in a urban context.
A city can’t be reached by one church, or even one network. You need a city reaching movement.

Keller mentions 10 in his remarks, but I heard 8.

What is a city reaching movement?

When the Body of Christ is growing more rapidly than the general population. What creates a movement?

Five or six church planting movements in different denominations and networks. Don’t work to increase your tribe, but to help others get going. Collaborate.
You need a

network of prayer,
evangelistic specialists to focus on universities and youth,
work on justice and mercy issues,
gatherings based on vocation (business people, artists, etc), and
have leaders regularly meeting to discern together what the city needs (not turf wars).

Four questions (from Luasanne’s guide):

How can the church develop a clearer awareness of the needs of the cities?
What has been the response of the church in your context to the increased movement of people to the cities?
What are adjustments that the church should make in order to respond to the needs of the city in a relevant way?
How can the global church be mobilized to the missiological challenge of the city?