Jesus of Suburbia
The church has to be in suburbia because that’s where the people God loves are.
This is an update of a sermon I wrote in 2014 on suburban ministry.
It’s been over seven years since I started at First Christian of St. Paul which is in the suburb of Mahtomedi, MN. One of the things that was kind of hammered home to me in seminary is to learn to do ministry in a certain context. And with this call, context matters, at least to me.
I’ve shared before that I’m a city kid that grew up with an antipathy towards the ‘burbs. So as my mentor Bob Brite has said, “the Holy Spirit, the practical joker that she is” has me preaching at a church in the suburbs.
And I don’t think I’m prepared for it.
I’ve noticed over the year that our seminaries prepare students for one kind of context: cities. The urban context has long been what our seminary education has been based on. I can understand the need to focus on cities; it is where the majority of Americans live. But most seminaries tend to ignore rural contexts and view suburbia with a sense of contempt. In a blog post last year, I shared what an evangelical blogger wrote about the suburbs and it wasn’t a love letter. A fellow Disciples pastor has said that the only message we seem to have for suburbanites is how they are bad…
