The majority of the world's non-Christians will not be geographically distant peoples, but culturally distant peoples who often reside together within the shadows of urban spires in the metro areas of every continent (except Antarctica, of course). Mission is no longer about crossing the oceans, jungles and deserts, but about crossing the streets of the world's cities...

The schism in the church that has pitted social and personal ministries against each other in the city, a tragic legacy of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy early in the twentieth century, still marginalizes the church's ministry in the rapidly urbanizing developing world.

Ray Bakke, A Theology as Big as the City (Downer Grove: InterVarsity, 1997), 13, 14.