J.R. Briggs

I Choose the City

June 30, 2009

• Tweet

Dr. Francis DuBose, seminary professor and missiologist, died last week. You probably don’t recognize this man’s name, but he contributed much to the current shift in the Church today. Dr. DuBose will probably best be remembered for coining the oft-used terms “missional” and “mega-church.”

But he was more than an inventor of new words. He lived it. He was an urban missions professor at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary in San Francisco. His heart embraced God’s missionary heart for the world – and his life reflected it. He was so impacted by the heart that God had for the city that he wrote beautiful poetry.

Here’s one of his moving “missional” poems.

I Choose the City by Francis DuBose

I choose the city…
Not simply to live in it,
to see it,
to hear it;
But to touch it;
yes, to embrace it,
to hold it,

To feel the wild glory of its
pulsating soul,

To move over its wide,
hurried broadways,

To stand stilled and sobered
at the nowhere of its dead-end streets,

To be trapped with it in its
pain and problems,

To be at once chilled by its ill
and covered with its confetti.

I choose the city because I choose God,
Because I choose humanity,
Because I choose the divine-human
struggle–

The struggle which will be won
Not in the serene path through
meadow and wood,
among the bees and birds, and flowers,

But in the city street
Made by the hand of man
Through the gift of God–
Main Street: the final battle field,
The scene of the ultimate struggle,
Where man chooses right
Because he is free to choose wrong.

Babylon, dirty and daring–
Babylon, yes–
Babylon today–

Tomorrow…
The New Jerusalem!

Francis DuBose, Mystic on Main Street, Chapel Hill, NC: Professional Press, 1993, pp. 78, 79.

Posted in: Uncategorized