"The cutting edge of the church in the city is lordship evangelism - Jesus proclaimed by word and deed, Jesus our justification and our justice.A biblical call to repentance and faith in Christ does not call us away from the city; it calls us to live under the lordship of Jesus Christ in every area of the city. Personal commitment to Jesus is foundational. But on that foundation we erect a model home, living out the full implications of the gospel for urban Christians.Isn't that how Paul saw it as he wrote to Corinth? I have heard people say that Paul never dealt with social, political or economic issues. But that doesn't square with the list of pastoral questions he tries to answer in I Corinthians - ethnocentrism, the social gap between rich and poor, lawsuits, sex and prostitutes, slavery, homosexuality, women's liberation.Cities like Corinth or Colomb don't let you get away with dividing your Christian life into safety zones - one zone labeled faith, another the world. Ask Malcolm X. American racism turned him from talkative Christianity to what he saw as real brotherhood in Islam. Ask the Black Christians of Soweto. A plea for peace without justice can turn good news into cheap grace. "I was sick and you did not look after me; I was under the ban and you never visited me." Ask the Blacks and Latinos who come to Urbana. Ask them why you have to search so hard to find their brothers and sisters on the mission field abroad or on this platform at Urbana or on the mission boards represented at the armory. It's hard to hear "Go into all the world" when the same voices don't also say, "Come into all our neighborhoods."Paul saw a social revolution brewing in the things we now identify as "church matters." A simple table meal to remember the Lord's death shatters social hierarchies long held sacred. At Corinth the wealthy apparently were making the Lord's Supper into a "private dinner party" (I Cor 11:21). And when the meal was over, the haves were drunk and the have-nots were hungry. Paul calls for a new kind of urban social order to be built from the table and the sacriflce that had prepared it (I Cor 10:16-17; 11:18-19). Wealth in the body of Christ becomes an opportunity to serve, prestige a call to humility.None of this is easy in the city. Political and social networks fit together too tightly. You may find yourself one day a missionary pastor in a Central American country, the members of your congregation united in their commitment to Christ but divided in their political allegiances. Late one evening a knock may come to your door, There in front of you stands a member of your congregation, a brother in Christ with strong anti-government sympathies. There is a bullet in his arm; blood drips down his coat. "Pastor," he asks, "can I stay the night with you?" Suddenly your Christian response to a brother becomes a political decision.More than ten years ago I was on a mountain in Korea. I was up there for three days of evangelistic meetings at an isolated village with no electricity. I was talking that night on the love of Christ and how Christians love one another, and at the end asked if there were any questions. An old man raised his hand. "I have a question, sir," he said. "If Christians are supposed to love one another, how do you explain what happened in Birmingham?"There we were on the top of the mountain in the middle of nowhere and this old farmer with a horsehair hat asked me about Birmingham. In the barbershop in the village that day, they got a newspaper, the only newspaper this village ever got. There it was spread out in front of the barbershop and all the villagers were reading it. On the front page was a picture of Bull Conner letting the dogs loose on the Black Christians praying in Birmingham, Alabama. Suddenly I discovered that the questions of racism and reaching unreached peoples are not two separate questions.In 1890 the Southern Presbyterian Church sent to the Congo a man who had learned these things. William Henry Shepherd spent twenty years in Africa. Respected by the Africans, he was called "Shoppit Monine, the Great Sheppard." Working among the Bokuba people, he showed a cultural respect and sensitivity for things African seldom seen among missionaries of his day. He knew how large this simple gospel was.The Jesus that he preached was revolutionary in Affican society. For example, he resisted the custom of killing a slave to accompany a recently deceased master. He protested against the practice of trial by poison. When the Belgian government imposed a heavy food tax on the people, he protested. The tax forced the Africans to work for Europeans to pay it, a subtle form of colonialism. In addition, the government used soldiers who were cannibals to collect the tax. Shepherd discovered that the tax-collecting efforts were a cover for slave raids and for cannibalism. His protests brought the entire issue to the attention of King Leopold of Belgium. Strained relations with the government and with his mission finally brought him back to the States in retirement in 1910.Sheppard had gone to Africa when the White Churches had almost no interest in Africa for Christ. Sheppard was Black, one of the 113 American Blacks who served in Africa from 1877 to 1900.Who can tell how many Bakubans heard the word of Christ and believed because they saw Sheppard standing for the oppressed and the sinned against. How many there saw Sheppard himself as one of those sinned against? Could it have been that which brought them to Jesus Christ and to the cross?What deed done for Christ will yet stir the hearts of the urban world's unreached peoples to hear the word spoken by Christ? And who will speak it and who will go do it?"(To which I respond:  Lord, here am I...please send me!)