2) Even in Cities, Enter with People Group Eyes

You’ll hear this from virtually any experienced missiologist: Yes, just over half of the world’s residents live in urban areas now, for the first time in the history of the world. But that doesn’t mean we chuck what we’ve learned about unreached people groups. In fact, the best missiology would say, “enter with people group eyes.” How does this turn out? Well if you enter a city like Murcia, Spain and just focus on planting churches “among the people of Granada,” then I can tell you with 100% certainty the people that will come: All of the South and Central Americans who have moved there thinking they would find jobs. Of course, many of them do NOT. So now you have, in Granada, Spain, a church filled with unemployed Ecuadorians and, that’s great, but Spaniards aren’t going to fill that church. Oh you might get 1 or 2 Spaniards who are diplomatic enough to enter a church filled with 40 Ecuadorians. But the Spaniards are much more closed. In fact, some might even go so far as to say they are downright unsociable. But with people group thinking, we’re saved from that. People group thinking helps us understand: They aren’t really biased or ethnocentric. It’s just that “birds of a feather flock together.” But here’s the even worse part: In the middle of the city, there are 35,000 North Africans (mostly Moroccans) who, I assure you, won’t EVER consider coming to an evangelical church service. They just won’t do it. So you see, one big problem with focusing only on metro areas is that the strategy will fail because it’s flawed concept. When entering urban areas, one need to approach the city with people group thinking. If it doesn’t work, then we can always drop it later. But in examples like these, people group thinking is critical.