My City-God’s City Pastor Joseph G .KRYGIER   1999

    

Observance: The sirens scream through the evening hours as the cadre of

emergency vehicles speed their way to Rosylyn Ave. The lights are flashing and the radios are emitting a cacophony of sounds as reports of the event are being given to the dispatchers in case there is a need for more help. Ten

minutes later, all is silent. There are no more lights or vehicles or

distinctly garbled sounds. It is just as serene as any small town in America.

 

Impression: It is unseasonably warm for this time of year (December) in the City of Good Neighbors. A woman has her window open in the apartment on the second floor of the worst kept building on the block. Her elbows are resting on the window sill and she has protruded her head outside the window. As I drive by, I slow down and take a deliberate glance her way and see a forlorn gaze for something or someone.

 

Reminder: My neighbor’s door has been accosted one more time and a new name has been added to the rest of the graffiti. We really need to paint that door this spring and let these kids know who is in control.

Habit: As I pull into my driveway and make my way to the door I hear the sounds of Christmas coming from another neighbor’s home. He has installed outside musical lights and a manger scene to display his belief about what this holiday means to him.

 

Fact: A few summers ago, on Audrey Lane, one yard away from the back of my house a young man was repeatedly shot in the head while sitting in a car parked at his parent’s home: a drug deal gone bad. Another time a young man was attacked and beaten and chained to the stop sign post across the street: vengeance of some sort? One summer, my wife’s purse was snatched after shopping at our local market. She ran after the thief. Some honorable men in a car stopped the culprit and made sure my wife’s things were returned.

 

Recently: A politician who is supposed to be a Christian uses hyperbolic rhetoric to defend his position that a public official has been unduly reprimanded and in the same breath claims a victory for Jesus where obvious irresponsibility has occurred somewhere in the prosecution of standard procedures that would benefit the children of the CITY.

 

    The CITY is a complex place. It is where the best of the best and the worst of the worst cohabitate. Sinners and saints, hookers and lookers, the poor and the rich, the gifted and the wasted. You can name it and claim it, you can tame it and maim it. If you can imagine it, it can be done in the CITY.

    CITY dwellers are an odd sort of species. Many would leave at a moments notice if they had the economic ability to do so. Others would invest every ounce of energy, resources and opportunity to turn it into Camelot, if it

were possible. How is it that the CITY can be loved and hated, adored and cursed, or remembered and forgotten? These paradoxes are what the CITY is all about because where sin abounds grace abounds even more.

    God has a heart for the CITY because most of the elect in the history of mankind have come from the CITY and will continue to do so. The largest unreached populations in the world who have yet to hear the glorious Gospel of peace are urban dwellers. Cities are the center of our governments, economies, and cultural activities, but in too many cases, are no longer the seat of historic, orthodox, biblical preaching, biblical worship, or biblical

discipling.

 

    Thought: Delaware Park and the surrounding area is one the most peaceful and beautiful parts of our city beyond the waterfront. Year round activities

abound with a beautiful blend of multi-ethnic runners, walkers, cyclists, golfers, tennis players, soccer camps, youngies and oldies strolling and holding hands. Winter festivals and even religious festivals are held there. A world renowned art gallery, the Historical Society, the Zoo, and three colleges are all in walking distance of each other.

    Remembrance: On Broadway, last year, a man was brutally assaulted and

beaten to death by a gang of youth. Was it because he was white? A homosexual?

A landlord with recently collected rent payments in his pocket? Perhaps all three? Just around the corner an interracial family was literally forced out of their home in the Lovejoy area, the windows having been broken too many times and the ephitets hurled once too often by some white neighbors who admit their “racism”.    

    History: Over the years (and as recently as this Mother’s Day) our house has been broken into three times and our garage once. My company vehicle was broken into and my son has had three bicycles stolen. I have been beaten up in front of my own home by a gang of teens who merely wanted to wreak havoc through a few neighborhoods because they were forcibly ejected from the local swimming pool. On another occasion, shots were fired in our driveway as police captured some young gangstas who robbed a local eatery and filled a police car full of Uzzi holes. Our shrubs and bushes were stolen when we planted them in front of our home 16 years ago, we have not replaced them. This past summer, some of my wife’s hanging plants were stolen from the porch. They will be replaced.

    The CITY has been deserted by many “evangelical” churches largely due to a lack of reaching the people as the demographics of an area changed. Some of these churches accepted the unbiblical premise of church growth experts that segregation (they never use this word) is the best way to build an effective church. Your question is, “Is he saying that these experts have promoted “racism” by encouraging the birds of a feather flock together strategy of church growth”? My answer is “Yes”.

    The CITY has the smell of death permeating it, yet cities are teeming with people trying to live. Urban America has been betrayed by many of the churches in our land. Betrayed by a lack of compassion, a lack of working for justice and and most of all a perversion of the Word of God.

    Many churches abandoned their city location and moved to the suburbs. They failed to biblically serve as neighborhoods in the neglected inner city were struggling with seemingly insurmountable problems that only a true Gospel witness could answer. We have promoted and nurtured, in many churches, a cultural Christianity in the CITY that is attached to church membership, good works, socioeconomic programs and political agendas.

    Church membership, and holistic ministry to the community are commanded in Scripture but it all must be rooted in, and a result of, salvation through Jesus Christ our Lord. The principles for church life in the CITY must be Christ centered and biblically practiced, not man centered and culturally directed.

Too many of our CITY churches have gone the way of heresy and works based salvation. Many are apostate, they have never preached the truth - The Gospel of Grace that exalts the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the real need, not felt needs, of sinners to believe that Christ alone can redeem because He provided penal substitution and atonement for our sins through His suffering and shed blood on the Cross of Calvary.

    What will it take to see the CITY through the eyes of God? What will it

take to hear the cries of the condemned with the ears of God? What will it take to move the church to have a heart of compassion that is aligned with the heart of God? What will it take to intentionally grow healthy churches that reflect the multiethnic complexion of an urban center like Buffalo? It will take a Bible based theology with an urban focus.