We have just started a new community group sereis of lessons called "The Gospel in Life" put together by Tim Keller. The first lesson was about the city of man in which we are pilgrims and exiles. God has kept us here and has asked us to go into the city of man and seek it's prosperity and peace like He did to the Jews in Babylonian exile in Jeremiah 29. The false prophets told the people to leave the city in order to keep their spiritual distinctiveness, but God said stay in the city AND keep your spiritual distinctiveness. What is our attitude toward the city in which we live? It ought to be to seek the good of the city, it's prosperity and peace by sharing and living out the gospel. However, when the city becomes expensive, dangerous or morally degenerate, we forsake the city and move to the suburbs like the false prophets told the Jews to do. We don't stick around to help make a difference in our city because the American dream is bigger than God's mission.
So, in our discussion time, one of our ladies brought up a really good observation that got us thinking about what should be normal for our church. She mentioned that over 10 years ago, our church suffered a huge outward migration of over 100 people who moved out of the Bay Area to the Central Valley within a year's time because of the economy. But it wasn't a bad economy that made people move out....it was a good one! The real estate market was booming and people could afford to move out of Fremont to places like Tracy, Manteca, Stockton and Modesto and buy houses three times as big for the same price as a one bedroom condo here. At the same time, hoards of people from India, Asia and the Middle East were moving in to Fremont and changing the demographics drastically. This almost killed our church at the time because almost all of the members pulled up their stakes and left for greener pastures.
When she made the connection between the lesson's emphasis to stay in the city and be a blessing to it for the sake of the gospel and the church's history of people leaving for the sake of the American Dream, it really impacted the small group and opened our eyes. We have been told that this kind of migration of people leaving the area and the church for financial reasons is "Normal". Maybe that was normal for those people who left, but we who remain and have been added to the church since then need to understand that we need a new normal. I know there are circumstances in individual families who absolutely have to leave the area, but in the early 2000's, many of them didn't HAVE to. Many left because there was a real estate gold rush going on and the grass was greener on the other side of the east hills. But the Gospel mission has not changed. The mission field came to Fremont during those years, and hundreds of God's people left the city, withdrew salt and light from the area not for the sake of the Gospel, but for the sake of the American Dream. Is this supposed to be normal? In a church that is not gospel centered, unfortunately, it is.
But when we realize that we have a higher calling than buying a big house in the country so we can be surrounded by good American white folks in clean neighborhoods, maybe we won't have to experience this kind of mass migration out of our church again. Maybe we can have a new normal. Maybe God's people will think "missionally" and stay in the smaller house, living in a neighborhood surrounded by foreigners for the sake of seeking their salvation! This is the new normal that we want to create as a culture in our church! How will you respond?
