{"id":335,"date":"2013-04-24T00:00:07","date_gmt":"2013-04-24T05:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.twocities.org\/blog\/?p=335"},"modified":"2013-04-24T11:15:55","modified_gmt":"2013-04-24T16:15:55","slug":"why-cities-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/?p=335","title":{"rendered":"WHY CITIES MATTER"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Why-Cities-Matter-Culture-Church\/dp\/1433532891\">WHY CITIES MATTER?<\/a><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" id=\"main-image\" style=\"display: inline; cursor: pointer;\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/ecx.images-amazon.com\/images\/I\/419CgtS-lOL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Confession time, but before I do a few words&#8230;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>I love the emphasis of getting Christians to consider the importance of living out the gospel in the city.\u00a0 I love big cities.\u00a0 I have spent much time in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and Boston. \u00a0Overseas I have enjoyed Paris, London, Belgrade, Vienna, Zagreb, Venice, and Salzburg. \u00a0Growing up, I spent many happy days in Detroit.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>My confession of sorts is that I also love rural America.\u00a0 In fact, I have been privileged these past three years to serve as an interim pastor at a terrific, rural church.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>The push toward planting churches in cities is a wonderful thing indeed, but I wonder if it is now getting too much attention.\u00a0 All this made me both excited and somewhat reluctant to read <em>Why Cities Matter?<\/em> by Stephen Um and Justin Buzzard.\u00a0 Would this &#8220;big city&#8221; pastor duo be imbalanced in their love for the city, or would they help me navigate this issue more intelligently?\u00a0 To my delight, I found the latter.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Why Cities Matter?<\/em> is not a long read at about 150 pages (not including the notes which are worth reading!)\u00a0 It is more than I expected: solid research mixed with accessibility, engaging writing style, and lots of stuff to stew over.\u00a0 I recommend it highly.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>As somewhat of a &#8220;book cover snob,&#8221; let my add my kudos on the design. \u00a0It is simple, elegant, and creative. \u00a0Well done Mr. or Mrs. Graphic Designer!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WHY CITIES MATTER? Confession time, but before I do a few words&#8230; I love the emphasis of getting Christians to consider the importance of living out the gospel in the city.\u00a0 I love big cities.\u00a0 I have spent much time in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and Boston. \u00a0Overseas I have enjoyed Paris, London, Belgrade, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","category-cities"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=335"}],"version-history":[{"count":28,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":341,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335\/revisions\/341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}