"Taking Charge of Cities"
Fletcher Tink

I think that I have just read the oddest of Jesus’ parables, narrated in Luke 19. It is strange because it talks about “minas” being dispersed evenly to ten recipients, one each. I have no idea how much a “mina” is, nor what these guys were supposed to do with it, other than “put this money to work.” Do you bank it? Loan it out at shark interest rates? Invest in a 401(c) account? Buy some income generating property? Start a microenterprise business? I think I’d be tempted to lay down the money to buy myself some life insurance on the nobleman himself, checking out actuarial tables as to the probability of his return. If he dies, or overextends his absence, we’ll declare him a missing person, and I get the payoff. You see, none of us like the guy anyway.

However, the hotshot nobleman gets a promotion and returns as king and wants up-to-the-minute accounting of the monies he had doled out.

The one guy produces a 1000% profit; the next, 500%, and the poor third fellow shows up breaking even. He didn’t lose the money, but protected it judiciously. However, apparently, all hell breaks lose, and he is stripped of his one measly mina which is turned over to the big investor who threatens to kill him. Talk about over-reaction!

I wish I had known the first two guys, so that I could have slipped them some funds to deposit in their productive schemes. Certainly beats my investment in social security!

But what amazes me are the rewards. No medals; no cash payouts; no huge retirement settlements or severance pay. Instead they are awarded “cities”, ten and five respectively.

Given our modern bias against cities, I can hear their collective, “Oh, no, do we have to.” More work, not less! Cities with their clanky ugliness, their busy confusion, their violence to body and soul, and their “in-your-face” temptations. “And this is all we get!”

I think most of my Christian friends would say, “Thanks, but no thanks! I’ll retire to a lakeside resort and consider our relationship terminated.”

Could it be that faithfulness is the precondition to stepped-up ministry in cities? That the payoff of a life of service is that we now have acquired the skills and perspectives to help save our cities? I wonder.

No, I don’t! Because tucked away in my memory are lots of vivid example of friends who have “taken control” of cities. For instance:

1. Joaquim Lima was a Cape Verdian who immigrated as a young man to Argentina where he studied for the ministry. He was assigned to the most southerly city in the continent [I need to get the name of this city] and the Nazarene church closest to Antarctica, of any in the world. Eventually he became long-term district superintendent of the Nazarene work in Brazil.

Apparently, he left an impression there in Argentina, because thirty years later while he was serving in his retirement as founding pastor of the Cambridge, Massachusetts Portuguese-language work, he was notified and invited by the city leaders of that distant Argentinian community to return for their dedication of a street to be named after him. Now there’s a testimony to a legacy of influence in a city!

2. Dr. Manny Chavier served for more than forty years as Cape Verdian pastor of the International Church of the Nazarene in New Bedford, Massachusetts. His influence not only touched the people of his city, but extended throughout the region.

However, in the 60s, when the cities were being torched by the racial confrontations of a troubled time, Chavier, personally, was the man who, because of his influence and courage, walked between antagonistic factions out on the streets, intent on mayhem, speaking words of reconciliation and saving that city from the flames. Here is man who, at great risk to his person, took control of a city because in it, he had invested well.

Rev. Aguiar Valvasourra has carved extraordinary ministry out of a traditional Nazarene church in Campinas, Brazil. The mother church of our Brazilian work, Campinas Central, has far outstripped every imagination of its missionary founders. Now, over seven thousand people attend, and a sanctuary is being built for 15,000. This church has organized forty-six additional churches on the side, while growing exponentially at home.

Their latest project is the development of a Nazarene university, approved by this last General Assembly. Already, one hundred professors, fully qualified and already affiliated with the Church of the Nazarene have stepped up to present their services as new faculty. Dr Jerry Lambert, executive director of the International Board of Education, envisions that within ten years, this venture will grow to be the largest Nazarene institution of higher learning in the world.

When Valvasourra was the foremost candidate for the general superintendency of the Church of the Nazarene, he withdrew his name from consideration, shocking the electors. Perhaps he understood that his commission was to “take control of the city” not just at the ecclesial level but in the very fabric of the formation of Christian thought and culture in his God-designated urban community.