This week I attended a seminary class that concluded with a tour of the city’s revitalized neighborhoods. As a class, we contrasted the various ways the course content was reflected in the city’s evolving history, infrastructure, and demographics. Early in our tour we walked into a church that had recently taken up shop in a once abandoned warehouse. Ironically, once inside, you could have easily forgotten you were in a downtown church.

“This is our community room” our guide explained; “…a safe place for students to come and hang-out... We are a missional church.” I para-phrase some but the keywords are on-point. “Safe from whom,” I wondered; and “Missional to what mission,” I wanted to ask. Our guide’s explanation begged the question of who this church intended serve. Were they here to serve the wealthy, white students from the private college several blocks up the street or the black man I saw checking his mail at the apartment building across the street?

Gentrification is defined as the restoration and upgrading of deteriorated urban property by the middle classes, often resulting in displacement of lower-income people. Across the country, where poverty is concentrated in the heart of many of our cities, in many neighborhoods, this is exactly what is happening. Urban renewal is pulling many affluent, many white, and many church people back into the city. As a result, many poor, many non-whites, and many un-churched people are being pushed out.

I suspect our guide knew little about gentrification; and she, no doubt, knew even less as to why church leaders chose this neighborhood to be their new home- unless of course her husband was the developer who was redeveloping the dilapidated houses around the corner. Did this church move downtown to serve its current city-dwellers, or is this church awaiting its new city-dwellers? Unfortunately, by all appearances, I suspect the latter.

I confess that drawing attention to a problem is not a solution, and, therefore, offer Bob Lupton’s suggestions wherein he describes Gentrification with Justice:

Christians who believe that their highest calling is to love God and love their neighbor are the very ones equipped to infuse into our culture both values and actions that will have redemptive outcomes. We can buy crack houses and renovate them for residences for mission-minded couples. We can structure deals to develop mixed-income housing. We can create innovative housing policies that will induce developers to include lower-income residents in their plans. We can pass ordinances that that will give tax relief to seniors on fixed incomes so they can remain in their homes. We can establish loan funds to give down payment assistance to lower-income home buyers. If we are both caring and thinking people, we can use our influence and resources to develop the means by which “the least of these” can share in the benefits of a reviving city - and foster healthy growth at the same time. We can harness the growing tide of gentrification so that it becomes a redemptive force in our cities. In a word, we can bring about gentrification with justice.

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Jason leads the advancement efforts at Logos Academy; an inter-cultural, Gospel-centered, community school located in York City, Pennsylvania. Jason and his family are members of the City Church community. In addition to his full-time ministry, Jason speaks to groups about Christian stewardship, generous giving, and effective ministry advancement. You can learn more at The Generous Life.