Downward Mobility and the Urban Church

Abstract

Upon returning from serving overseas amongst the urban poor in Papua New Guinea, I questioned the paucity of Canadian Reformed churches (the federation of churches that retains my credentials) in the inner cities of urban Canada, as well as the apparent mobility drift of churches from urban centres to more rural or suburban locales. These questions came to the fore when I commenced a church plant with sixty starting members (many middle-class) in a lower socioeconomic community in east Hamilton (McQuesten). The socioeconomic disparity between those who chose to be part of the church plant and the majority of people in McQuesten demanded some intentional reflection, which planted the seeds for this phenomenological research project. Desiring to approach these questions phenomenologically, I was drawn to the work of the Catholic thinker Henri Nouwen. Although Nouwen was not an evangelical church planter, he was a prolific writer who shared his existential journey from a distinguished position at Harvard University to L’Arche Daybreak, a care home for people with disabilities in Toronto. Was Nouwen’s experience and vision of downward mobility generative for those engaged in church planting in lower socio-economic neighbourhoods in urban Canada? To address this question, I studied four themes rooted in Nouwen’s corpus: home, time, wealth, and power. This investigation took place through extant literature and twenty interviews with missional leaders serving in predominantly lower socio-economic urban centres across Canada. Although I was able to answer the research question in the affirmative, Nouwen’s works are critically analyzed and the themes are actively engaged through the interviews, providing readers with the ability to examine their own journeys into greater intimacy with Christ and greater compassion for the marginalized.