What we can say, wherever you happen to minister, is that at some point you’ve got to share the gospel. You might run a food bank or a CAP job club but, despite the doling out of food parcels or CV writing, unless the gospel is at some point stated we have not been engaged in mission, evangelism or the work of making disciples. 

There is a lot of talk (and rightly so) about the best way to do evangelism in an urban context. Do we stick on events or run services? Do we forget programmes and focus on relationships? Do we go attractional, missional or some other buzzword approach altogether? Do tent meetings and mission weeks work anymore or ought we to find other means of sharing the gospel? Questions abound.

I am convinced we oughtn’t to be dogmatic about these things. I share the majority view within evangelicalism on door-2-door evangelism, but I am also conscious that there are places where this sort of work continues and is seeing real fruit for the gospel. For every few people who won’t come to an event, you can find one who will. Whilst some people want solid relationships before they will give the gospel 5 minutes, there are others who really respond to direct appeal in the safety of a fairly anonymous meeting. There are those who will readily buy into ‘services’ and those who won’t. I’m sure this is basically in line with Paul’s ‘all things to all men’.

When thinking about what we ought to do, it will depend on your context. Some urban areas, and different people in different places, will suit different approaches. CAP job clubs may sail in one place and be a total dead loss in another. Sitting around in community hubs and engaging with locals might work on some estates and be a total waste of time in other deprived areas. Some places might have mosques to engage while others don’t have a single Muslim within 5 miles of the estate. We’ve got to find the approach that works in our particular context rather than trying to prescribe ‘models’ for the urban context as if there is any such thing as one type of urban context.

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