I’ve asked before …
https://brigada.org/2011/04/15_6929
but the request didn’t yield a single website or list of any kind. How is it that we invested such great energy in 1996 praying for “100 Gateway Cities of the 10/40 Window,” yet today, it seems no one can direct me to *any* material following up on such a huge campaign? What’s more, some agencies and churches have been critical of people group thinking in urban areas. They have pointed out, perhaps accurately, that people groups break down in these huge “containers of people.” A leading people group researcher told me yesterday by phone that sometimes, in cities, we find people groups pocketed with their people group cluster or affinity group. So — are there lists anywhere that tell us to what extent certain people groups have moved to certain cities? For instance, see the 100 largest cities at…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_urban_agglomerations_by_population_%28United_Nations%29
[that link will wrap; if you have trouble reassembling it, just go to this Brigada item on the web by clicking the link at the end of this item, then click on the link on the web version of this item]
Imagine the impact it would have on these areas of the world if we could just make an impact on those 100 cities.
I don’t get it.
If you could help me find data — any data — that would help us guide churches in adopting unreached cities (and the people groups that live within them), I’d be very grateful. We’re helping with a major initiative at an upcoming convention beginning July 5th and we’re really love to give them tangible data, real options, and valid prayer items. Please just click “comment” below. If your response is confidential and you’d rather it not be published, just email me at
Dlucas@TeamExpansion.org
but please realize I’m down to the wire — July 5th is right around the corner. Thanks.
Doug
Doug,
this is one I have wondered about as well. It was Viv Grigg and a couple others who came up with the original formula for identifying the 100 gateway cities back in the 90s. I contacted him once, but he said it just kind of drifted off his screen. The ‘gateway’ language has been taken over by social scientists examining key urban areas for ‘immigration’ — ie. Toronto is a ‘gateway city’ because of the 1000s of immigrants every year. I use this description for a gateway city when giving a lecture: “Gateway Cities are those significant centres for reaching unreached people groups who treat these cities as social, political and economic hubs for their region. A Gateway City has less than 2% evangelical Christians. Planting churches in these cities can lead to significant outreach to unreached peoples in surrounding towns, villages and rural areas.”
There was also an article in EMQ maybe 5or7 years ago where an author was playing around with a new formula for designating gateway cities, that I thought was interesting, but it is very difficult to ‘search’ EMQ, so I haven’t been able to find it again.
just a few thoughts, though no real hope for you at this moment :)