“Love (Your City)”
by Jacob Bloemberg

Summary of Chapter 8

Chapter 8: People

  1. Stage of Development for organization serving city movement
  2. The movement’s leaders
  3. The movement’s people

Stage of Development for organization serving
city movement:

1.Explore: Leaders meet individuals/groups to learn, connect and share visions -> interviews; Leaders need relational/communication/event organizational skills
2. Formation: focused on creating a coalition strong enough to move on to the Operation stage
3. Operation:

  • The leader’s skills focus on decision making, people building, and motivation. 
  • Managing the diversity of decentralized teams is critical;
  • Working with different churches and denominations: a centered set thinking
  • Working with partners: maintain decentralized

4. Realization: The focus during this stage is to organize and mobilize prayer summits, prayer walks, prayer gatherings, congregational prayer, and personal prayer. Pray on site, pray at work, pray in church, pray at home, and pray while driving.
5. Transformation: Discipleship and presence-based prayer are the focus of this stage. New believers need to be matched with mature Christians to be discipled in their faith and mentored in their newfound life.
6. Replication: When Christians in other cities hear about the kingdom realization and community transformation experienced, they will come to see it for themselves and would want to take it back to their own cities.

The movement’s leader:

  1. CALLING-BASED LEADERSHIP: The leader pursues a life of calling to be used by God in His transformational kingdom work in the city.
  2. INCARNATIONAL LEADERSHIP: The leader does not just go to and do things for the community, but lives in the city and the neighborhood, working with civic leaders as well as the residents. He is here to SERVE; (do not go extreme otherwise you get burn-out; Pastor Jacob: ‘if you want me to stay, you have to pay’)
  3. REFLECTIVE LEADERSHIP: They invite critical feedback from others about themselves, their methods and models, and their communication and style. Leading by example, leaders become catalysts more by what they do than what they say.
  4. SERVANT LEADERSHIP: no “hidden agenda”. Trust will be gained if the leader demonstrates the altruistic posture of Christ, valuing others above self and looking out for the interest of others (Philippians 2:4).
  5. CONTEXTUAL LEADERSHIP: Models should not be copied and pasted from other cities, countries, and continents, but adapted to and developed in the local context.
  6. GLOBAL LEADERSHIP: The leader must be reading and learning widely, participating in global networks and gatherings.
  7. SHALOM LEADERSHIP: The leader works towards the well-being, abundance, and wholeness of the community, as well as individuals; Building trust and mutual understanding among church leaders, between church and city leaders, and between Christians and their communities.
  8. PROPHETIC LEADERSHIP: When it comes to broken systems and practices at the macro level of society, prophetic leadership is needed to speak to those in power and to speak with power, and IN LOVE; Specifically, speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves.

The movement’s people
Methods of gathering people for citywide movements

  • Love [Your City] Conference (full/half day) The purpose is to gather church/ministry/city leaders, to listen to one another, to inspire participants to join and start new initiatives, and to network the leaders for potential partnerships. The conference can be themed around a domain or a specific issue that is pertinent for the city at that time, such as environment, at risk children, poverty, social entrepreneurship, drug addiction, homelessness
  • Love [Your City] Tour: expose church members, leaders, pastors to the city
  • New Leaders Orientation: introduce new pastors to civic leaders, ministries, congregations
  • Urban Think Tank: Focused around one urban issue; gathers specialists, academics, and ministry leaders with expertise in the area of focus; presentations->discussions->agreements-> to formulate action steps 
  • Academic Seminars (one-week events): for students and practitioners who desire to gain academic credit or to gain further exposure.
  • Denominational Consultation: gathers churches from multiple denominational affiliations together with non-denominational churches to help refocus their urban vision and strategy.
  • Three-Day Consultation: Gathering a larger group (100- 200) of key people in the city to discuss the real pressing issues of the city, design programs to address those issues, and identify the major barriers for implementation -> to form a citywide catalyst for creating partnerships and launch new initiatives.

*Next chapter: Chapter 9: Love [Your City] Tool