The Four Worlds Model and the Urban Church

Abstract

Our overarching context, the socio-cultural framework out of which we experience the world, largely determines the resulting content of our lives, the way we see the world. Our views about God tell us more about ourselves than about God, for they expose the context out of which we operate and the resulting content that emerges. David R.Hawkins suggests that “context is all inclusive of the totality of the person and the process—the mind, the body, the style of the practice, the person, the setting, the room, the building, the city, the country, the state, the continent, the world, the sky, the planets, the galaxy, the universe, the mind of God.”  Thus the parameters of context extend from the mind of man to the mind of God, from the smallest to the greatest. An atheist, then, merely reveals a context so small that there is only room for the content of personal ego. The same can be said of the theologies, urban theories, and methodologies of ministry that emerge to meet the challenge of urban ministry. If their context is too small, many well-meaning programs are found to be ineffective. Thus, the need arises for a perspective of wholeness to meet the global challenges of the task at hand. In this article I will introduce a conceptual model for understanding today’s urban world and the challenges that such an understanding poses for missiology in an urban context. I will first introduce the model and then discuss its implications to the mission of the urban church.