City Taking - Peter Wagner

A growing consensus among Christian leaders is that the most strategic geographical area for the evangelization of a nation is the city. Two of those who have been clearly bringing this to our attention are John Dawson and Floyd McClung. The titles of their books, Taking Our Cities for God and Seeing the City with the Eyes of God, respectively, reflect this insight. Dawson sees the cities as the mind and heart of a nation. He says, "A nation is the sum of its cities." McClung says, "Cities are the mountain peaks of society; trends, ideologies and fashions are born in the fermenting cauldron of city life and then flow down and out to influence the populace."

Roger Greenway, an urban missiologist, in a recent review of these two books admits that traditional evangelicals should take note. He says, "Perhaps we have drifted, in practice if not in theory, from the Biblical world view that takes a personal devil seriously and defines mission as spiritual warfare against the active forces of darkness."

THINKING STRATEGICALLY:

As I have mentioned several times, the ultimate focus is world evangelization. Warfare prayer is not an end in itself, but a means of opening the way for the Kingdom of God to come, not only in evangelism, but also in social justice and material sufficiency.

As we look at the world, it is only natural that our attention is first drawn to nations as target units. That is why I strongly support James Montgomery's DAWN (Discipling a Whole Nation) Movement, a brilliant strategy to catalyze the Christian forces in each nation to evangelize their country by multiplying churches. A more advanced set of target groups are unreached peoples, and missiologists are discovering within each nation fairly large numbers of diverse people groups, many of whom are virtually untouched by the Gospel.

The other unit we need to look at when we develop evangelistic strategy, as I have mentioned, is the city. John Dawon says that if we are serious about discipling nations we must grasp their reality. "That means the Gospel must transform the spiritual, philosophical and physical life of a nation's cities." He then gives a challenge, which I echo: "Let's lift up Christ's banner in the dirtiest, darkest places. Let's take on the giant of the impersonal, looming city."

The most sophisticated strategy for evangelizing a city we have at the present time is Edgardo Silvoso's "Harvest Evangelism." In chapter 1, I told of Silvoso's first experiment in the city of Resistencia, Argentina. Through effective warfare prayer, the number of evangelical believers in the city doubled over the course of the "Plan Resistencia." Hallelujah!
Let's take our cities for the Kingdom of God!

Excerpt from C. Peter Wagner's book entitled, Warfare Prayer

C. Peter Wagner is The Chancellor of the Wagner Leadership Institute in Colorado Springs, CO, U.S.A. He also serves on the Board of Directors for Church Growth International.