Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Loving cities well: Chris Brooks on the church’s role in economic restoration
Loving cities well: Chris Brooks on the church’s role in economic restoration
Mar 17, 2025 10:20 AM

What would happen if local churches came together to love and serve our cities?

Upon hearing such a question, our minds are prone to imagine an assortment of “outreach ministries,” from food pantries to homeless shelters munity events to street evangelism.But while each of these can be a powerful channel for love and service in munities, what about the basic vision that precedes them?

Before and beyond our tactical solutions to immediate needs, how can the church truly work together to bring economic flourishing that will endure for years e?

In a recent talk for Made to Flourish, Pastor Christopher Brooks explores that question at length, drawing from both scripture and personal experience to provide a framework for re-imagining the church’s role in urban munity transformation. “God places his people in the hearts of cities, and cities in the hearts of his people,” he explains.

As pastor of a church in Detroit, Brooks speaks to the range of challenges that local churches faced in responding to the chaos that surrounds them. In his own experience, that included the disruption that followed the financial crisis and, later, the devastation that came from the city’shistoric decline into bankruptcy. The people of Detroit were hurting, and local churches were struggling as well, quickly retreating into isolation and division.

Eventually, Brooks was able to meet with several local pastors and begin to sow seeds of unity and collaboration. Together, they agreed to focus on spurring a revival of “good news” and “good works” across the city—economic, social, spiritual, and otherwise. “We were captured by a vision that good deeds would produce good will that would open the door for the good news to be shared,” Brooks explains.

As a result, that small group of pastors and churches slowly grew, now including over 500 churches from across the Detroit area. All ing together in shared purpose, making a covenant to love their city well do so by working together.

As far as the methods, the es have varied, ranging from training programs to personal discipleship to networking activities to economic activation. But regardless of the tactics, these churches are growing in a shared understanding of the real issues in munity, as well as their roles in training up believers for stewardship in the broader social and economic world.

To give a taste of that vision, Brooks offers the following lessons he’s gained on how we might change our perspectives and truly love our cities well.

1. Poverty isn’t permanent when the es together.

It’s so easy for us to lose sight of this reality and to feel overwhelmed, in particular when we work in isolation…We think that cities can’t be changed or that the Gospel can’t work in certain zip codes or neighborhoods. But when Jesus said, ‘The poor you will have with you always,’ he didn’t intend for that to mean that poverty was some unfixable disease or some incurable condition. No. We can see poverty change by unleashing the entrepreneurial, enterprising spirit that God has placed within each and every person within munity. When we begin to see them not just as mouths that consume, but minds that create, God restores flourishing.

2. Diagnosis determines treatment.

The church has been misdiagnosing poverty. We’ve been narrowly defining poverty as the lack of resources. But as a person who grew up poor, let me tell you, poverty is much deeper than that. It’s the lack of positive of relationships. Who’s better at giving people a network of positive relationships than the church? What people need most is not a check or a handout. They need a network of relationship that can provide intimacy and restoration and healing…God changes lives through relationships.

3. Our cities need munity development.

Never forget that what we bring to the table is munity and economic development. Don’t forget that part. Because…if God does change lives through relationships, and if…poverty is…a lack of positive relationships, then here’s my question: “What is the greatest relationship that a person can have?”…It’s not a relationship with you or with me, but it’s with a Savior, who can not only fix us on the outside, but renew us on the inside, and transform our hearts and our minds. This is what munities need. They need more than just creative programs or initiatives. They need Christ.

In the end, its about forming networks of fruitful relationships for the Kingdom and mon good. When the local church is working together with that bigger picture of human needs and creative capacity, transformation will follow, in turn.

“It is when we begin to collaborate with one another, forming these networks of relationships in Christ, that munities are transformed and flourishing returns,” says Brooks. “Let’s love our cities well plete the love story.”

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
The Naughty List
You can view the most recent list of panies that have received bailout assistance from the federal government via the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (EESA), executed through measures like the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), here (PDF updated 12/16/08). I’m thinking about adding panies to my own personal “naughty” list. Visit the EESA homepage, where you can sign up for EESA e-mail updates as your tax dollars are spent for you. “How is this money being spent?” you...
Economic Justice for All Revisited
Catching up on “Revisiting the 1986 economic pastoral”, an article from October in the National Catholic Reporter: The bishops’ point “that Catholics’ moral life cannot be separated entirely from their economic life has relevance for what we’re going through now,” said Kevin Schmiesing, research fellow for the Acton Institute, a proponent of free markets. “Unless you believe there is no ponent to this, that there’s no failure of responsibility, that there’s no greed at work, that those kinds of moral...
Reading Russell Kirk
It’s the end of the year, so the book lists are out. I’m thinking about conservative icon Russell Kirk. If you want a really enjoyable and edifying read, I mend you begin with The Roots of American Order. That book will give you an understandable and historically grounded sense of what “ordered liberty” means. It will also open the mysteries of Kirk wide to the uninitiated reader. The prose is lively. Highly readable. Kirk is more widely known for the...
Soul Searching at Yeshiva U.
In “Betrayed by Madoff, Yeshiva U. Adds a Lesson,” the New York Times interviews students and teachers at the New York University which was closely linked to Bernard Madoff, the financier who has been charged by federal prosecutors with orchestrating a $50 billion Ponzi scheme fraud. In Intermediate Accounting I, undergraduates analyzed how he seemingly tap-danced around the Securities and Exchange Commission. In Rabbi Benjamin Blech’s philosophy of Jewish law course, students pondered whether Jewish values had been distorted to...
O Holy Night
O Holy night, the stars are brightly shining. It is the night of our dear Saviour’s birth. Long lay the world in sin and error pining, Till he appeared and the soul felt its worth. A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices, For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn. Fall on your knees! Oh hear the angel voices! Oh night divine! Oh night when Christ was born! Oh night divine! Oh night! Oh night divine! Chains shall he...
Santa and the ultimate Fairy Tale
Of course, Santa is based on a historical character. And in many (but certainly not all!) ways, he points forward to Jesus Christ. But in a broader sense, God has created a mystical, mythical, and magical world– that can be overdone or mis-imagined. That said, the mon error is to under-do or under-imagine– out of our “modern” heritage and tainted worldview. I’ve blogged on this quite a few times– and three times in the past month, in noting the 100th...
Acton Commentary: Selfless Giving and Tempered Trading
In this season of giving, Kevin Schmiesing looks at another form of exchange — trade. He observes that mercial activity “is not an exercise in selfishness, but the practice of properly ordered self-interest, which is of necessity tempered by the wants and needs of others.” Read mentary over at the Acton website and e back to share ments. ...
Ponnuru on Ponzi and Pyramids
Ramesh Ponnuru says Social Security is worse than a Ponzi scheme. He’s right. It’s more like an inter-generational pyramid scheme, a pyramid tipped on its side… To be sustainable, over time (T) it has to take more from more people (thus a three-dimensional pyramid rather than a two-dimensional triangle. It’s really exponential rather than multiplicative). Social Security. In case you forgot, it still needs fixing. This Christmas, think about the rather unpleasant gift we’ll be leaving the generations that follow...
J. Daryl Charles on the Revival of Natural Law
In the latest volume of the Mars Hill Audio Journal, host Ken Myers talks with J. Daryl Charles, author of Retrieving the Natural Law: A Return to Moral First Things (Eerdmans, 2008). Charles is associate professor of Christian Studies at Union University, and spent the 2007-2008 year as William E. Simon Visiting Fellow in Religion and Public Life in the James Madison Program at Princeton University. I had the pleasure of meeting Ken Myers at this year’s GodblogCon and am...
The Acton Website gets a New Look
Today saw the launch of a sharp new look for the Acton Institute website. This new iteration of the website puts content first, with a very uncluttered, fresh look. It also sports some of the latest and greatest in web technology, but I’ll spare you the geekspeak and let you discover all of the bells and whistles for yourself. We hope that you’ll continue to enjoy the Acton website and the rich collection of articles and resources that it provides....
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved