Breakthrough Help For Struggling Urban Churches

Many churches in low-income urban communities struggle constantly, always short of money and, even more important, lacking the leadership that would lead to thriving health and multiplication of the church’s ministry. Years, even decades, of hard work have failed to break this frustrating pattern.

Are low-income churches just doomed to forever struggle?

We don’t think so. Christianity is enjoying explosive growth in many areas of the world, almost entirely in areas of great poverty. So if it’s not poverty that is keeping urban churches from thriving and multiplying, what is?

We believe the problem is that in the U.S. and Canada, most urban churches are trying to do church in middle-class ways--ways that require lots of money, buildings, complex organizational abilities, and academically trained leaders. This suburban model of church, when transplanted to a low-income neighborhood, works about as well as trying to grow cactus at the South Pole. Suburban ways of doing church simply don’t thrive in the “soil” of lower-income urban neighborhoods.

The mission of Cities on Hilltops is to help urban churches navigate the transition from a suburban-style ministry that must be constantly propped up to new ways of doing urban ministry that grow out of the strengths of urban culture which can therefore thrive and multiply in the city.

The consulting process for our Cities on Hilltops track draws on our other Living Stones tracks, but is very flexible to respond to specific situations and give churches with limited resources the greatest possible value for their investment. 

Learn more at www.citiesonhilltops.org.