Dear reader, please consider a transfer of membership to my congregation in St. Louis, MO if you are a current resident of one of the following countries:

                                                          Iraq                                         Sudan
                                                          Afghanistan                           Saudi Arabia
                                                          Nigeria                                   Iran                 
                                                          Pakistan                                  

     Why relocate to St. Louis?  Cardinals baseball (2011 World Champions).  Four seasons.  Budweiser.  The Arch.  Comparatively safe to your country.  And our church needs members who have experienced outright persecution for their faith.  In fact, I believe your presence in our church would be exponential in its impact.  We need you to change us.  Your American brothers and sisters are getting lazy on the couch of comfort and contentment.    

     We in the American church frequently lament the fall of Christian influence in the United States.  But such whining seems to be a shrill cry when you consider the worldwide body of Christ. In a rather surprising front page cover, Newsweek’s February 13th, 2012 feature article is titled “The Rise of Christophobia.”  It chronicles the intense worldwide persecution of Christians, particularly in Muslim majority countries.  Noting the case of Nigeria, author Ayann Hirsi Ali writes, “In the month of January 2012 alone, Boko Haram (a national religious organization) was responsible for 54 deaths.  In 2011 its members killed at least 510 people and burned down or destroyed more than 350 churches.” 

     We annually gather a reluctant batch of adolescent students in a rite called confirmation.  In the Lutheran Service Book Agenda, a question is asked of all confirmands:

            “Do you intend to continue steadfast in this confession and Church and to suffer all, even                 death, rather than fall away from it?”  They are to respond: “I do, by the grace of God.” 

      We might get a different response if 14-year-old Billy was dropped in Pakistan where a “blasphemy law” can make a declaration of faith in the Triune God a criminal act.  Each of us would give critical consideration to our confirmation vows if we lived under such a threat. 

     I am humbled by the faith of minority Christians who stand as lone voices in their country and culture.  I am always a bit uncomfortable with the monolithic nature of my denomination’s demographic.  We are too safe and too comfortable.  The issues we fight about are too parochial.  "Worship wars" are inconsequential when you could lose your job or your life for speaking the Apostles Creed.  So with seriousness, I am requesting the transfer of any Christian who comes from a context of persecution.  We need you.  We need to you to:

• Teach us what it is to sacrifice.
• Remind us to pray for the worldwide church. 
• Show us how risk for the sake of the gospel. 
• Raise our missional horizon.
• Show us that we are blessed.

And whether you relocate or not, we pray for you. 

      “The more often you mow us down the more in number we grow; the blood of Christians is seed.”                              -   The ancient church father Tertullian

     I recently read a book by Doug Saunders called Arrival City.  He writes about the final great human migration.  "A third of the world's population is on the move this century, from village to city, a move that began in earnest shortly after WWII, when South American and Middle Eastern villagers left their homes to build new enclaves on the urban outskirts."  The bottom line is that the whole world is becoming urbanized.  What the Western world has already done a century ago, the rest of the world will do this century.  Stunning facts:

• In 1950, 309 million people in the developing world lived in cities.  In 2030, 3.9 billion will.
• In 2008 half the world's 6.7 billion people lived in villages.  Between now and 2050, the world's cities will absorb an additional 3.1 billion people.
  
• By 2025, 60% of the world will live in cities.  By 2050, 70% will. 
  

     By and large, Saunders calls this a good thing.  Rural life as we know it in the West is mostly good.  But for much of the world, rural villages are home to extreme poverty (the affects of famine in East Africa, for example).  Farming for much of the world is subsistence farming, where you produce (if you're lucky) just enough to eat.  Subsistence farmers do not sell or export anything.  New urban economies will provide better lives for these villagers.

    This raises a number of questions - sociological, economic, educational, etc.  A few questions I ask:  Will people's quality of life really improve in urban areas as opposed to rural villages (beyond economic measurements)?  What will happen to rural cultures, values, and traditions?  What will this do to families?  And there are a million more. 

     A final question I wonder about.  What will this do for the mission of the church?  Cities are already centers of learning, culture, politics, and education.  Will the church be able to influence cities with the gospel?  Will the church care for massive influxes of urban dwellers?  I currently have a college intern who speaks Spanish, whose father is Peruvian.  As a college student, he is considering pastoral ministry.  Could we pour into him here in St. Louis, and raise him up in order to send him out?  To Sau Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, or Buenos Aires?