In his three-volume, eight-hundred-page work, Center Church, the late pastor Tim Keller devotes the entirety of his second volume to city ministry. He believed it was a primary biblical strategy for the early church to evangelize cities and appeals to churches in the twenty-first century to invest once more in urban welfare.
Not everybody was big into city ministry in the first few centuries of the early church. Fourth century monks sought refuge in the desert to escape the corrupting influence of city life. Ephrem the Syrian (ca. 306-373) rejected this growing trend toward ascetic isolation. He formed with other like-minded believers in a voluntary order called “Members of the Covenant,” an intentional urban community of men and women committed to both celibacy and service to their community. They maintained a set-apart lifestyle while maintaining a vital connection to the wider populace.
Ephrem reportedly had an awful singing voice yet became a prolific hymn writer. Four hundred of his hymns still exist and are still sung in Syrian churches today. His hymns were primarily designed as teaching hymns, rich in theological content and intended to refute principal heresies of his day.
Ephrem’s confession leads us into prayer: