an Invitation to See with Fresh Eyes

Our cities are crammed full of heaven. They are filled with more beauty and goodness than we know what to do with. Our cup runneth over.

The whole world is a burning bush ablaze with God’s glory, and our cities are cathedrals full of grace, if we can only see it.

The birth of Christ reveals that God is Emmanuel—God with us. God is with us in all things, in all ways, always.

This means that the hope of our cities is not “out there”. It is “in here” among us, with us, within us, eager to be born. And like all good gifts from above, it is born from below. Yes, Word made flesh is love with skin. And love always seeks embodiment. It insists on the warmth and vulnerability of flesh that one day yields the terrible beauty of the cross. Jesus, is God’s yes and amen to a world that has long since forgotten its belovedness.

This magazine is dedicated to helping leaders become midwives to the holy in all things and undergo a Gospel of love and mercy for a hurting world. That’s what we’ve been doing in vulnerable urban communities throughout the world for nearly 25 years.

We are more convinced than ever that the most powerful resources in vulnerable urban communities are the leaders themselves. What’s needed is a way of seeing, doing and being that frees us to do things we never thought possible.

There are four underlying questions we ask throughout this magazine.

There are four underlying questions we ask throughout this magazine.

See

Does our way of seeing call us out of the myth of scarcity into the liturgy of God’s abundance?

Do

Does our way of doing call us out of disembodied theory from above, into embodied practice, from below?

Be

Does our way of being call us out of rivalry into peacemaking?

Free

Does our way of seeing, doing and being call forth a community in mission who is free to love and serve?

Together, these questions conspire to help us become fully human. We might think of them as a human catechism which is the Gospel of Jesus.