of the city that summon the church to be incarnate within and for the city—from the city as a generator of people and power to the church as an animator of community in the midst of otherwise alienation and anomie. Dovetailing with what later “new urbanists” also call the priority of community purpose over mere property rights and values:
(. . .) koinonia is affirmed—an alternative to consumerism. Koinonia means community as partnership [. . .] a sense of being members one of another; together in the bundle of life, so the mechanisms of urban living—economic, political, educational, cultural, religious, scientific, therapeutic, recreational—will press over onward in the direction of the inter-dependent, as against the paternalistic, the proprietary, the suppressionist.77
There has been so little of the Canadian church scene available for historical and interpretive guidance that the longing for this document is more now than ever. As one co-author has since reflected,
[T]here were urban core ministries in metropolitan cities across Canada fully supported by the church. The study process leading to the writing of the report reinforced the sense of network/community/solidarity among them. The presentation of the report at General Council was a strong affirmation of urban core ministry. CUT (Canadian Urban Training) had been hugely successful.78
To a modest degree, the bi-annual “Energy from the Edges” community minister/urban core worker events for United Church of Canada personnel (with relevant national staff present) has followed through; albeit now its funding for actual gathering and mutual support has been eliminated. A Dream Not for the Drowsy expresses the hope that the church meaningfully engage rather than retreat from the city’s issues and inequalities. Furthermore, in Coalitions of Justice: The Story of Canada’s Interchurch Coalitions,79 several more coalitions for justice are explicated; notably a full generation of ecumenically supported PLURA (Presbyterian, Lutheran, United Church of Canada, Roman Catholic, and Anglican Church in Canada), providing regional and national seed funds to the actual poor for addressing and redressing root causes and conditions of poverty. Several church-based urban ministry publications from the 1970s and 1980s have shut down, though their denominational magazine reflections endure.80 Thus, such secular bodies as the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives can be a continuing resource, notably through their regular The CCPA Monitor articles on social inequalities. As well, the CCPA has, remarkably, sponsored training sessions and/or leadership schools for young adults on social issues and justice practices. These initiatives fill a void where once the church sponsored such youth and young adult sessions. Recently, by way of these graduates, CCPA senior staff has joined burgeoning fresh expressions of the urban church in collaborative efforts to encourage para- or alterative-spiritual communities with social justice intentions (thinking of the three ingredients of a body of people, over a long period, engaging in deep conversations 81).
Smouldering Embers
City churches engage several options in responding to the challenges of the city. They employ and engage several interesting resources and disciplined practices in the pursuit of their theological objectives or virtues. For example, the spiritually grounding disciplines of Centering Prayer and Christian Meditation—basically simple to learn and challenging to employ regularly—are now more prevalent, as is the confession that while urban ministries talk of justice making and keeping, it is far from simple or quick to maturely practice justice. In the hopeful service of a vital balance, more urban ministers than ever aim to incorporate these spiritual disciplines in the service of advocating and organizing for justice. Notwithstanding the difficulties, several Canadian organizations have taken up the challenge. One greater Vancouver network, Streams of Justice, is a welcome example (viewed by some as an exception for its disciplined focus on justice). A representative para-political think tank involved in social justice work is the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. A recent model of applying biblically informed social ethics to ground urban community organizing broad-based across neighborhoods and districts is the Metro Vancouver Alliance, an associate of the 75-year-old Industrial Areas Foundation.
There are several thrusts that arise from the above and foreshadow the next chapter on the dynamics of urban ministry. They include but are hardly limited to these seven: survive or die, persistent poverty, nuanced inequalities, addictions, globalization, burnout, and the emergence of new monasticism.
Ministries experience death by closure and/or a benign demise of one’s historic identity by merger. Norm Ellis’ books express the live-or-die forced option. My Parish Is Revolting documents the choice to make abundant and mixed use of the whole church; this was a 1970s breakthrough, breaking down previously sacred but compartmentalized barriers (sanctuary versus drop-in space likely tucked away in the basement). The author’s own urban ministry attests over four decades and five urban ministries. Tim Dickau’s Plunging into the Kingdom depicts a once ailing Vancouver eastside Baptist Church breathing new life into its building, increasing staff with extra worship services and community houses, and spawning social justice networks such as Streams of Justice. This east side ministry has energized wider ministerial networks and added another Sunday service with a shared husband-and-wife team ministry.
Poverty remains the chief reality that summons urban ministries and their mission statements. The poverty of New York’s East Harlem spurred returning WW II veterans, as Union Seminary students, to combine theological studies with real-life concerns and eventually to move into the ghetto to live among its people. Toronto’s South St Jamestown poverty sparked affluent United Church of Canada lay-people, aroused by commutes through the district, to organize an on-location ministry to address the stressed situations caused by massive urban development. The downtown eastside poverty of Vancouver is what has contributed for many decades to the steadfast ministry of First United Church. In such cases, the ministries’ origins and development—as well as other networks like Streams of Justice (SoJ), A Community Aware (ACA), and the Metro Vancouver Alliance (MVA)—can be accounted for as an aroused and then animated contrast-awareness (a core category that can be induced from an application of grounded theory analysis and to be demonstrated in appendix B.)
There are signs of revival of classical monasticism as a new monasticism refreshes urban ministry. This new monasticism creates ministries to face poverty by moving beyond analysis to organize efforts more favorable to marginalized people. New monastic writers exhibit retrieved if not fresh expressions of the classical vows of the original and continuing monastics. The vows of poverty and obedience, as a listening presence and continuing conversation and/or stability, represent such disciplines.
The book includes an appendix on what the new monasticism needs to critically learn from a Thomas Merton—as well as a Reinhold Niebuhr and a Jürgen Moltmann and their constructive legacies (Appendix A). This also includes references to the three ministry networks of ACA, MVA and SoJ that are discussed in Chapter 7.
Ecumenical social ethicist John C. Bennett spoke of the importance of statistics, but they need to be interpreted compassionately to have relevance. Statistics support Gibson Winter’s observation that “we have two urbanizations—one of hope and one of despair.” Annual days for noting working people’s struggles and issues—May Day and Labor Day being examples—have taken on possibly renewed life due to the impact of the Occupy Movement. With the fragmentation and loss of the prophetic capacity in many Canadian mainline churches, these equalitarian thrusts challenge tendencies to cynicism and status quo passivity, especially as they invite inter-disciplinary alliances for the churches’ participation. One Vancouver network attending to this is A Community Aware (ACA).
Urban churches have tended to assume that the health professionals and self-help groups like Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) cover the field—ministers being the referral agent or 5th-step “confessor,”
