Ray Bakke may know more about urban ministry than any other evangelical. How he got to this point is proof that God knows better than we do how to weave together the disparate strands of our lives. Bakke's youthful ambition growing up in rural Washington State was to become a high-school teacher and coach. But when he attended Moody Bible Institute, he fell in love with Chicago. So instead, he became an inner-city pastor, first in Seattle, then in Chicago. A single congregation could not contain his vision or energy, however, and eventually the whole of Chicago, and later cities in general, became his parish.

Not that he entirely gave up on teaching. Bakke, an American Baptist, has taught Bible at Trinity College (Deerfield, Ill.), church history at McCormick Seminary, and urban ministries at Northern Baptist and Eastern Baptist seminaries. He still tries to read a book a day.

Bakke, 58, has served as senior associate for large cities with the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization; helped found the Seminary Consortium for Urban Pastoral Education (SCUPE), which trains urban pastors; launched the Seminario Biblico Hispano of Chicago; and helped found Evangelicals for Middle East Understanding (EMEU).

Officially, Bakke is senior associate of International Urban Associates, a Chicago-based network that seeks to empower God's people in the largest cities of the world. What Bakke really is is a lover, student, and teacher of cities the world over. His passion is mentoring urban ministers, helping them "exegete" cities—interpret their significance in light of biblical revelation and God's mission in the world. His newest book, A Theology As Big As the City, will be published by InterVarsity Press in May.

Most of your adult life has been spent in Chicago as a pastor and a teacher of urban mission. How did you start working internationally?
Every spring I'd get a call from an organization that had a plan to save cities. They would say, "Come to a hotel. We have a special plan for Chicago." I always went to those meetings and participated in their crusades, but I left feeling used and frustrated. I kept wondering if anybody would ever come to our city and say, "Teach us what you're learning."

Then David Howard asked me in 1979 to coordinate the urban track of the 1980 Lausanne Consultation on World Evangelism in Thailand. I said, "David, I may be too radical for the Lausanne movement. I don't fit the church-growth paradigm. But come and take a tour with me of Chicago." He did, and after that he was convinced that I should be the Lausanne urban coordinator. For almost 18 years I have been the Lausanne associate for large cities, a volunteer position.

People should study the city not because it's so different from the rest of America, but because it's pointing the way the rest of the country is going. It exaggerates behavior like a time-lapse camera.

Stop looking at the city as just a problem with poor, locked-out people. That's only seeing the victim pattern. See the city as the R&D unit for the whole church. What you see in the city is a new wave of churches that cross over lines of race, class, denomination, and language.

What happens in the urban consultations you conduct?
I've done consultations in over 200 cities. When they ask for help, I'll say: "Most of what you need to know is already in your city. Would you be willing to go ask every bishop in town, 'If you had to prove God is alive in your city, what would you point to to prove it?' Also, find a sociologist or somebody who really knows your city."

I get them to bring together their best models of urban ministry, and we teach each other what we're learning. I ask: "Who's doing evangelism? housing? youth? gangs? kids? seniors?" My role has been interpreting the city from Scripture and history.

You've been part of a support network in Chicago. What has its role been?
A group of us made a commitment to each other 25 years ago because we were watching colleagues get burned out by what was happening in the city. These urban pastors fresh out of seminary would have taken a course in counseling to learn about personality types; but they never learned how to exegete communities. Cities have personalities. Chicago is an industrial city; New Orleans, Boston, and San Francisco are cultural cities; Washington is an administrative city; New York is a commercial city.

So a group of us started meeting, and we made two covenants: to be friends and to teach each other what we were learning about the city; and, if necessary, to lay our bones down here.

What biblical insights do you draw upon for "exegeting" the city today?
For the last eight years I've been working with Pete Hammond on The Word in Life Study Bible (Thomas Nelson, 1996). I did about 1,200 articles on urban, ethnic, and ethical issues in the Bible-handling the 1,250 texts on city and the 142 cities mentioned in the Bible.

I've learned from Ezekiel 16 that cities are family systems ["Thus says the Lord God to Jerusalem: … 'Your father was an Amorite, and your mother a Hittite. … Your elder sister is Samaria … and your younger sister … is Sodom,' " vv. 3, 46, NRSV]. Jerusalem's sister city in the north is Samaria, and in the south Sodom. The biblical family is urban, and it's made up of ethnic families.

Milwaukee and Chicago share a common water system. When Milwaukee was polluting it, Chicago took Milwaukee to court. And we share a sewer system with downstate cities who promptly took Chicago to court when we polluted it. Ezekiel 16 requires me to think of Milwaukee and Saint Louis as sister cities to Chicago; and Jackson, Mississippi, as a father to Chicago, because a million and a half black people from Mississippi came here; and Poland is our mother because 840,000 Poles came to Chicago—100,000 more Poles than San Francisco has people. To have a theology as big as this city, you have to take into account these "migrant" theological tributaries.

Where do suburbs fit into your theology of cities as family systems?
The suburbs are the daughters of the city. They are family. People move to the suburbs to get away, but there's no such place as "away" anymore. There's no escaping urban issues. We share common water, sewer, and economic systems, and increasingly the educational and tax systems. A threat to one is a threat to the other. Gated communities are now growing faster than ghettos, but people are beginning to realize they're not our salvation; a gated community is still a ghetto.

What theology forms and informs your understanding of the city?
The theology of John Calvin: that the Christ over us is Lord of the system, and the Christ within us is our personal Lord. As I understand Colossians, Christ triumphed over principalities and powers; we have to respect them, but we shouldn't be cowering and running away to the suburbs. We can take on the principalities and powers.

For Calvin, a city wall is a gift of common grace, a wall to protect all of us, not just the believers. A healthy school, hospital, and police department are gifts of common grace for the believer and the unbeliever.

I really believe in the parish concept, the church being part of its primary community. Pastors have two roles: pastor of the church and chaplain to the community—which means being a chaplain to every other pastor.

This perspective comes from Calvin's Institutes, Book Four, where he asked his deacons to monitor the public health hospital at Geneva to make sure it was caring for the poor. For Calvin, your tithe money and your tax money both belong to God; the one funds saving-grace institutions, and the other funds common-grace institutions, which are for all the people. The tithe and tax are both God's money. They're both important.

Do you ever get accused of being a "social gospeler"?
A suburban Christian said to me: "When you talk about urban evangelism, I get very excited. But when you talk about social action, I get very nervous. Isn't this the social gospel?"

So I asked him where he lives, and he told me—one of the finest suburbs west of Chicago. I said, "Why do you live there?" He said: "Good schools for my children. It's safe, quiet, clean. Good housing value. I travel a lot. I need a place where my family can be secure when I'm gone."

I stopped him and said, "Every reason you've given for living where you do is a social reason. If anybody believes the social gospel, it's you. You've committed your whole life to it. How can you tell those who don't have the systems you have to just preach the gospel?" And this man, bless his heart, said, "I never thought of that."

The hospital in my community is sicker than the patients in the system. How can it be wrong for us to build a better hospital, school, or police department?

We have to proclaim the gospel and seek the spiritual transformation of every person alive. But we also have to seek the social transformation of places that Satan has taken over and God wants liberated.

How did your urban missiology develop?
When I came to Chicago in 1965, the whole evangelical establishment was fleeing the city. All those people who believed that "greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world" were running away from the city—people who loved foreign missions, just when foreigners were arriving here in big numbers.

That's when I made the commitment to the city. I dropped out of seminary for a year and visited all 77 communities of Chicago, talking to priests, pastors, politicians. I started buying every book on Chicago and tried to understand what was going on here. And I began to develop a hermeneutic for the city: that God is sending the whole world to cities, not only to this city.

There were 63 nations represented in my Edgewater community on Chicago's north side 20 years ago—there are even more today. The high school has more than a third of the nations of the world in it: 2,500 kids in the high school, with over 50 percent foreign born. And they're teaching in 11 languages.

You've said that people who are interested in the city shouldn't start just a church, but ministries.
Ministries scratch where people itch, and they generate indigenous leaders and dollars. If you just start a church, you'll probably plant a church in the image of the planter, and you'll need an outside subsidy and people from outside, which will intimidate the insiders. It doesn't empower the people.

Here's where we need partnership. A lot of denominations give a grant to someone to pastor a church. As I learned 25 years ago, that puts my church and me on welfare. Instead, I want that money put in a bank as a line of credit.

When people ask for money from the Mustard Seed Foundation, founded and funded by the largesse of my brother Dennis and his wife, Eileen, we say: You need a line of credit to help fund 501(c)(3) [federal not-for-profit] ministries. Add a little funding from your church, and leverage it with additional corporate and private grants.

Now if you have an old church that's falling down, create your own community-development foundation with a building program and building manager. Offer classes on building, and charge your neighbors for taking the class. Instead of having volunteer carpenters come to fix up your building, get them to teach the classes.

In the process, they just happen to fix up your building. More important, you give your people skills. Start a rehab program, and employ people to fix houses. By employing your people, they get into the system. Soon you have dollars flowing back into the neighborhood.

Where are your models for this kind of ministry?
My heroes for urban community development are Ezra, Esther, and Nehemiah. Esther moved inside the system, ran for Miss Persia, and won. She married the king, accessed power, and changed the law. Somebody has to move off the map of the godly into the godless structure and change the law. Esther teaches us that it's not enough just to repent for sin. It's systemic, and the law has to change. We're into housing because justice is not being done. If you want justice, you have to change the law.

Nehemiah, on the other hand, got the government grant and started the biblical model-cities plan. He got everybody in the neighborhood to build the wall. Urban ministry does not start with just the saved; it starts with everybody.

When Nehemiah got the wall built, he discovered that he had an urban jungle; only the priests lived there. So Nehemiah went to the suburbs and said, "Choose one out of ten to come and live in the city." Nehemiah 11:2 says, "And the people blessed all those who were willing to live in Jerusalem." Then Ezra came and rebuilt the temple with his friend Zerubbabel.

I tell pastors, "You have not preached tithing until you have preached the tithing of your people, of 10 percent going into urban neighborhoods where the church is." If you have more than that, you'll intimidate the natives and gentrify the neighborhood. Tithe your people, and use your assets to buy property next to every playground and grammar school in your community so you can stash your people there to create positive webs of influence in the community.

Is there a typical profile of people who do ministry well in the city?
People have to be secure in their identity. Another secret is the ability to see that you don't build on problems to be solved; you build on islands of strength that are already there—the ability to see the capacities of what you've got and not lament what you don't have. A support group and family affirmation are critical.

I recommend to new urban pastors what I did in my own ministry: visit every other church in the community, meet the pastors, and say, "I've been driving by but never stopped to thank you for serving the neighborhood. Tell me the most important lesson you've learned about being a minister in this community" or "How has this community changed in your lifetime?" I got wonderful openness because I wasn't threatening anybody.

What do you think of the current interest within evangelicalism in racial reconciliation?
Better late than never. Back in the 1960s, when my commitment to racial reconciliation was formed, they weren't there. Racial reconciliation has been part of our family for a long time. My wife once had a black roommate at Moody Bible Institute, which was very unusual at the time. We adopted a black kid-not that we wanted to, but my oldest kid kept bringing him home. We finally adopted him after feeding him for six months. And we've spent our life as a family incorporating his roots. And now we have a beautiful black grandchild. Our way of working at racial reconciliation has been quiet; I haven't marched in a lot of parades.

The reality is, you can't talk reconciliation and continue to live in all-white communities, spend your money in white shopping malls, and take your vacations in white locations. If you're serious, ultimately you broaden your commitments, including the church.

What are your thoughts on welfare reform?
We have to have welfare reform. The welfare system was designed almost punitively. In 1968 when I coordinated Chicago's Reach-Out program for 30,000 kids as part of President Johnson's Great Society program, I saw how the system worked. When we'd interview the kids, they would ask: "Will my check be deducted from my mother's check?" The answer was yes. The kids would say, "I can't afford to work, because my mother is just going to lose benefits." That's criminal. The kids couldn't afford to get a paper route, because every dollar they made was going to be deducted from their mom's check, because Americans are afraid that poor people are getting rich with their tax dollars.

I had a plan to get all my congregation off welfare. Nobody wants to be on welfare. They hate it. It's very demeaning to have some white social worker come to your house, if you're a public-aid mom, and tell you what you can and can't do. We'd train them and get jobs for them. But the first time a kid got sick, they would go back to welfare to be able to get the medical card. Clearly, if we're serious about welfare, the biggest single deal we could do is say to the poorest of the poor: We'll insure you so that if you or your children get sick you have medical coverage.

There's hypocrisy, too, in this movement to reform the welfare system. Most of my family are farmers out West on dairy price supports. They benefit from agricultural welfare. The $40 billion worth of that support is at least equal to the welfare given as direct service to the poorest of the poor. Also, the same people who want their middle-class mothers to stay home and be full-time parents are demanding these poor mothers go to work at minimum wage.

The Democratic solution to poverty is more money; the Republican solution is less money. Neither is responding to the problem, which is a disempowered community and a disempowering nation that says we don't care about the poor.

When my brother Dennis did my income taxes, he said there's something wrong with a country that taxes me more than him. I agree with William Julius Wilson on the declining significance of race. We're resegregating on a class basis. What's happening is a growing gap between the haves and have-nots.

What about the church's role in welfare reform?
The vulnerable of society are the church's primary responsibility. Now, the reality is, as a tax-paying citizen I believe the church does not have this responsibility alone. This is not what I want mission dollars to go for. I want to spend mission dollars on evangelism. I don't want to have to do what I think the government is responsible to do when Bill Gates and all these people get their taxes reduced. There's something wrong with the richest country in the world expecting charity dollars, which are primarily our mission dollars, to pick up the task alone.

What should be done about guns and violence in homes and on the streets?
I grew up in a hunting culture. I got my first gun, my only gun, as a 12-year-old. It's a privilege to own a gun, not a right. Like automobiles, if you can train and license people to drive a car, you can do the same with a gun.

The community is armed, which means nobody is safe. Guns are killing kids and family members and not making it any safer for us as a people. It's ironic: I feel so much safer outside the U.S. I wish Americans had the privilege of traveling abroad where everybody's not armed and you can walk the streets at night.

What's your perspective on teen pregnancies, single-parent families, and the breakdown of the family?
You can't be a pastor and not be wounded by what's happening. In my church I had 12-year-old kids who had had sexual practice either way. There were blended families sharing one bedroom, kids abused by stepparents, visiting men, or older half-brothers. The kids didn't really know who they were sexually. So we had to teach the sanctity of body, sex, and creation, because so many families didn't have that as a norm.

In my experience, though, abortion is a middle-class, suburban issue. It's a lifestyle issue for them; kids are an inconvenience. Urban mothers want their children, especially black families.

The disintegrating family and absentee fathers is a sad thing. It's rooted in bad policies and sin, obviously. But if we wanted to get families back together, we could do it by not punishing a mother whose spouse is incapable of employment. Now it's so much more convenient to get the men out of the house so the wife can get on aid.

What is the mission of International Urban Associates?
IUA is a network which links associates in cities with each other. We walk alongside them, encouraging and mentoring them, and, if possible, providing them with grants we secure. We also try to find the next generation of visionary urban leaders.

What are you working on now?
We have four urban agendas. First, we run a think tank on Pacific Rim cities. From a missionary perspective, God is bringing the world from the Southern Hemisphere to the Northern, and the Eastern world to the Western. The United States is being turned around. We're no longer a nation facing Europe, but a nation facing Asia. The West Coast, where I grew up, is the front door of Asia.

The twin facts of the urbanization of Asia and the migration of Asians to the West tells me that God is preparing the world for an Asian Pentecost. Asians are the twentieth-century Jews in dispersion, and we should be interpreting those texts for them and saying, "God is scattering you." I'm thinking evangelization by way of diaspora: migrant streams—just like Alexandria and Babylon for the Jews—are reappearing. And we need to nurture them and link them. This is my missiology.

Chinese Americans are linked to 20 percent of the world's population back in the mainland. I've argued that ethnic churches shouldn't blend into the Chicago church picture. We should be building bridges to them, but we should be encouraging them to keep the bridges back home. Foreign mission in an ethnic parish means leveraging their influence for the liberation of the gospel in the home country.

Second, the Middle East has been a major agenda—empowering the Arab church in the Islamic context. I feel tied to it in a filial sense: it's the fatherland, if not a holy land, for me.

The third area is the Francophone world: 440 million people in 46 French-speaking countries, 26 of them African. We discovered more missionaries in Kenya than in 46 French countries combined, a bias toward Anglophile countries and an anti-Catholic bias on the part of many.

My colleague Glenn Smith and I started networking in French cities, and we now have three training centers: Paris, Abidjan [Côte D'Ivoire], and Montreal. And we put together a network of mission agencies. If Europe is going to be evangelized, it may come through the French-African scene, especially places like Paris, which is Africanizing rather rapidly. So much of the 10/40 Window [an imaginary rectangular box on the globe stretching from North Africa through Southeast Asia] is the bilingual French- and Arabic-speaking slice of North Africa. The gospel comes easier to these people through the French than the Arabic; conversion is less threatening. The problem is we have no French constituency in the United States.

The fourth area is the Latin partnership, 25 Spanish and seven Portuguese countries. Again, they are mostly Catholic countries struggling to be pluralistic. Within those countries is an indigenous struggle for autonomy and identity. I think we can help those folks.

If you could write your own epitaph, what would you say?
Isaiah 58:12: "Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in" (NRSV). I haven't been an urban builder, but I have been building coalitions of people with a vision for rebuilding their own cities.

Originally published in Christianity Today, March 3, 1997.

Copyright © 1997 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.
March 3, 1997 Vol. 41, No. 3, Page 36

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