Cycling as a way of life and mode of transportation is on the rise in city after city around the world. For those looking to dip their proverbial toes into the waters of urban cycling the prospect at times can be rather intimidating. What kind of bike should I ride? A skinny-wheeled high-end road bike? A fixie? A chunky city commuter bike? A department store bike? How about fashion? Do I have to wear brightly colored skin-tight Lycra outfits? Can I just wear normal clothes? How do I lug my gear around? The Bohemian Guide to Urban Cycling takes the reader into the world and workings of cycling in the city to uncover the essentials to how to join in on the cycling revolution. Your bicycling guide on this journey is a card-carrying bohemian living in Portland. By using the bike-crazy city of Portland as the backdrop, this book covers all of the basics needed to bike comfortably in the city and to know what the heck you’re talking about ... from bike selection to fashion to bike lanes to gentrification and more. After reading this you’ll know precisely what to ride, how to ride, what to wear, and how to talk like an insider. Well, maybe not, but it’ll still be a fun journey together. But this book is more than about urban-cycling fashion and high-end bikes. It also plunges headlong into conversations about mobility, equity, race, and justice. If there is going to be a book about all-things cycling in the city it must delve into these uncomfortable topics in order to develop a more holistic view of urban cycling. The bottom line must be to affirm all kinds of people pedaling through the streets of our cities on anything that rolls.

The Bohemian Guide to Urban Cycling

Benesh, Sean

Urban Loft Publishers

“The sense of being lost, displaced, and homeless is pervasive in contemporary culture. The yearning to belong somewhere, to be in a safe place, is a deep and moving pursuit. Loss of place and yearning for place are dominant images …” (Brueggemann, The Land) Fragmentation, mobility, dualism––these forces work against our belonging, and work against our richly dwelling in the places we live. Add to these the rise of “virtual” place and relationships, and our sense of displacement only increases. It has been difficult to embrace a call to life as mission in this world under these conditions, and equally difficult to embrace a call to place. Are there “sacred” places? If every place is sacred, does the word lose its meaning? What is it that God loves about place? Can architecture contribute to our ability to engage in a place? How do experiential human questions like “belonging” intersect with a theological lens? Does a biblical view of place imply an ecology and an ethic? How do pilgrimage and place relate? How can the arts assist us in place-making? This book addresses these questions and more, in a lively dialogue between theology and culture.

No Home Like Place: A Christian Theology of Place

Religion & Spirituality

Hjalmarson, Leonard

Religious Studies

What role does the church play in shaping the built environment of the city? Or does it? Blueprints for a Just City is an exploratory journey looking at the ways in which God’s people have played a pivotal role in not only influencing life in the city, but in the actual built environment as well. Together we will delve into the parameters of the Gospel, the role of common grace in the city, and God’s involvement in shaping urban form. If God’s heartbeat is for justice and equity, as part of the Gospel story, how then does the church immerse itself into the city influencing and shaping the built environment? The outcome of Blueprints for a Just City is to collect and synthesize blueprints for what a just and equitable city can look like when marked by the Gospel.

Blueprints for a Just City: The Role of the Church in Urban Planning and Shaping the City’s Built Environment (Metrospiritual Book Series)

Christian Books & Bibles

The twin forces of globalization and urbanization are transforming the context of global missions. While the Western church grapples with the challenges of evangelism in an age of globalization, new evangelistic opportunities are emerging that blur the conventional boundaries between local and global outreach. Even as the rise of a persistent post-Christendom presents new challenges for the church, global migration is rearranging the religious and ethnic makeup of our cities. Cities are centers of constant change, and in an urban world, current missionaries will need to become adaptable. Furthermore, contemporary missions strategies will need to engage a world organized along networks that may transcend geographic boundaries. Painting a picture of evangelism and church planting in our urban and global world, Crossroads of the Nations utilizes contemporary data and together with missionary accounts – both actual and recent – tells a story of transnational missions impacting our world.

Crossroads of the Nations: Diaspora, Globalization, and Evangelism (Urban Ministry in the 21st Century)

Looney, Jared

Learn how to grow transformation in your city. More than half the people on the planet live in cities. It’s not just our future that’s urban––our present is. What does the Bible say about cities? How should the church go about reaching those billions of city-dwellers? Where do our cities fit into the Kingdom of God? The church needs a comprehensive, gospel-centered response to these questions as we seek to obey God’s call to “seek the welfare of the city” (Jer. 29:7). In Sowing Seeds of Change, Michael Crane weaves together theology and praxis, creating a framework for understanding your city, a means of crafting a vision of what it could be, and a way forward towards transforming it. Sowing Seeds of Change proposes an approach to the city that is both holistic and Christ-centered, offering churches a balanced, compassionate, well-researched model for ministry in diverse urban contexts. Whether you’re a pastor, missionary, seminarian, or urban church member, you’ll be challenged, edified, and equipped by Sowing Seeds of Change.

Sowing Seeds of Change: Cultivating Transformation in the City (Urban Ministry in the 21st Century)

Crane, Michael D.

Often times the Bible is associated with rural pastoral settings. The Israelites wandering in the desert wilderness living in tents, David playing his harp for sheep out in the pasture, and Jesus strolling along dusty roads between remote villages. But what if I told you that the Bible is an urban book and that the center stage for where the drama of biblical events played out was truly the city? Starting in Genesis, all of the way to the end of the Bible in Revelation, the whole trajectory of humanity and the focal point for the Missio Dei was and is urban and not rural. When Jesus erupted into history through the womb of a teenager he lived in the most urban region in the world. The early church was birthed in the city and spread to the largest most influential cosmopolitan urban centers of the day. For the first-century Christian, to be a follower of Jesus was synonymous with being an urbanite. The Urbanity of the Bible explores the urban nature of the Bible and displays the urban trajectory of the Missio Dei. The city was and is a dominant theme of the setting, backdrop, and purposes of God throughout history. As the world today has flooded to the cities this book is good news. We were meant to live in the city.

The Urbanity of the Bible: Rediscovering the Urban Nature of the Bible (Urban Ministry in the 21st Century)

It all begins with being called a ... copycat. We were born to be copycats. From the age of 4 months, humans copy everything they hear and see. God hardwired us to learn this way. From butterflies to the Beatles, Coca-Cola to Xerox, examples of mimicry are everywhere. Even the Mona Lisa can’t hide her smile from being copied. We can’t escape from becoming copycats! What if we embraced our gift of copying instead of refusing to learn from others? For each season of our lives, we are given processes to endure with mentors to see us through. By embracing our ability to copycat others, we become bursting with potential, positioned to pioneer something altogether original. The Bible shows believers how God has been the catalyst igniting countless generations of copycats before us, changing the world in the process. Trusting God sets off a chain reaction of events through His followers, inspiring other copycats to follow. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, who will copycat you? “This book is an intriguing addition to new thinking on the dynamics of discipleship. Mimesis, or ‘copy-catting’ as Phil calls it, is an intrinsic part of what it means to imitate Christ and therefore to follow him. By cleverly mixing theology with social science, Phil helps us understand a basic aspect of relationship with Jesus.” Alan Hirsch Founder of Future Travelers / Forge Missional Training Network. Author, The Permanent Revolution, Untamed, and The Faith of Leap “God-given potential, deep spirituality, mentors who strategically walk with us––these are the makings of immense creativity and influence. Copycat leads us into this life-consuming adventure of discovering our originality and living out God’s unique plan for each of our lives. Along the steps of this journey Phil Zarns guides us in an engaging, personal way, with a style that is authentically thoughtful and entertainingly creative.” Jim Bradford General Secretary for The Assemblies of God, USA

Copycat: Finding Our Originality

Zarns, Phil

As the tide has turned and a wave of church planters have washed up on the shorelines of city centers many are learning to navigate the intricacies of urban life for the first time. Many of today’s North American church planters are migrating in from the suburbs, smaller cities, and rural towns as they are confronted with a culture, lifestyle, and built environment that is more foreign than they thought ... or would admit. What do church planters need to know about the city in order to be effective? Exegeting the City was written for you, the church planter, to expand your understanding of the city. This will aid you in the process of contextualization as you discern how to embody, teach, and proclaim the Gospel in the city. Besides, your city needs you to do this. Throughout the book you will be exposed to different trends that are reshaping the city both in culture and urban form. This in turn influences how people experience and live in the city which then has direct bearing in how you plant a church. Exegeting the city today is of critical importance.

Exegeting the City: What You Need to Know About Church Planting in the City Today (Metrospiritual Book Series)

Small Voice, Big City sets urban mission, the mission of Jesus, in a broad context: people, land, and the kingdom of God. This book focuses on the power of the gospel -- often outwardly weak, small, foolish -- to heal the nations and redeem earth's cities. The gospel proved powerful in the first-century world, when the church was born; it still is today.

Small Voice, Big City: The Challenge of Urban Mission (Urban Ministry in the 21st Century)

SNYDER, Howard A.

God created us as individuals, choosing us to be his own, giving us a purpose and calling for our lives, and endowing us with the gifts and the community to carry out that mission. We are created—and chosen and called. There is God’s work and there is our work. And God demonstrates to us his power and sovereignty through his work—while all we can do is wonder and stand in awe! Nonetheless, even in the midst of such awe, we have the work to which God calls us—and it is that work that we are to do. But we do that work, knowing that God is God—and we are not! So we recognize we won’t bring in the kingdom of God. But, rather, we are to contribute our specific and small work to that kingdom—recognizing that God calls us to be faithful.

The Most Powerful People in the World: The City-Changing Power of Called Believers

Linthicum, Dr. Robert

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