In For the City [the book Carter co-wrote with Darrin Patrick] you allude to Tim Keller’s teaching on Jeremiah 29. When did you first become aware of that teaching, and how did it shape your view of the church’s role in the city?
I remember he wrote a book on that teaching of Jeremiah 29. I read it the same time I had this sabbatical. God’s telling the people when they’re in captivity, “Look, don’t go in there and isolate yourselves from these people who have treated you so poorly, ransacked your city and taken you captive. Don’t hate them. You go in there and you love them. You be for them. You pray for their welfare. And you pray for their flourishing.” Shalom is the word he used. The word shalom means universal flourishing. “And so go in there and be for their educational flourishing. Go into the city that you’ve been taken captive, and be for their cultural flourishing, and their artistic flourishing and their financial flourishing. Don’t try to hurt them, but be for them. Engage in that.”
We began to ask the question, “Why does God do this? Why is He asking His people to do this?” And I think it’s just a reflection of His love for us. And that’s how we are to be the light of the world. It was during this time when I was reading Amos and was reading the Old Testament that I read this teaching that Keller gave, and I said, “Man, what an awesome thing for us to do as a church.” Because I think a lot of times Christian churches have an isolationist identity that’s us against the world, us against the city, and we’re against the city. We’re the church—church good, people bad and city bad. Really, God’s saying the opposite of that: “No, you engage with these people for the love of the Lord.”
Why do you think the church hasn’t followed that teaching very well, and how should it go about changing that?
I think probably the biblical concept comes from James, where we’re supposed to keep ourselves unstained by the world, and in an attempt to protect ourselves and our children from the evils of the world, we built these massive churches and isolated ourselves from the city. But when you really look at the ministry of Jesus, his ministry was not to draw a massive crowd and then build a building and start programs for the kiddos. When you look at the way Jesus Himself did ministry, He gathered a small number of disciples, trained them, discipled them and then released them into the world to go and make other disciples. So I think the answer to the question “How do we change this?” is we need to quit looking at the church as a place of protection from an evil world and instead start beginning to look at it as a global missionary force where we equip the saints for the ministry and then release them to go make a difference for the gospel.
Read the full interview in the May/June edition of Outreach magazine.
