Dr. Richard Florida is Director of the Martin Prosperity Institute and Professor of Business and Creativity at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. According to his website, Dr. Florida “is one of the world’s leading public intellectuals on economic competitiveness, demographic trends, and cultural and technological innovation.”
In a recent essay in the March 2009 issue of The Atlantic, Florida makes the following observation:
Perhaps no major city in the U.S. today looks more beleaguered than Detroit, where in October the average home price was $18,513, and some 45,000 properties were in some form of foreclosure. A recent listing of tax foreclosures in Wayne County, which encompasses Detroit, ran to 137 pages in the Detroit Free Press. The city’s public school system, facing a budget deficit of $408 million, was taken over by the state in December; dozens of schools have been closed since 2005 because of declining enrollment. Just 10 percent of Detroit’s adult residents are college graduates, and in December the city’s jobless rate was 21 percent.
To say the least, Detroit is not well positioned to absorb fresh blows. The city has of course been declining for a long time. But if the area’s auto headquarters, parts manufacturers, and remaining auto-manufacturing jobs should vanish, it’s hard to imagine anything replacing them.
When work disappears, city populations don’t always decline as fast as you might expect. Detroit, astonishingly, is still the 11th-largest city in the U.S. “If you no longer can sell your property, how can you move elsewhere?” said Robin Boyle, an urban-planning professor at Wayne State University, in a December Associated Press article. But then he answered his own question: “Some people just switch out the lights and leave—property values have gone so low, walking away is no longer such a difficult option.”
Perhaps Detroit has reached a tipping point, and will become a ghost town. I’d certainly expect it to shrink faster in the next few years than it has in the past few. But more than likely, many people will stay—those with no means and few obvious prospects elsewhere, those with close family ties nearby, some number of young professionals and creative types looking to take advantage of the city’s low housing prices. Still, as its population density dips further, the city’s struggle to provide services and prevent blight across an ever-emptier landscape will only intensify.
Dr. Florida’s recommendations for how the government might reshape the economic landscape in response to this present crisis are just as startling. Among them, “the removal of homeownership from its long-privileged place at the center of the U.S. economy.” He recommends replacing the American Dream with “a bigger, healthier rental market” with the objective of making mobility a viable option for workers and making “the economy as a whole more flexible and responsive.”
Nancy..ok. Whatever their wording is…they are a solid bunch of folks sharing and living the gospel in Detroit…
Well, I think the gospel indeed CAN save Detroit, but will it?
In much of the Bible, it is understood that more and more sin brings more and more wrath. In the OT, God sends his wrath on cities that are in diobedience to the Word of God. God destroys Sodom and Gemorrah for their sin. The problem is sin on all kinds of old classic and new innovative levels.
The problem is sin and the solution is the gospel.
Sorry Mike, I had gone to the link you posted to see what they were all about and I was actually commenting on their mission statement and purpose.
It just made me think of hippie activist/idealism with their wording…Like the late 60’s – early 70’s…*: )
Nancy,
Were you referring to me as “ME”? Can you restate what you’re saying—I’m not really sure.
“meet them where they are at…and then urge them not to stay there..”
Wait…I think I said something kinda like that…*; )
“So, if God wants to save Detroit yes the gospel can do that on all three levels…if He doesn’t, He’ll just instruct everyone of His children to move elsewhere…”
Nancy,
I don’t think that “holistic discipleship” sounds hippiesque. . .
The Gospel must be holistic. There’s no part of our lives that can be untouched or separate from it. I don’t have my “christian life” and then my work life, social life, etc. The Gospel must saturate every part of life. Which is why I believe the Gospel can help heal Detroit…if we allow ourselves to be used by God and obey Him with the love and gentleness that is necessary in reaching the lost. We can’t talk down to people or treat them as victims but must meet them where they are at…and then urge them not to stay there..
ME,
“Our heart in planting this church is to join with those fighting to provide an opportunity for the people of Detroit to live out their purpose as God’s beloved creation. ”
In accomplishing this…God will definitely be glorified. but again, it is in the people not the place, where the glory shines.
Holistic Discipleship…sounds a bit “hippiesque”…*; )
I believe the gospel can redeem Detroit in all spheres – social, political, economic, etc. – and I believe we need to begin to think as missionaries (indeed we ARE missionaries if we’re CHRISTIANS) and I think we need to begin partnering NOW with people who are engaging in redemptive work already.
Check out http://www.mackave.com
Eric and his group are solid believers living out the gospel in the poorest zip code in the city. We need to seek the Spirit’s direction in how each of us and how our communities can begin to engage in the work of Jesus in the city.
Mr. Golder,
Bravo! I love the way you think, my brother!
Chris,
Again, great points! We do need to leave the comfort of our padded pews and get to preaching repentance and faith on the streets. Read Romans 10. It is the perfect plan for evangelism. If we claim to have the words of life, we MUST proclaim them everywhere. “And the lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.” (Luke 14:23) Merriam-Webster defines “compel” as “to drive or urge forcefully or irresistibly.” This is much more than just going out and giving a namby-pamby “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life message.” People are dying every day without Christ and will spend eternity in Hell. This should HORRIFY us! When we show people that they have violated the law established by the eternal, Almighty, infallible, and Holy God, and allow His Holy Spirit to convict of sin, then the good news of the Gospel falls right into place! Does God love us? Of course He does. Does God have a “wonderful plan?” When you understand that all of life is for the glory of God, yes He does have a wonderful plan. But that doesn’t mean that it will line up with what our humanistic vision of what a “wonderful plan” is. Does God have a “wonderful plan” for Christians tortured in Orrissa state in India? How about in North Korea? Saudi Arabia? Syria? Pakistan? What does that “wonderful plan” look like?
“For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:9) We may never know His ultimate plans for us until we see Him face to face. But isn’t that what faith is all about? Yes, the Gospel is the hope we need and seek. It is also the cure for our social ills. But let’s make sure that we have the focus on the primary goal. “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.” (Westminster Shorter Catechism) When we fulfill that purpose, no matter what the outward trial, we are satisfied in Him! And THERE is peace!
Hi Nancy,
I’m not saying that this is the same as having hope for our country, but I can’t help but think of the zealots that were around in the time of Christ. There they were waiting, with their swords in hand, for the Messiah to come and bring freedom, leading an army to restore their nation. Indeed the Messiah did come, not with a sword of steel, to bring political and economic freedom. But with the power of the Gospel, and in the Spirit of the Lord, to bring Spiritual prosperity to all who believed. The nation itself still stayed in oppression, including the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70.
Whether or not God still desires our nation to succeed, I do not know. What I do know is that we are promised trials, and suffering in our life, and that God wants our faith and service, no matter the circumstances around us.
And in all this, I rejoice.
Chris,
Amen, Amen, and Amen!
May I add: “Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”
Good questions, Paul. It breaks my heart to see a city that I love turn into such a black hole…especially when just a few years ago there was such a feeling of positivity.
Can the Gospel save Detroit? I take it that was a rhetorical question…because, of course it can. The question is–will it?
Detroit is a “doughnut city”–everything is happening in the suburbs outside of it with a big hole in the downtown center that we leave forgotten and empty. I find that a lot of people bemoan Detroit and the state of it but haven’t been down there in years. If the Gospel is going to save Detroit than it means that all the churches in the suburbs are going to have to step out of their lily-white comfort zones and go downtown. Leave the comforts of the sanctuary and preach on the streets, talk to the prosititues and homeless, care for the broken, church plant on Cass Avenue instead of in Troy and take the $2 million that was going to be used to update the sanctuary and invest it in downtown.
I attend a fairly large church in Troy. I enjoy it. But I feel a sense of shame every time I walk in and look at the big video screens, hear the band and see the comfortable chairs and realize that the millions of dollars spent making the worship center more “comfortable” and “conducive to worship” could have been spent fulfilling the Gospel’s call to go out and serve the least of these.
I do believe that God wants his people to prosper in every area of their lives…He wants us to be conformed to the very image of our Lord Jesus…What will get us there is of course the Holy Spirit. Our eyes may see a bumpy road…His eyes see the completed work. While we might see in our nation hard times in places…there will always be a place of refuge for us, if we look to God and accept it.
“He recommends replacing the American Dream with “a bigger, healthier rental market” with the objective of making mobility a viable option for workers and making “the economy as a whole more flexible and responsive.””
It makes me think of “It’s a Wonderful Life”, when George went back into Bedford Falls, and caught a glimpse of a booming, Godless, rental society.
As far as the question “Can the gospel save Detroit both spiritually, economically, and politically?”, history shows that once the Gospel works it’s power to save Spiritually, the economic and political environment benefits also.
My question is: Does God desire any economic or political success in the Unites States?
Hmmm, Good question…I guess that would totally depend on God. Once we are in Christ…we enter the phase of mind renewal…Study of the Living Word of God…prayer and fasting, even community involvement and outreach (in part) serve to bring us into agreement with God…So, if God wants to save Detroit yes the gospel can do that on all three levels…if He doesn’t, He’ll just instruct everyone of His children to move elsewhere…and then the answer would be no…I believe that God is more interested in His children than in any physical place. Sometimes it takes our discomfort for Him to get our attention and move us to action.