Is Incarnational Ministry Possible in a Commuter City?
As per a great post I read on Pastor John Lee’s blog on A Perspective on the Transience of People in (NY) City… whilst in the Pacific NW I’ve learned the deep value of being in, for, and with a neighborhood as a church and while I hope to transplant this ethos to our (hopeful) move this summer to NY I can’t help but to wonder if it really works (out there). As I recall growing up on the subway – everyone commutes. And life is spent in different sectors of the metro area; i.e., you might work in the burbs, but play in the city, and sleep out on the Island… life isn’t centralized in NYC in other words. So I wonder about this commuter tension when it comes to building a church in NY… how does one legitimately minister to a neighborhood and not live there? Should we fight against the commuter tendency or work around it? Or take, for example, a church like Redeemer; what percentage live in the city, or more specifically the upper West Side (& various locales) and what percentage commutes in for church, and how is that viewed?
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hey wayne- i think that one factor that plays into this is one’s wealth. often, as scrah would say, mobility is tied to wealth, and i think the same is true for nyc, especially when one considers the availability of subways, express stops, and the people who can afford to be close to both (subways and specifically, express stops). obviously there are subways stops all over manhattan, but that’s one reason why manhattan can be so expensive, thereby excluding a certain sector of less-well-off folks to live there. unless, of course, poorer folks are relegated to areas that are on the outskirts of manhattan where it’s still quite a hike to the train.
hence, i think you’ll get a lot of different answers about commuters in nyc… we have our fair share of both – neighborhood folks and commuters, but I think our commuter population is self-selective to people who are willing to deal with difficult parking circumstances or cooky train schedules on the weekend.
@drew
I think that’s really true. Lots of time when we hear about incarnational location-based ministry in our seminaries, it’s unconsciously coming from a suburban P.O.V.; that’s not to say that incarnated suburban churches are not cutting edge and highly needed; but perhaps we need more seminaries operating within the cities as well? (and not just on the outskirts)
But the mobility and wealth critique is an important one… puts a new spin on the popularity of “incarnational ministry”. Maybe instead of incarnational ministry we need more “ascensional ministry.”