Urban - Suburban Partnerships

Jeremy has been posting some notes from the Urbnet Summit. [Part 1, 2 and 3.] I specifically appreciated these notes from part 3:

Few real relationships with urban and suburban
· Scale of 1-10, the number is 3
· Expectation that urban should/must adapt to suburban way of doing things

BUT, our goal should be to Build Bridges that facilitate meaningful, reciprocal relationships

· Requires being in the room — and staying there — and having the hard conversations required to rebuild fractured relationships
· Cultivate (Rhythm) Relationships (by spending time with each other)
· Resources (calls into the city for help with “urban issues”)
· Responsibilities to understand each other’s worlds
· We need to think through how to interact with suburban churches and why do we want to work with them outside of the stereotypes.
· We in the city interact cross culturally all the time. God is equipping urban America due to the diversity that already exists in the city not the suburbs. Is there something we can offer to help get this issue out?
· Why do suburban churches outreach in the city but not vice versa?

Here are some thoughts I had to follow up with his notes:

- He mentions the expectation "that urban should/must adapt to suburban way of doing things." Context and culture are significant - and that expectation needs to be tempered. Cross cultural workers know from the beginning that context matters - urban and suburban cultures are vastly different. It is indeed not a one-size/one-model fits all.

- I love the idea that urban churches should outreach in the suburbs. That is very cool and I would love to see something like that happen. Any tangible ideas out there?

- "We in the city interact cross culturally all the time. Maybe the cities are one of the best places to find cross cultural workers and trainers.

- "God is equipping urban America due to the diversity that already exists in the city not the suburbs." No doubt, the global and urban migration is huge and represents an amazing opportunity to reach proximities of the world that could never be impacted before. But suburban diversity is certainly changing as well. Our suburbs might be unique but there is a huge blend of cultures in Howard County - take a deep look the next time you are at the Mall or at a public school. I imagine other suburbs that are co-located with large metropolitan areas are also seeing the same kind of change in ethnicity.

Related: SPACE activity on culture in our mall - Fall 2006.
Related: I have put some notes together for a potential breakout session entitled "Leading Out of the Global Matrix - World Cultures and Why Leaders Should Care" designed to engage suburban leaders in culture and context.