How to pray: For your city
By Daria Nadozza
Around five years ago I started to become fascinated by cities. I love cities. I love experiencing different places, how people live, their culture, food and customs. What fascinates me most though is how our world is changing and moving to cities. Today a city like Toronto, Canada and London, England have more in common than Toronto and small town Ontario (Canada). Cities are looking more and more alike globally. Dr. Glenn Smith, my academic advisor and great mentor wrote this about how the world is changing in one of his articles on how to know your city:
"In 1700, fewer than two percent of the world's population lived in urban places. Beijing and London were the only cities that had populations surpassing one million. By 1900 an estimated nine percent of the world's population was urban. London was then the only "super-city" on the globe. In 1950, 27 percent of the world's population lived in cities, and 73 percent of the world's people lived on the land.1 By 1996 however, the world was growing by 86 million people a year, 73 million in cities alone and for the first time better than 50% of the world's population lived in cities. While the rural percentage of the world's population is declining, rural population is still growing in absolute numbers. The United Nations - which offers the most conservative growth estimate - projects that by 2025 over 60 percent of the world, an estimated 8.3 billion people will live in urban areas?"
I am often asking myself, "how can we know and reach our cities?" The world is now over 50% urban but in Canada over 80% of our population actually lives in a city. This is one of the reasons why within 24-7 Canada our focus has been prayer, mission and justice in CITIES. Ray Bakke, when discussing the challenge of church structure in his book, A Theology as Big as The City, says this: "Like supermarkets, hospitals and police departments, churches will require day pastors and night pastors for twenty-four-hour environments in all languages, cultures and class groups, now residing in the same communities". Cities are open 24-7, so I think church ministries should be too, and where better to start than praying 24-7 to see where God would lead us?
In 2007 I had my first experience studying a city. For four months, 16hrs/week, myself and two other interns went through a 20 step ‘exegetical' study of the business, nightlife and student life of the core downtown of Montreal, called Ville Marie. Glenn Smith, director of Christian Direction in Montreal, came up with this 20 step exegesis. The same way we'd exegete scripture, we learned to exegete our city and wrote a 50+ page report for church leaders and major stakeholders to read. I later spent a week studying New York City and this summer we're finishing up an other exegesis of the west end of Montreal. All this to conclude- In order to reach our cities, I have learned that we MUST know our cities!
When studying a city, you don't necessarily want to start with the ‘needs' however the needs in cities are rapidly growing. Bakke also says, "As we look at the world-class cities around our planet, we face five new urban realities: a crack cocaine epidemic, assault weapons, massive numbers of homeless children, HIV/AIDS and (in the U.S) what Time magazine has called ‘the browning of America.' The needs of urban populations are greater than ever." This leads me to believe that the need for prayer in cities is also greater than ever.
Within Canada we've been learning to pray, do mission and seek justice in our cities. Aaron and his community in the downtown east side of Vancouver have been praying and working with the poorest postal code in our country for many years now. They spend their days and nights living life with drug addicts and prostitutes. Jill and Kirk just moved into a community house in Hamilton, Ontario to pray and serve their city. They just spent the last 2 weeks praying in a Uhaul moving truck next to a youth center with anyone and everyone interested in joining them. Dave and Brian have been praying and working to change the city of Brantford. They have their church service in the old downtown mall with a prayer room storefront, have a BBQ every Friday night in the streets, are working to unite the churches in Brantford and they have even created their own super hero, Captain Kindness, who makes regular appearances at city events and leads random acts of kindness events. These are just a few of the stories of how we're learning to pray and make a difference in the cities across Canada... and there is still much more ground to break!
I leave you with this challenge... Wherever you are... I challenge you to get to know your city!
Take a walk, read, talk to people, learn what's happening (contact me if you're interested in Glenn's 20 steps).... and then, as Jeremiah said, start to seek the welfare of your city. Pray for what you learn and then take it to the streets and put it into action.
Source: 24-7 Prayer
