Transforming Grace

It has only just dawned on me why our small groups have struggled to grow much beyond the original members of our congregation. We are trying to do small groups in a big city way in a settled community. We started in 2006 with two “growth groups” led by the clergy and meeting in their houses. We now have four groups, one of which multiplied from the other two and one which started from scratch.

In university towns or where the population is made up of young professionals and people are transient or at least trying to settle a small group is a good place to meet people and make friends quickly. Not so in a settled community. Many people in Blakenhall whom I come into contact with meet with their extended family and a select number of friends they have known since they grew up together. Social lives are settled, people don’t often meet in each other’s homes socially, but pop in for a chat and socialise at the pub or club. Our invitations to people to join our existing small groups meet with resistance because of the disruption this would cause to routine, social networks and meeting in a stranger’s house is just a plain weird idea.

Our direction of invitation must be reversed. We should ask, “may I come with a friend and join you in your home to learn about Christ and how to live for him together with your family and friends?” I have seen the potential for this in a number of situations where people have come to faith and have friends who are interested in Christ. We need to plant groups without trying to take people out of existing settled social circles. Instead, we should add a group leader and one or two members to such circles.

To make this work, some leaders must be “planters” who move from home to home as opportunities arise as in Acts 5:42, “And every day, in the temple and from house to house, they did not cease teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ.” So group planters must not be hosts, which is the mistake we’ve made by hosting at clergy houses.

I went to the CPAS Growing Leaders course training day on Saturday. The day was very good and, without having run the course yet, I would recommend it to anyone looking for resources to help develop leaders within the local church to have a growing Christ-likeness of character, motivation and priorities for life. The leadership development model is a very helpful summary of the CPAS philosophy.

As a result of attending the course, I’ve been encouraged to start think strategically about growing leaders in an inner city context. I’ve got four books lined up to read:

1. The habits of highly effective churches by George Barna (I read this when I first arrived in Blakenhall and want to re-read it)
2. Advanced Strategic Planning by Aubrey Malphurs (I started reading this when I arrived in Blakenhall but didn’t finish it)
3. Building Leaders by Aubrey Malphurs and Will Mancini (I bought this when I arrived in Blakenhall and I have never opened it)
4. Mentoring Leaders by Carson Pue (which was recommended at the weekend as the ideal companion to Building Leaders)

What makes the CPAS material promising in my mind is that it starts with the premise that leaders exist in every context. There are many young men and women I know in Blakenhall who are natural leaders and who would transform the church and the area if given the motivation, will and opportunity to follow Christ in a culturally appropriate way. The question is: as the church (nationally and locally) has given young male leaders very little to get excited about in the past (cold pews, Victorian hymns, ancient liturgies, men in dresses etc), how do we get over deeply ingrained conceptions of what church is and instead reveal, teach and model Christ in this context so that these young leaders want to follow him and lead others to follow him?

At one level it is as simple as being focused on Christ myself and boldly, lovingly leading individuals one at a time to know, trust, love and obey him so that they lead others to do the same. At another level there’s all sorts of things to think through about how best to do that and how the body will function so that people follow Christ together in the inner city.

I’ll start with George Barna later this week and see what ideas emerge.

I went to the second of three LANA (Local Area and Neighbourhood Arrangement) consultation meetings last night. LANAs are the latest initiative which shows that our government is “listening”, which in effect means the blind are leading the blind. The evenings show that people are not blind to the problems faced in Blakenhall but blind to the solutions.

Here’s how it has worked so far: Various representatives from Blakenhall were invited to attend three meetings of three hours each to prioritise the needs of the area. Amanda went to the first meeting where lists of concerns were drawn up by groups at various tables using a system something like speed-dating (10 minutes at each table) under the following headers:

1. Vision
2. Health
3. Crime and Community Safety
4. Education

Last night we did more speed dating to pick the top three priorities from the lists of over fifty. Here’s a representative list of the options from the first meeting:

Vision
Less petty crimes against property & cars
No tower blocks
More youth facilities
Community Cohesion
Policing to stop drinking on the streets

Health
Healthy eating - veggie / vegan
Drug, smoking and drinking eduction
Too many school pupils taking lunch at chippy (stop kids leaving school)
‘Life skills’ - respect agenda

Crime and Community Safety
Reduce burglaries, muggings
Young people not occupied
Get tough on crime

Education
Encourage respect
Deal with under achievement
Encourage productivity
Extra help at early stage
Role models (mums)

We were asked what we thought of the evening and I said “the meeting was optimistic but without any real sense of how issues of behaviour and community might be addressed”. On my feedback form I was asked three questions:

Q1. What has been the greatest improvement to your area in the past year?
A. Better street furniture and pavements

Q2. What has been most damaging to your area in the past year?
A. Disruption to community caused by repossessions and transient population

Q3. If you could see one thing happen in your area to improve things what would it be?
A. For people to love God with all their heart and love their neighbour as they love themselves (all the law is summarised in these two commands).

As the church in our nation has failed to reveal God in such a way that people will love him, fear him, listen to him and obey him, the government is trying to pick up the pieces by “listening” to the people who suffer the fallout. People know what’s wrong with our neighbourhood but without God in the picture the overwhelming sense I was left with last night is that the blind have been left to lead the blind. The educational programs set up with our tax money will fail to address the issues of the heart which lead to anti-social behaviour and cause general misery in Blakenhall.

I can’t make the last of the three meetings and I’m not sure of the value of my being there. I do have increased confidence that there is a will here to sort out the mess created by sin and that by persevering with the gospel the local church will make God known so that people will hate their sin, love God and their neighbours.

We have a gospel to proclaim
Good news for men in all the earth;
The gospel of a Saviour’s name:
We sing His glory, tell His worth.

Tell of His birth at Bethlehem,
Not in a royal house or hall
But in a stable dark and dim:
The Word made flesh, a light for all.

Tell of His death at Calvary,
Hated by those He came to save;
In lonely suffering on the cross
For all He loved His life He gave.

Tell of that glorious Easter morn:
Empty the tomb, for He was free.
He broke the power of death and hell
That we might share His victory.

Tell of His reign at God’s right hand,
By all creation glorified;
He sends His Spirit on His Church
To live for Him, the Lamb who died.

Now we rejoice to name Him King:
Jesus is Lord of all the earth.
This gospel message we proclaim:
We sing His glory, tell His worth.

Music: William Gardiner (1770 - 1853)
Words: Edward Burns (b. 1938 )

I’ve culled the table below from Mark Driscoll’s Radical Reformission and hope he doesn’t mind. It highlights the difference between routine presentation and reformission participation evangelism and has helped me think not only about personal, friendship evangelism but about how we should seek to grow our small groups.

It is obvious as I read the table that both types of evangelism involve some sort of friendship or sharing lives. The question Driscoll seems to raise is: at what stage should Christians begin to invest their time, energy and emotions in a relationship; before or after the conversion of their friend?

.

The difference between the two is not only the much earlier formation of a genuine friendship in the reformission model but the direction of mission. The routine model, I believe, highlights the relatively low investment in friendships outside church as the model seeks to draw people into the church culture before friendships are built. The second model highlights the model of getting out into the surrounding culture and investing real time, energy and emotion in making real friends (1 Thess 2:8). The difference can be shown like this:

This model should influence the way we think about growing our small groups. Rather than draw people into existing circles of friends, we should set up groups within existing friendship networks, meeting where they already meet, which is (in spite of all I have said against it) the essence of the homogenous church growth principle. More on this in a later post.

Thanks to Hugh Balfour for his honest, helpful and encouraging view of ministry in the inner city which arrived from Reform this week. Here he states the factors which militated against him getting out of Christ Church, Peckham when he wanted to move on to the greener pastures of suburbia but failed:

…as I look back I can see that other factors were at work, which I suspect are more common than we realise.

The first factor concerns why we wanted to move. This was principally because of burn out with the inner-city and fear about our children’s education. In other words our desire to move was not motivated by faith but by fear. Why do you want to move?

Secondly, I knew deep down that I was running away from what God had called me to. I had had a call to the poor since the early days of my Christian life, so whenever I went to look at a parish, I was always asking about the local council estate. I think that sub-consciously I was trying to con God that I could fulfil this call in some green and pleasant place. He wasn’t having any of it! When it came to the job I most wanted and seemed best qualified for, He abandoned me in the interview. Not an experience I would recommend! Since submitting to the Lord’s will and deciding to stay in Peckham, I have experienced a hugely increased sense of joy, peace and fruitfulness in ministry, and the Lord has wonderfully provided great schools for our children.

The lesson of all this is, trust God, and do not imagine that means we have to send our kids to terrible schools. He is our Father, He knows our needs and will give good things to those who ask Him (Matt 7: 7-12). I think this is one of the biggest battles we face, but once we learn to trust our Heavenly Father life becomes much simpler. The second lesson is that we are not professionals. The church is not a career path where we start in a small church, perhaps in the inner-city, before progressing on to a large suburban evangelical church. We are called to preach the gospel of the Kingdom. Nowhere does the New Testament command us to build churches; Jesus will do that. We have to be faithful to the ministry to which He called us, which will lead to suffering and persecution with great joy. Again if we have not got this clear we are likely to make bad choices, experience much heartache, and possibly make a shipwreck of our ministry.

I’ve said before that more must hear the call to inner city ministry, but perhaps that statement falls short of reality. Of course God is calling many ministers to the inner city but we respond by running from God’s call. Britain’s inner cities need more Jonahs of the repentant, obedient and not fearful kind. Thank God for men like Hugh Balfour.

The sad story of Emma Gough, the 22 year-old Jehovah’s Witness mother-to-be who died after giving birth to healthy twins because she refused to accept a blood transfusion, hit the headlines recently. She lived in Telford, 45 minutes from Wolverhampton and her death has affected many local people, including a sister of someone in our congregation, because the JWs are thriving in Wolverhampton with around 13 congregations. It must be so hard for Emma’s husband and family to be left with infant twins and no mother, especially when a simple blood transfusion would have saved her life. It must also be hard for those who adhere to the strict blood transfusion law of the Watchtower. I’ve decided to post this blog to help anyone who is affected by this teaching to ask; does the bible prohibit blood transfusions? If you are a Jehovah’s Witness, I have used the New World Translation in this work in the hope that you will read this post and think prayerfully about what the bible teaches.

I understand that this is a sensitive and controversial subject for Jehovah’s Witnesses. The Watchtower has changed its position on the use of blood products but maintains a policy of automatic self-disfellowshipping for any transgressors of this “law”.

I also understand that the “law” on the use of blood products stems from the letter to the Gentiles recorded in Acts chapter 15, which asks Gentile believers to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat strangled animals and from sexual immorality.

The context and reason for the Jerusalem council edict must be understood before we can answer the question “does the bible prohibited blood transfusions?” Two questions apply to Acts 15 before the issue can be properly understood:

1. What it is the context in which the Jerusalem council made it’s decision?
2. Why were the Gentiles asked to abstain from these four areas and not from stealing, lying, coveting and other such biblical laws?

In Luke’s account in Acts, James said to the council, most especially the circumcision party, that they must recognize and embrace Gentile believers as brothers and sisters in Christ, and not burden them or put stumbling blocks in the way of the salvation of other Gentiles by asking them to add to their faith in Jesus either circumcision or the whole code of Jewish practices (v13-18). At the same time, having established the principle that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone, without works (v8-11), it was necessary to appeal to these Gentile believers to respect the consciences of their Jewish fellow-believers by abstaining from a few practices which caused offence to them and which put stumbling blocks in the way of fellow Jews coming to faith in Christ. For, James went on to explain, Moses had been preached in every city from the earliest times and is still being read in the synagogues on every Sabbath (v21). In such contexts, where the teachings of Moses were well known and highly respected, Jewish scruples were sensitive and out of charity should not have been violated by Gentile believers. Paul applied the same argument in 1 Corinthians 8. He knew that food was not defiled by being sacrificed to idols and so it could be eaten by followers of Christ. Some immature Christians, however, were uneasy when they saw other Christians eat idol-food. Paul was, therefore, willing to stop eating meat for the sake of his weaker brother.

In the case of the four abstentions listed in Acts 15, the “weaker brother” appears to be the Jewish believers whose ceremonial customs, all matters of external purity, were being violated by the Gentile believers and this made the Jewish brothers uneasy, their conscience was defiled. So by eating meat sacrificed to idols, eating or drinking ‘blood’ and ‘eating the meat of strangled animals’ Gentile believers broke the ceremonial food laws recorded in Leviticus (Lev. 17:6-15). Sexual immorality was also a matter of Jewish purity, outlawed in Leviticus (Lev 15:16-33). For Gentile believers who came from a background of temple prostitution and general promiscuity the issue needed addressing. This sexual immortality was associated with cultic practice and so it overlapped with both the ceremonial and moral aspects of God’s law.

In essence, the Jerusalem council agreed that all believers in Christ are saved by God’s grace though faith. They are justified and made righteous by hating their moral sin and loving Christ for dying in their place on the cross. As for the law, it is divided into moral and ceremonial and whilst the moral law still stands today the ceremonial law is swallowed up in the cross as Christ fulfills the requirements of the sacrificial system. All believers are held to the moral law of God but not the ceremonial. Whilst the Jews who had come to trust in Christ is their Messiah knew that he had fulfilled the ceremonial laws and so abolished them, it still pricked their conscience when they saw their Gentile brothers breaking those ceremonial laws. God had already revealed through Peter’s visions in Acts 10 and 11 that the food laws were abolished under Christ. All things were now “clean” to eat because the ceremonial law was fulfilled in Christ. Jewish believers could now eat all sorts of meat and blood products, yet it left them feeling uneasy, so Gentiles were asked to abstain for the love of their Jewish brethren.

Carrying this principle forward to today’s ethical dilemma created by the Watchtower, it is clear that blood transfusions do not fit the category of Jewish ceremonial law as no sacrifice for sin or guilt is performed in the donation of blood. Blood donors may believe that they are making a small sacrifice to make them right with God but the bible teaches that only one sacrifice is acceptable to God, the death of Jesus on the cross (1 Peter 3:18). Blood given for transfusion and the blood of animals used in sacrifice are not in the same ceremonial category.

So, do blood transfusions fall into the category of something believers should abstain from because of the uneasy conscience of some? It might be true that Jehovah’s witnesses feel uncomfortable with the idea of having the blood of another person pumped into their veins. The question remains, does the Bible ask people to abstain from the practice of blood transfusion for this reason?

I believe the teaching of Jesus in Matthew 12 sheds some light on the situation. The disciples go into a grain field, pluck heads of grain and eat them on the Sabbath. The Pharisees are angry because Jesus’ disciples are breaking the Sabbath law “do no work”.

Jesus’ reply takes the following line of argument:

1. The priests “worked” every Sabbath in the temple and so “broke” the law yet remained innocent because their temple work took precedent over the law not to work on the Sabbath. The authority of God’s law allowed them to work (v5).
2. Jesus himself is greater than the temple system, he fulfills the law for people and has authority to allow them to do acts of mercy on the Sabbath (v7)
3. Mercy takes precedent over sacrifice (v7)

To prove his point, Jesus then healed a man with a withered hand, on the Sabbath in the synagogue (v9-13) and the strict law keepers wanted to kill him, not for showing mercy but for breaking the law which said “do not work on the Sabbath” (v14). Yet, the same Pharisees would work on Sabbath by rescuing a sheep from a ditch! And Jesus said that a man’s life is worth more than a sheep’s. So, as healing people is a work of re-creation, Jesus himself taught and demonstrated that mercy takes president over sacrifice.

Presuming that someone still argued that the laws of Leviticus 17 stand today, that they were not swallowed up in the sacrificial death of Christ, and that blood transfusions break those laws, Jesus teaches and demonstrates that healing someone is more important than keeping such laws. Jesus “went through the land doing good and healing all those oppressed by the Devil; because God was with him” (Acts 10:38). Saving the lives of people and healing them falls into the category of mercy. Jesus said “I want mercy, not sacrifice”. It is, therefore, necessary for believers to show and receive mercy, to heal people, before adhering to any ceremonial laws on blood.

If you are a Jehovah’s Witness I hope this gives you the courage to accept a blood transfusion as an act of mercy and not to be concerned about breaking ceremonial laws concerning blood.

This extract from If you don’t know me by now reveals an incredible inconsistency in Sikh thought…the teaching of the brotherhood of humanity and yet the prohibition to marry outside the same caste, let alone the same race. Here’s more of Sathnam Sanghera’s inner turmoil as he decides whether or not to break the news to his parents about his relationships with English girls and to tell them that he wants to be free to marry whom ever he likes:

In desperation, I resorted to looking around my family for someone who might at least support me in the event of a confrontation with my mother. My brother was a natural person to consult, but relationships weren’t something we had ever discussed and I worried he would tell her. I thought I’d found an alternative when, during an interminable wedding, a respected elderly friend of the family remarked: ‘You know, we have to move with the times when it comes to marriage. We can’t behave like Punjabi villagers any more.’ But just as images of a white wedding flashed through my mind, me in morning suit, Laura Ill white, my family in the pews, he added: ‘For instance, if one of my sons wanted to marry a girl who wasn’t the right caste, I would try to understand it.’
The right caste?
He would TRY to understand?
The man had enjoyed a successful career in Britain, had spent nearly thirty years in Britain, and this was how far he’d come. The message came through loud and clear: marrying someone who was not a Sikh was the very worst thing you could do…

Despite this, sometimes, tired out worrying, I would allow myself to think positively. Sometimes — encouraged by friends — I’d decide things weren’t that bad. The Sikh faith, founded by Guru Nanak, was liberal. It taught monotheism, the brotherhood of humanity, rejected idol worship, the oppressive Hindu concept of caste, and had tolerance at its heart. Its gurdwaras were open to anyone; it was unique in respecting other religions and other people; Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth guru, had preached equality and proclaimed that his disciples should ‘recognize the Indian race as one’. Besides, Mum must have worked out what was going on…

But these moments of optimism were the worst. With metronomic predictability, a crash would follow. I would visit Will and she would present me with gold jewellery she’d bought for my future bride, or would insist on a particularly depressing arranged marriage meeting. The worst crash came when she rang in tears, announcing that a great scandal had afflicted the family in India: a pretty and lively cousin of mine had run away to marry a boy. When I pressed for further information, it transpired, between her sobs, that the problem with this boy was not that he was from another religion, or from another caste, or the wrong age, or had bad prospects, or was even the wrong height or skin colour. The scandal, it turned out, was that he was - get this - FROM THE SAME VILLAGE AS THE GIRL. Which, apparently, is a no-no.

More than anything else, this story brought home the bleakness of my situation.

I can’t work out whether this makes the biblical teaching that all are one by faith in Christ, Jew nor Greek, male nor female, Punjabi nor English, attractive or unattractive to Sikhs. The demolition of race and caste boundaries through faith in Christ must be attractive. Yet, abandoning parental tradition must make such betrayal almost unthinkable.

I’m reading If you don’t know me by now, by Sathnam Sanghera, a memoir of love, secrets and lies in Wolverhampton (London, Penguin, 2008 )

Living as I do in the midst of the solid Punjabi Sikh community Sathnam grew up in, the book is a helpful insight to Sikh life, family values, culture and religion and the tension second generation British Sikhs feel as they become torn between two cultures. What gets me is the truth of Proverbs 22:6 Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it. To illustrate, here’s an account of Sathnam’s struggle in his secret relationship with an English girl…

…gradually, I realized I was deluding myself I was in deep, and had to start thinking about whether I should tell my mother I wasn’t going to have a marriage, arranged or otherwise, to a Jat Sikh girl.

And of course, when I was with Laura in London, there was no debate. Every time she made me laugh, thrilled me with her appetite for life, it was obvious I had to do it. …But the moment I considered the consequences and practicalities of actually talking to Mum about it, I lost my nerve.

As time passed, it became evident that if I did anything it would have to be dramatic. I would have to throw the equivalent of a petrol bomb, and if the petrol bomb didn’t work, I would have to throw another. Among the options I toyed with were: taking a foreign posting with work and disappearing with Laura; presenting my marriage to Laura as a fait accompli; having a baby — if there’s one thing Mum understands, it is the importance of looking after children; marrying a Sikh girl who was in a similar situation, and then living with our respective white partners in secret; putting it about that I was gay, but then presenting the much more palatable reality of my heterosexual relationship; and contracting a near-fatal illness, during which I declared that my family’s acceptance of my relationship with Laura was my last dying wish … only to recover suddenly…

You see, when it comes down to it, death is a more appetizing prospect than crossing my mother.

I’m on page 59 and wonder whether or not he’ll depart from the way he was brought up.

I wonder just how many “Christian” kids suffer such a painful wrangling with secular western culture? Timmis and Chester state that 1000 teenagers leave the church each week in the UK. Perhaps our kids are so culturally immersed, and without a biblical perspective, that succumbing to secular cultural values is easy for them. They do not depart from the way they were trained because they were trained by the world not the word.

Racial segregation is troubling our government and there is a strong desire to do something about it, but what can the government do? I live in the multi-cultural constituency next door to the one where Enoch Powell was MP for 24 years. He left the Conservative party to join the Ulster Unionists in 1974 and made his infamous “rivers of blood” speech 40 years ago yesterday (20th April 1978).

Trevor Phillips, the chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), marked the 40th anniversary of Enoch Powell’s speech in an address on the matter of racial segregation in the UK. Phillips pointed out that Powell’s predictions of violence between races had not come true but that

we have seen the emergence of a kind of cold war in some parts of the country, where very separate communities exist side by side… with poor communication across racial or religious lines.

Wolverhampton has been described as less of a city and more of a collection of tribes and villages, with around 80 ethnic groups. Our local community action group organises an annual fun day, where community groups set up stalls and promote their activities. There is the the scouts (white, middle class), the Caribbean association, various Asian ladies well-being groups, an Asian dance group, a gospel choir and others. At the last two fun days St Luke’s church was the only multi-cultural group. I don’t expect it to be different this year.

they sang a new song, saying, “Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.” (Revelation 5:9-10)

There is little or nothing the government can do. This multicultural government wants social cohesion without God. This will not happen because faith and cultural identity are so closely entwined in many ethnic groups. In Malaysia it was said “to be Malay is to be Muslim”. In Blakenhall, to be Sikh is to be Punjabi. The Church of England is hardly an exception to this rule. I am regularly embarrassed by how white and middle class the members of the clergy are and this is reflected in our churches. There are signs of change at the top and at the fringes. The most famous bishops in the country are arguably Michael Nazir-Ali and John Sentamu.

Churches in multi-cultural settings need to work hard so that they don’t become homogenous but instead reflect the reality of Revelation 5. As Christ redeems people by his death for their sin he makes them members of kingdom so his reign is seen on the earth.

Tim Keller said churches need to work hard on making the leadership of churches multi-cultural. Our church wardens are Jamaican and God has been pleased to answer our prayers for ministry trainees who are not white and middle class. One is coming from Ghana and the other is an Asian South African. It will be much harder work for the leadership to understand each other due to a lack of shared cultural assumptions, but the hard work will be worth it for Christ’s sake and glory. Perhaps, then, the government will take notice.

Here’s two quotes, the first from Total Church and the second from Jonathan Fletcher’s recent Reform paper (it arrived in the post yesterday) Back To The Future. Reforming The Church of England - Learning From The Past, both highlighting the same problem…evangelical ministers are scared of the inner city.

First, Chester and Timmis:

A church in a prosperous town with 27,000 inhabitants received over 60 applications for the post of assistant pastor. At the same time a church in the north of England with an established evangelical ministry serving a city of several hundred thousand people could not get one application for the post of assistant pastor. People sometimes claim it is a question of calling. They do not dispute the validity of ministry to the poor, but feel their calling is to the rich. That is not Luke’s pitch to Theophilus. And it does not explain why God apparently calls far more people to prosperous areas than he does to the poorer areas of the nation! In reality the only call in the Bible is the call to the way of the cross, the way of service, sacrificial love and suffering. (Total Church, p80)

And Jonathan Fletcher:

By the same token, it is rather sad that evangelicals have got a bad reputation of not going to Urban Priority Areas, such that when St Nicholas’ Tooting was advertised as an evangelical church only two people applied for it. We will not win the country unless we can stick with those sorts of places. The model that Holy Trinity Brompton in London has given us of planting in existing parish churches that are about to close and giving them new life is remarkable. We must not lose those opportunities.

If enough leaders say this, perhaps an increased number of ministers will get a heart for the inner city. On the other hand, as Paul writes, how are they to call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? (Romans 10:14).

The figures quoted above, in light of the gospel, should bring tears to our hearts, if not our eyes, and move us en masse to the inner city.