February 9, 2025 • 32 mins
In this powerful episode of Bleeding Daylight, global city transformation expert Hugh Brandt challenges traditional views of faith and work, revealing how professionals across all sectors can meaningfully contribute to community flourishing. Brandt discusses the importance of understanding one's work as a critical part of God's larger kingdom narrative, emphasizing that every profession—from dentistry to cybersecurity—can be a platform for positive cultural transformation.
Drawing from his decades of international experience, Brandt explores the concept of “tzadikim” (righteous leaders) working collaboratively across seven societal spheres to bring about systemic change. He shares inspiring examples from cities like Abidjan, Denver, and Worcester, where Christians are moving beyond individual focus to create tangible improvements in education, healthcare, economic mobility, and community development, ultimately demonstrating that the gospel is both proclaimed and lived.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:08):
Wherever there are shadows, there are people ready to kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.
This is Bleeding Daylight with your host, Rodney Olsen.
Welcome and thanks for listening.
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(00:30):
There are dozens of other episodes waiting for you at bleedingdaylight.net.
As we're more and more encouraged to live for ourselves and seek our own truth, what would it look like to engage in a bigger story that seeks the good of others?
How can we move from an individual focus to desiring the best for our city?
(00:52):
Today's guest may help us find an answer.
Today's episode features Hugh Brandt, a global city transformation expert whose remarkable journey spans four decades across three continents.
(01:13):
After beginning his career with Campus Crusade in Lesotho and Zimbabwe, Hugh has dedicated his life to urban renewal and leadership development.
As the co-founder of Cities Project Global, serving as the chief culture officer, he spent years helping city leaders understand how their work, whatever it may be, contributes to urban flourishing.
(01:36):
Hugh, welcome to Bleeding Daylight.
Thank you, Rodney.
Good to be with you.
I'm sure that you would have worked in countries where community is absolutely paramount, but how do you go about convincing people in Western countries where individualism is rampant that seeking the good of the city is worth pursuing?
It's a great question.
(02:00):
A good question for me living here in the United States, that we are such an individualistic country.
I think as we grow deeper into God's perspective, what God is calling us to do, that our human job description is to create culture that reflects His nature and character, then it's best done when we work with others.
(02:20):
It says in Proverbs 11, verse 10, when the righteous prosper, the city rejoices.
And the word righteous there is tzadikim.
It's plural.
So when leaders work together, when they prosper, it causes the city to rejoice or for the city to experience some level of shalom.
God is calling us to work well with one another.
(02:42):
So a key is to have a good understanding of God's worldview and what He's calling us to do as members of His body, no matter what our work is, no matter what sphere of society we're working in.
But I agree that we need to demonstrate this happens in the body of Christ, happens in the local church, but also in different parachurch organizations.
(03:04):
And then in many other ways where we can come together and work together.
And oftentimes maybe with people who might not believe exactly like we do, but they care about the same thing.
And we can then work with what we would call unlikely allies.
Scripture is full of those sorts of passages that you just mentioned about the city flourishing and talking to people as people groups.
(03:28):
And yet we tend to read scripture through this lens of being an individual.
We talk about Jesus as our personal savior.
There's all this language in the church that makes it seem like this is for our best life when it's actually talking to us corporately a lot of the time, isn't it?
I couldn't agree more.
(03:48):
Years ago, when I was helping to speak at a conference in Lome, Togo, God gave me this simple picture that in every city there's a volcano, but the volcano isn't full of lava.
The volcano is full of workplace leaders and God's wanting to see those workplace leaders mission with him doing what they're doing as doctors and nurses and lawyers, but doing it for his glory and for the common good of all.
(04:12):
But what I've experienced in all these years is too often there's a lid on that volcano.
And part of that lid is the church where the church is not teaching that you don't have to be an international missionary to really serve God.
You can be a local dentist, you can be a school teacher, and God is using that to grow his kingdom, to bring change and transformation and shalom to that city, to that community.
(04:39):
We have often handed off the work of the gospel to those people who are paid to do that sort of thing, either pastors or missionaries or those working in various organizations.
And yet the statistics show that the overwhelming majority of people are not working in those places.
So if we leave it up to that small cohort, bringing the kingdom to this earth is not going to happen, is it?
(05:04):
No, it's not.
We had Barnett do some research for us about eight years ago.
Primarily it was done here in the United States with a few thousand people and discovered that approximately one to two percent of Christians work in the religion sphere.
Fifty-two percent work in the business or economic sphere, something like 18 percent work in the education sphere, then a smaller number in the family and the communication and so forth.
(05:30):
But can only one or two percent?
Is their work the only work that really matters to God?
Are they the only ones that would have this vision for shalom, for what God intended us to do?
So we're committed to mobilizing the entire body of Christ, not just those in the religion sphere, but the other 98 percent.
Take me back to that time when God started to impress upon your heart this need for us all to be involved in growing His kingdom.
(06:00):
Rodney, I went to Southern Africa as a missionary to the country of Lesotho, to a little village called Buttebute, and I was a secondary school teacher.
Turns out it was part of the overseas Cambridge system out of England, and it was one of the worst countries in the world.
Of all those that were part of that, it had the worst results.
In fact, I discovered that only seven percent of the students graduated from secondary school.
(06:24):
So as the students would stay in the room and we teachers would move around, I'd find myself standing there at the door waiting for the one teacher to come out and for me to go in to teach history or to teach science or even Bible.
But I find myself, of course, praying that these students would know Jesus, that they would find life.
But I also found myself praying that they could graduate from school, that they then would have the opportunity to have a good job and to have a family and to raise a family and to make a difference in that country.
(06:53):
Well, as I was doing that, God was prompting me to do that, but I can't say I had the theology to back it up.
Well, now I do.
Now I understand that God is calling all of us to see ourselves in mission with Him.
Rodney, I have to tell you, there's times when God prompts me, maybe speaking to a group of, again, workplace leaders who are not missionaries, and God prompts me to say, I apologize.
(07:16):
I used to think that what I did is what really mattered to God, while what you're doing in helping people with their teeth or you're a teacher, that it wasn't the same.
And I've had to say, I apologize that I had that wrong thinking.
Part of my growth has been to grow in my understanding of what God's Word is saying.
(07:37):
And then at times to apologize, but also times to say, I want to come alongside and help.
Rodney, one of the things that I used to say is, come and help, join me in fulfilling the Great Commission.
And part of it was, do it my way.
Well, now when I meet leaders, I say, what's God laid on your heart?
What's He calling you to do?
I would love to help if I can.
(07:57):
How have you seen this at work as you have started talking to people across various countries?
How have you seen it at work when people start to get a bit of an idea of what it is that God is calling them into?
When they begin to understand that God's wanting them to live out their faith in everything they do at home, at work, not just on Sunday morning or Wednesday night at the Bible study, it's transformational.
(08:26):
I've had some people, as we provide this teaching in French speaking West Africa, one of the city leaders said, why have I never heard this before?
I've been a Christian for 20 years, but I never understood this larger story.
I thought all that really was, was to share the gospel and make sure people are going to heaven, but not to see that I have a key role to play.
And right now on planet earth on this side of eternity.
(08:49):
So again, their eyes are being opened.
They're getting excited and it's motivating.
In that same city in West Africa, there is a man who retired, but he was an emergency room surgeon and he was a medical professor.
And when he understood this and got excited about it, he realized there was a part of this great city where there was no clinic.
He also saw that we need to provide better care for the people, better bedside manner than what I've experienced all the years when I was working as a emergency room surgeon.
(09:19):
So he helped build a clinic and it's functioning right now.
So people don't have as far to walk, but they want to go there because they're well cared for.
There's many stories of this.
I mean, even my city here, but around where people now say, wow, what I do matters and they're now doing it with renewed joy and understanding and purpose.
(09:40):
There seems to be some people who would break down the way that we reach out to this world into just sharing our beliefs and sharing the gospel as against those who would then say, but there's also this social gospel.
They would say that the two are completely divorced.
(10:00):
And yet what we see in scripture is a ministry to the whole person.
Can you talk to me a little about that?
Yeah.
You know, simply we use the words like good news and good deeds.
What if it's not either or, but it's both.
And that when we have good deeds, people say, why, why do you do that?
And we have the opportunity to communicate the good news of the gospel about Jesus.
(10:23):
But also when we have the opportunity maybe to talk about this, people will say, wow, and how do you live?
And so then they see, wow, you not only speak about it, but you live it.
And so we talk a lot about this, living this integrated life.
What we say, how we live, what we do, it all matters.
And people watch that.
(10:44):
You know, the old phrase, I don't care what you know until I know that you care.
And that's simple idea, but it's so profoundly true.
We believe the whole gospel, not a truncated gospel, only just your sinner and believe in Jesus should go to heaven.
But maybe the larger story, the idea that God created the world to represent shalom, his shalom.
(11:04):
But of course there's sin, but sin has not only impacted me, but it's impacted all of creation.
It's corrupted.
So now God is calling us to join in redeeming all of his creation.
Yes, people, but also all of his creation.
So again, this bigger story that it's not an either or, it's all.
I can imagine that as you start to speak to church leaders and to pastors, there could be a couple of responses.
(11:30):
One is, thank goodness.
Now I've got other people working alongside me for the furtherance of the kingdom.
But there's possibly others who, as you've already mentioned, have this idea of, no, it's got to be done my way.
And no, that's my job.
Are these the sorts of responses that you're getting?
How do leaders and pastors respond when you share this vision of a city flourishing?
(11:55):
You know, a couple of stories.
One is a good friend of mine, he used to be a dentist in Chicago, but he said, for so many years when I was there, I felt like a second class citizen church because I wasn't a missionary.
I wasn't a pastor.
He came out here to my city of Denver and then did become a missions pastor.
(12:16):
But he began to realize that he didn't need to be, he could have continued as a dentist and that his work did matter.
And it needed to be communicated that the dentistry in and of itself matters to God.
Rodney, you know, there's different workplace leaders' meetings that go on on a monthly basis.
They come together, they share business cards, they meet one another, they refer each other.
(12:38):
And I was attending one of these and I was in a group of about 40, but they broke us into smaller tables.
We're sitting at a table, we're talking about what we do.
And I talked about how for years I mentored young inner city men.
One man, he says, I don't want to follow you.
He says, I work for a company that provides cybersecurity.
That's all I do.
Well, when we finished and we were going back to the larger group, we had a few minutes and I said, wait a minute.
(13:03):
I said, tell me what would happen if you didn't offer this cybersecurity to the different companies in our city?
What would happen?
He says, oh, they'd be in trouble.
So I said, I want you to know that your work matters, that it's contributing to the shalom of our city.
Without you, we'd be in trouble.
And he said, no one's ever said that to me before.
(13:23):
I didn't know that what I do really does matter.
It's fun to see how people respond when you thank them for what they're doing and you explain that what they're doing really matters in God's grand story, God's bigger story, God's kingdom story.
We see a rise in tribalism, especially in the Western world where people choose one side or the other.
(13:48):
We see that rising up in various places.
Has this proved to be an extra struggle for you as you're trying to say, hey, let's look for the betterment of the whole city?
I can say yes and no.
Yes, people are still stuck in their tribes and they're unwilling to interact with someone who doesn't think exactly the way they do.
(14:10):
But I think, again, when they see that we care about the same thing they do, that we go to where they are, and we say, may we help, can we jump in and work alongside them?
This really catches their heart and mind.
Through our training that we offer, we go back and look at William Wilberforce and the original Clapham Circle there in England.
(14:31):
And we recognize that they had a great vision.
They wanted to not only stop slavery, but they wanted to bring in a sense, shalom to their country.
And what we discovered is they had a great vision, but they also had this incredible community.
And they were people representing literally all seven spheres of society.
And they actually moved together.
(14:53):
They're living in a part of London called Clapham, which at the time was in the country, south of the Thames River.
But they had this uncanny love for one another.
And we say it's hesed.
Hesed is the Old Testament word for love.
It's kind of the Old Testament comparable to agape in the New Testament.
And they had this incredible love for one another, and people saw it.
(15:13):
They were drawn to it.
And they saw that these people not only love one another, but they love our country, and they want it to be transformed for good.
You mentioned there the seven spheres of society.
Can you help me understand that a little more?
As we've been partnering with others, our understanding of this has really grown.
And it's a way to look at society, a way to look at cities that kind of make it more palatable.
(15:39):
It's like, well, there is a government sphere, and there is a family sphere, and a religion sphere, and a business sphere, and an education sphere, and a communication sphere, and a media sphere, or I should say art and entertainment.
And we recognize that a lot of transformation happens within those what we call spheres, where people spend a great period of their lives, of their days working in that sphere.
(16:04):
Maybe they're a journalist.
And so we talk a lot about what does it look like for God's nature and character to be reflected in that sphere, where they work, what they're doing, but how they work, what they do actually matters, and it reflects God's nature and character.
So the seven spheres of society is a special way of seeing who God is through those spheres of society, and how he's calling us to reflect his nature, his character, as it's described in scriptures, to reflect it in those spheres.
(16:39):
Now, Rodney, we also recognize that in some cities, maybe there's many universities, so they break down the education sphere into some others maybe.
Other cities maybe have many hospitals, and so there's a medical sphere.
So the seven spheres isn't something sacred, but it's something that's been identified over the years that these spheres do exist in society.
(17:03):
It helps us then to say, God, how can we join you in bringing your kingdom to this city, to this country, through these seven spheres, or the additional spheres that he lays in your heart?
I imagine there's people listening who say, this sounds great in theory, but how does it actually work?
Is it actually working?
Can you give me some examples of cities where people have really embraced this and seen changes?
(17:30):
Yes, I can.
I've been referring to one already, but it's Abidjan.
It's the largest city in Côte d'Ivoire in French-speaking Africa, the third largest French-speaking city in the world, and most people have never heard of it.
This is now where there's a growing number of people who've been through our Leadership Circle course, where they learn these ideas that God is calling us to this great calling of creating new culture, and the city's being impacted.
(17:56):
The new school is being built, or this clinic's being built, or our people are now caring for the homeless.
It's growing.
We have this idea that if there can be as many as 10% of leaders in a city, for example, have this vision, they could literally impact much of the city.
Can there be these lights around the city?
(18:17):
That's what we're seeing in Abidjan.
There's these lights where it's like, this is what the kingdom of God should look like.
In a sense, we're giving them a taste, a taste of what the coming kingdom's going to look like.
It's happening in Abidjan, for example.
I can say it's happening in my city of Denver, Colorado, where some people went through the Leadership Circle, our course, and they're now working with many others.
(18:38):
There's about 30 organizations working together to help people move from being working poor to moving into our middle class, so that they now can buy a house.
They can send their kids to a good school.
They're realizing it's going to take a long time, but now these 30 organizations are collaborating, and they're helping overcome the problems people have, like a car breaks down, they can't get to work, and then they get fired, or they don't have a good house to live in.
(19:05):
It's not a safe place, for example.
They're dealing with all these issues that could keep people from really finding a career job and then succeeding in that career job.
Again, things are happening, for example, in Denver.
I could list so many more.
For example, there's a group of people that have been through the Leadership Circle in Worcester, South Africa.
(19:27):
They now have a vision for building 500 homes for the poor who are living in little shacks, and now they'll move into a beautiful home.
Not a huge home, but a beautiful home that will not burn down or fall down in great wind.
They're doing many other things there.
Yes, it's beginning to spread, but for it to spread, for it to impact cities, it's a God thing.
(19:53):
If God's calling us to do this, then He's going to do it, and we have to be ready to follow Him.
There may be some thinking, well, this sounds like a very new idea, something that is a radical change in direction, and yet we see this right back through Scripture.
I know that a favorite Scripture of yours is in Isaiah 58, and that speaks very specifically towards God's people seeking the betterment of the city around them.
(20:22):
Yes, it does.
If you look at that text, it's amazing how God says, you talk about fasting, but that's not the fasting I want.
You mistreat your employees.
You literally beat them up, but this is not what I'm calling you to do.
He says that all things are possible, that we can be those who can restore and renew and make the community livable again.
(20:45):
This is what God is calling us to do in very everyday life, how we live.
God uses that, and God really uses it to bring change.
And so, yes, I love Isaiah 58 verses 1-12, some of my favorites.
We know that there are a number of people who are seeking to legislate change, wanting to make sure that the legislation that we have in place across various countries really aligns with the Christian way of living.
(21:16):
And yet, what you're describing here is, instead of trying to enforce something, is saying, hey, look at what it could be like if we did live this way.
And I imagine that that's more effective.
Rodney, I think so too.
How do I know what type of redemptive activities to be involved in if I don't understand God's design?
(21:38):
If I don't understand what's eventually coming, the new heavens and the new earth?
If I don't understand those many preview passages in Scripture, like Isaiah 65, 17-25, where it's describing the new heavens and the new earth, this is what's coming.
Well, in light of that, then that helps me to know what I'm to do, the redemptive activity that I need to be involved in.
(22:01):
It's the everyday work that God is calling us to do in collaboration as tzaddikim, not a singular tzaddik, but as a collaboration of tzaddikim working together about issues that they care deeply about.
And when they do, it brings about change, personal change, but then corporate change.
(22:21):
And we believe we talk about even institutional change or systemic change.
I imagine that to really see this flourish, we need to break down denominational barriers, the barriers between churches, not to say that they don't exist for a reason, that people want to worship in different ways and that faith will look different for different branches of the Christian church, but to say, we need to work alongside these brothers and sisters in Christ so that we can bring this.
(22:53):
So is that the first step in seeing different churches come together?
I think so.
Rodney, when we go into a city, we look for churches that have a vision for the whole city, not just for their little area, not just for their denomination or their one church, but to say, we care about maybe this larger neighborhood or this part of our city or this sphere that's represented largely in where our church is located.
(23:19):
So they have a vision for the bigger shalom.
They care about their city.
Years ago, I heard someone say Jesus was named as Jesus of Nazareth.
Rodney, I want to be known as Hugh of Denver, that people would see Hugh cares about our city and he's working toward the flourishing of the city.
And yes, that unity.
(23:41):
You know, when I became a missionary and went to Southern Africa, I was 23.
That was 46 years ago.
But I have to say that early on in my Christian life, I was like, why isn't there more unity in the body of Christ?
And I have to say for too long, I did experience disunity and it was disheartening to me.
But in these last years, I'm seeing more and more collaboration, willingness to work with one another, even if our doctrine is slightly different.
(24:10):
We've discovered that we care about the same thing.
Well, let's do something then about that which we care about and willing to work with one another.
And when we do, the world looks at us and says, I want to be a part of that.
I want to be part of this because I see you're working together.
You're no longer divided.
Who wants to join a divided group, kind of inside fighting within the body of Christ?
(24:35):
So Rodney, you're right.
God's calling us to unity.
We need to do that if we really want to see change.
If there's someone listening at the moment who says, I find all this very attractive and it's something I'd like to be involved in.
How does someone get started in seeing this come to their city?
That's a great thing.
(24:56):
There's a lot of good organizations, in particular in my country, but around the world that are now starting to do something like this.
Probably 20 years ago, there was hardly any books being written about faith and work.
Well, now there's many.
Giving examples about how you can begin if you're part of a church and what churches can do, or if you're in a company and things you can do.
(25:16):
But within my organization, our main offering is called the Leadership Circle.
And it's a unique guided journey to help you unlock your purpose and expand your impact and work with others about working on things that you care deeply about that you want to see changed.
So if people are interested in our Leadership Circle, they can go to our website at www.citiesprojectglobal.com.
(25:41):
But also, there's again, as I said, there's many other good organizations around the world that are beginning to catch this vision for the bigger story that God has for us, where they can join in and receive some of that training.
And in doing that, they now discover others who care about the same thing.
So they're not alone.
There's others now that care about, that are wanting to work together to deal with these problems that are systemic in their cities that need to be changed.
(26:10):
And I imagine a big part of it is not just saying, these are the issues that we see, but being open enough to go and speak to those who are leading our cities, those who have power, and saying to them, we as a group of churches want to make a difference in this city.
We want to bring positive change.
That must be an incredible witness to those that you speak to.
(26:34):
Oh my goodness.
Yes, Rodney.
When you go to government leaders and say, we're available, we're willing to go into the schools and help students learn to read when they're six, seven years old.
Doing things like that, or we're willing to go into the neighborhood and paint over the graffiti and to clean up some of the houses that are not in good shape.
I mean, things like that, people stop and say, wow, I didn't know that Christians cared about the poor.
(27:02):
What a terrible thing to have.
But possibly the person that said that to me one day, some years ago, because they had not seen Christians, churches involved in obvious things that are going on in their city, things they can do like helping kids learn to read, or helping kids get a job who now they're in secondary school and they're old enough to have a job and they provide them with work or they direct them toward work.
(27:27):
Yes, it's that practical living out our faith practically that people will notice.
There's a book called To Transform This City.
It talks about one of the authors, he was going in and becoming a pastor of an existing church in San Francisco, California.
And he said, when he was getting there, he thought, I got to get into the neighborhood and find out what people think about the church.
(27:51):
And as he was doing that, what he came away with is many people saw the church as a parasite.
It was located on one of the most prominent city corners in that part of San Francisco.
And they said, a lot of money going in and nothing coming out.
The church was having no impact in the neighborhood.
So they said, it's literally like the church was a parasite.
(28:12):
And he said, we got work to do here.
So that people begin to see that this church here is a place where spreading the common good that people are beginning to experience God's nature and character, shalom, and spreading around the neighborhood.
And we see that there's this partnership between living out the gospel and proclaiming the gospel that neither one of those could be dispensed with.
(28:38):
So often, as I said before, we can either go with, no, it's all about the proclamation of the gospel.
And other groups who say, no, it's only about living it out.
And yet the two should go hand in hand, shouldn't they?
Oh, they have to go hand in hand.
Yes.
If we read the word of God, it becomes very clear that God's calling us to proclaim, but he's also calling us to live like Jesus where we are, where we're planted.
(29:02):
Rodney, recently I've been struck with the question, what's God like?
A good friend of mine, he's a pastor and he was invited.
He was new into a community and he was invited by a friend, a new friend in that community.
And they went to the local pub.
And as they're in there, this new friend said to his existing friends that were there, have a guess what my new friend does.
And they went, we don't know.
(29:22):
He said, he's a pastor.
Well, all of a sudden now they all start kind of complaining, you know, and they're grumbling.
And, and one guy in particular, kind of the bigger, louder guy went on for quite a while describing the God he doesn't believe in.
And finally the pastor said, well, I don't believe in that God either.
Well, that began some conversation that night, but guess who called the pastor the next morning?
(29:43):
That loudest man said, I want to meet and talk about and learn more what God is really like.
Well, he wasn't believing in the real God.
So part of our proclamation has to be, what's God like?
And I think if people understood what God is like, I think they would come running.
They'd want to be a part.
They'd want to know him and walk with him.
(30:04):
But again, they don't necessarily know what God is like.
And Rodney, when I talk with people about this, I say, you know, if you were asking me what my wife is like, I said, I would not tell you how tall she is.
I wouldn't tell you the color of her hair or the color of her eyes.
I would tell you about her character.
I'd tell you about her heart, what she cares about.
And then I would tell you how she lives.
(30:25):
I think that's what we need to do too.
When we talk about God, we need to tell stories about God, stories from the scriptures, but also stories how God has treated us, how God has cared for us through the years.
Stories, we believe Rodney, change lives.
And there's proof of that because Jesus told stories, many of them we call them parables, and it changed people's lives.
(30:48):
Hugh, I know we've only really just scraped the surface of this whole idea of seeking the flourishing of a city, being able to live out the gospel as well as proclaim it.
So if people are to get in touch with you or find out more, where's the easiest place for them to find you?
Well, again, they can go to our website, citiesprojectglobal.com.
(31:11):
They can also go to Amazon.
We have a new book, and Rodney, the book is called The Intersection, Faith, Work, and Life.
And it communicates some of these key ideas that you and I have been discussing.
We now have had leaders from over 40 cities in the world go through our leadership circle.
(31:32):
And we have a dream that by the year 2030, there'll be 700 cities in the world that have at least a million people.
We have this dream.
Imagine if there were a group, a growing group of Tzadikim who were prospering in each of those cities.
And as they prospered, those cities began to rejoice.
They're rejoicing because Shalom is happening.
(31:55):
That's our dream, something God's got to do.
And I will definitely put links in the show notes at bleedingdaylight.net so that people can find you easily.
But Hugh, thank you so much for the conversation.
I've really appreciated it.
And thanks for spending some time with us today.
Rodney, thank you very much.
I have really enjoyed it as well.
(32:15):
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(00:30):
There are dozens of other episodes waiting for you at bleedingdaylight.net.
As we're more and more encouraged to live for ourselves and seek our own truth, what would it look like to engage in a bigger story that seeks the good of others?
How can we move from an individual focus to desiring the best for our city?
(00:52):
Today's guest may help us find an answer.
Today's episode features Hugh Brandt, a global city transformation expert whose remarkable journey spans four decades across three continents.
(01:13):
After beginning his career with Campus Crusade in Lesotho and Zimbabwe, Hugh has dedicated his life to urban renewal and leadership development.
As the co-founder of Cities Project Global, serving as the chief culture officer, he spent years helping city leaders understand how their work, whatever it may be, contributes to urban flourishing.
(01:36):
Hugh, welcome to Bleeding Daylight.
Thank you, Rodney.
Good to be with you.
I'm sure that you would have worked in countries where community is absolutely paramount, but how do you go about convincing people in Western countries where individualism is rampant that seeking the good of the city is worth pursuing?
It's a great question.
(02:00):
A good question for me living here in the United States, that we are such an individualistic country.
I think as we grow deeper into God's perspective, what God is calling us to do, that our human job description is to create culture that reflects His nature and character, then it's best done when we work with others.
(02:20):
It says in Proverbs 11, verse 10, when the righteous prosper, the city rejoices.
And the word righteous there is tzadikim.
It's plural.
So when leaders work together, when they prosper, it causes the city to rejoice or for the city to experience some level of shalom.
God is calling us to work well with one another.
(02:42):
So a key is to have a good understanding of God's worldview and what He's calling us to do as members of His body, no matter what our work is, no matter what sphere of society we're working in.
But I agree that we need to demonstrate this happens in the body of Christ, happens in the local church, but also in different parachurch organizations.
(03:04):
And then in many other ways where we can come together and work together.
And oftentimes maybe with people who might not believe exactly like we do, but they care about the same thing.
And we can then work with what we would call unlikely allies.
Scripture is full of those sorts of passages that you just mentioned about the city flourishing and talking to people as people groups.
(03:28):
And yet we tend to read scripture through this lens of being an individual.
We talk about Jesus as our personal savior.
There's all this language in the church that makes it seem like this is for our best life when it's actually talking to us corporately a lot of the time, isn't it?
I couldn't agree more.
(03:48):
Years ago, when I was helping to speak at a conference in Lome, Togo, God gave me this simple picture that in every city there's a volcano, but the volcano isn't full of lava.
The volcano is full of workplace leaders and God's wanting to see those workplace leaders mission with him doing what they're doing as doctors and nurses and lawyers, but doing it for his glory and for the common good of all.
(04:12):
But what I've experienced in all these years is too often there's a lid on that volcano.
And part of that lid is the church where the church is not teaching that you don't have to be an international missionary to really serve God.
You can be a local dentist, you can be a school teacher, and God is using that to grow his kingdom, to bring change and transformation and shalom to that city, to that community.
(04:39):
We have often handed off the work of the gospel to those people who are paid to do that sort of thing, either pastors or missionaries or those working in various organizations.
And yet the statistics show that the overwhelming majority of people are not working in those places.
So if we leave it up to that small cohort, bringing the kingdom to this earth is not going to happen, is it?
(05:04):
No, it's not.
We had Barnett do some research for us about eight years ago.
Primarily it was done here in the United States with a few thousand people and discovered that approximately one to two percent of Christians work in the religion sphere.
Fifty-two percent work in the business or economic sphere, something like 18 percent work in the education sphere, then a smaller number in the family and the communication and so forth.
(05:30):
But can only one or two percent?
Is their work the only work that really matters to God?
Are they the only ones that would have this vision for shalom, for what God intended us to do?
So we're committed to mobilizing the entire body of Christ, not just those in the religion sphere, but the other 98 percent.
Take me back to that time when God started to impress upon your heart this need for us all to be involved in growing His kingdom.
(06:00):
Rodney, I went to Southern Africa as a missionary to the country of Lesotho, to a little village called Buttebute, and I was a secondary school teacher.
Turns out it was part of the overseas Cambridge system out of England, and it was one of the worst countries in the world.
Of all those that were part of that, it had the worst results.
In fact, I discovered that only seven percent of the students graduated from secondary school.
(06:24):
So as the students would stay in the room and we teachers would move around, I'd find myself standing there at the door waiting for the one teacher to come out and for me to go in to teach history or to teach science or even Bible.
But I find myself, of course, praying that these students would know Jesus, that they would find life.
But I also found myself praying that they could graduate from school, that they then would have the opportunity to have a good job and to have a family and to raise a family and to make a difference in that country.
(06:53):
Well, as I was doing that, God was prompting me to do that, but I can't say I had the theology to back it up.
Well, now I do.
Now I understand that God is calling all of us to see ourselves in mission with Him.
Rodney, I have to tell you, there's times when God prompts me, maybe speaking to a group of, again, workplace leaders who are not missionaries, and God prompts me to say, I apologize.
(07:16):
I used to think that what I did is what really mattered to God, while what you're doing in helping people with their teeth or you're a teacher, that it wasn't the same.
And I've had to say, I apologize that I had that wrong thinking.
Part of my growth has been to grow in my understanding of what God's Word is saying.
(07:37):
And then at times to apologize, but also times to say, I want to come alongside and help.
Rodney, one of the things that I used to say is, come and help, join me in fulfilling the Great Commission.
And part of it was, do it my way.
Well, now when I meet leaders, I say, what's God laid on your heart?
What's He calling you to do?
I would love to help if I can.
(07:57):
How have you seen this at work as you have started talking to people across various countries?
How have you seen it at work when people start to get a bit of an idea of what it is that God is calling them into?
When they begin to understand that God's wanting them to live out their faith in everything they do at home, at work, not just on Sunday morning or Wednesday night at the Bible study, it's transformational.
(08:26):
I've had some people, as we provide this teaching in French speaking West Africa, one of the city leaders said, why have I never heard this before?
I've been a Christian for 20 years, but I never understood this larger story.
I thought all that really was, was to share the gospel and make sure people are going to heaven, but not to see that I have a key role to play.
And right now on planet earth on this side of eternity.
(08:49):
So again, their eyes are being opened.
They're getting excited and it's motivating.
In that same city in West Africa, there is a man who retired, but he was an emergency room surgeon and he was a medical professor.
And when he understood this and got excited about it, he realized there was a part of this great city where there was no clinic.
He also saw that we need to provide better care for the people, better bedside manner than what I've experienced all the years when I was working as a emergency room surgeon.
(09:19):
So he helped build a clinic and it's functioning right now.
So people don't have as far to walk, but they want to go there because they're well cared for.
There's many stories of this.
I mean, even my city here, but around where people now say, wow, what I do matters and they're now doing it with renewed joy and understanding and purpose.
(09:40):
There seems to be some people who would break down the way that we reach out to this world into just sharing our beliefs and sharing the gospel as against those who would then say, but there's also this social gospel.
They would say that the two are completely divorced.
(10:00):
And yet what we see in scripture is a ministry to the whole person.
Can you talk to me a little about that?
Yeah.
You know, simply we use the words like good news and good deeds.
What if it's not either or, but it's both.
And that when we have good deeds, people say, why, why do you do that?
And we have the opportunity to communicate the good news of the gospel about Jesus.
(10:23):
But also when we have the opportunity maybe to talk about this, people will say, wow, and how do you live?
And so then they see, wow, you not only speak about it, but you live it.
And so we talk a lot about this, living this integrated life.
What we say, how we live, what we do, it all matters.
And people watch that.
(10:44):
You know, the old phrase, I don't care what you know until I know that you care.
And that's simple idea, but it's so profoundly true.
We believe the whole gospel, not a truncated gospel, only just your sinner and believe in Jesus should go to heaven.
But maybe the larger story, the idea that God created the world to represent shalom, his shalom.
(11:04):
But of course there's sin, but sin has not only impacted me, but it's impacted all of creation.
It's corrupted.
So now God is calling us to join in redeeming all of his creation.
Yes, people, but also all of his creation.
So again, this bigger story that it's not an either or, it's all.
I can imagine that as you start to speak to church leaders and to pastors, there could be a couple of responses.
(11:30):
One is, thank goodness.
Now I've got other people working alongside me for the furtherance of the kingdom.
But there's possibly others who, as you've already mentioned, have this idea of, no, it's got to be done my way.
And no, that's my job.
Are these the sorts of responses that you're getting?
How do leaders and pastors respond when you share this vision of a city flourishing?
(11:55):
You know, a couple of stories.
One is a good friend of mine, he used to be a dentist in Chicago, but he said, for so many years when I was there, I felt like a second class citizen church because I wasn't a missionary.
I wasn't a pastor.
He came out here to my city of Denver and then did become a missions pastor.
(12:16):
But he began to realize that he didn't need to be, he could have continued as a dentist and that his work did matter.
And it needed to be communicated that the dentistry in and of itself matters to God.
Rodney, you know, there's different workplace leaders' meetings that go on on a monthly basis.
They come together, they share business cards, they meet one another, they refer each other.
(12:38):
And I was attending one of these and I was in a group of about 40, but they broke us into smaller tables.
We're sitting at a table, we're talking about what we do.
And I talked about how for years I mentored young inner city men.
One man, he says, I don't want to follow you.
He says, I work for a company that provides cybersecurity.
That's all I do.
Well, when we finished and we were going back to the larger group, we had a few minutes and I said, wait a minute.
(13:03):
I said, tell me what would happen if you didn't offer this cybersecurity to the different companies in our city?
What would happen?
He says, oh, they'd be in trouble.
So I said, I want you to know that your work matters, that it's contributing to the shalom of our city.
Without you, we'd be in trouble.
And he said, no one's ever said that to me before.
(13:23):
I didn't know that what I do really does matter.
It's fun to see how people respond when you thank them for what they're doing and you explain that what they're doing really matters in God's grand story, God's bigger story, God's kingdom story.
We see a rise in tribalism, especially in the Western world where people choose one side or the other.
(13:48):
We see that rising up in various places.
Has this proved to be an extra struggle for you as you're trying to say, hey, let's look for the betterment of the whole city?
I can say yes and no.
Yes, people are still stuck in their tribes and they're unwilling to interact with someone who doesn't think exactly the way they do.
(14:10):
But I think, again, when they see that we care about the same thing they do, that we go to where they are, and we say, may we help, can we jump in and work alongside them?
This really catches their heart and mind.
Through our training that we offer, we go back and look at William Wilberforce and the original Clapham Circle there in England.
(14:31):
And we recognize that they had a great vision.
They wanted to not only stop slavery, but they wanted to bring in a sense, shalom to their country.
And what we discovered is they had a great vision, but they also had this incredible community.
And they were people representing literally all seven spheres of society.
And they actually moved together.
(14:53):
They're living in a part of London called Clapham, which at the time was in the country, south of the Thames River.
But they had this uncanny love for one another.
And we say it's hesed.
Hesed is the Old Testament word for love.
It's kind of the Old Testament comparable to agape in the New Testament.
And they had this incredible love for one another, and people saw it.
(15:13):
They were drawn to it.
And they saw that these people not only love one another, but they love our country, and they want it to be transformed for good.
You mentioned there the seven spheres of society.
Can you help me understand that a little more?
As we've been partnering with others, our understanding of this has really grown.
And it's a way to look at society, a way to look at cities that kind of make it more palatable.
(15:39):
It's like, well, there is a government sphere, and there is a family sphere, and a religion sphere, and a business sphere, and an education sphere, and a communication sphere, and a media sphere, or I should say art and entertainment.
And we recognize that a lot of transformation happens within those what we call spheres, where people spend a great period of their lives, of their days working in that sphere.
(16:04):
Maybe they're a journalist.
And so we talk a lot about what does it look like for God's nature and character to be reflected in that sphere, where they work, what they're doing, but how they work, what they do actually matters, and it reflects God's nature and character.
So the seven spheres of society is a special way of seeing who God is through those spheres of society, and how he's calling us to reflect his nature, his character, as it's described in scriptures, to reflect it in those spheres.
(16:39):
Now, Rodney, we also recognize that in some cities, maybe there's many universities, so they break down the education sphere into some others maybe.
Other cities maybe have many hospitals, and so there's a medical sphere.
So the seven spheres isn't something sacred, but it's something that's been identified over the years that these spheres do exist in society.
(17:03):
It helps us then to say, God, how can we join you in bringing your kingdom to this city, to this country, through these seven spheres, or the additional spheres that he lays in your heart?
I imagine there's people listening who say, this sounds great in theory, but how does it actually work?
Is it actually working?
Can you give me some examples of cities where people have really embraced this and seen changes?
(17:30):
Yes, I can.
I've been referring to one already, but it's Abidjan.
It's the largest city in Côte d'Ivoire in French-speaking Africa, the third largest French-speaking city in the world, and most people have never heard of it.
This is now where there's a growing number of people who've been through our Leadership Circle course, where they learn these ideas that God is calling us to this great calling of creating new culture, and the city's being impacted.
(17:56):
The new school is being built, or this clinic's being built, or our people are now caring for the homeless.
It's growing.
We have this idea that if there can be as many as 10% of leaders in a city, for example, have this vision, they could literally impact much of the city.
Can there be these lights around the city?
(18:17):
That's what we're seeing in Abidjan.
There's these lights where it's like, this is what the kingdom of God should look like.
In a sense, we're giving them a taste, a taste of what the coming kingdom's going to look like.
It's happening in Abidjan, for example.
I can say it's happening in my city of Denver, Colorado, where some people went through the Leadership Circle, our course, and they're now working with many others.
(18:38):
There's about 30 organizations working together to help people move from being working poor to moving into our middle class, so that they now can buy a house.
They can send their kids to a good school.
They're realizing it's going to take a long time, but now these 30 organizations are collaborating, and they're helping overcome the problems people have, like a car breaks down, they can't get to work, and then they get fired, or they don't have a good house to live in.
(19:05):
It's not a safe place, for example.
They're dealing with all these issues that could keep people from really finding a career job and then succeeding in that career job.
Again, things are happening, for example, in Denver.
I could list so many more.
For example, there's a group of people that have been through the Leadership Circle in Worcester, South Africa.
(19:27):
They now have a vision for building 500 homes for the poor who are living in little shacks, and now they'll move into a beautiful home.
Not a huge home, but a beautiful home that will not burn down or fall down in great wind.
They're doing many other things there.
Yes, it's beginning to spread, but for it to spread, for it to impact cities, it's a God thing.
(19:53):
If God's calling us to do this, then He's going to do it, and we have to be ready to follow Him.
There may be some thinking, well, this sounds like a very new idea, something that is a radical change in direction, and yet we see this right back through Scripture.
I know that a favorite Scripture of yours is in Isaiah 58, and that speaks very specifically towards God's people seeking the betterment of the city around them.
(20:22):
Yes, it does.
If you look at that text, it's amazing how God says, you talk about fasting, but that's not the fasting I want.
You mistreat your employees.
You literally beat them up, but this is not what I'm calling you to do.
He says that all things are possible, that we can be those who can restore and renew and make the community livable again.
(20:45):
This is what God is calling us to do in very everyday life, how we live.
God uses that, and God really uses it to bring change.
And so, yes, I love Isaiah 58 verses 1-12, some of my favorites.
We know that there are a number of people who are seeking to legislate change, wanting to make sure that the legislation that we have in place across various countries really aligns with the Christian way of living.
(21:16):
And yet, what you're describing here is, instead of trying to enforce something, is saying, hey, look at what it could be like if we did live this way.
And I imagine that that's more effective.
Rodney, I think so too.
How do I know what type of redemptive activities to be involved in if I don't understand God's design?
(21:38):
If I don't understand what's eventually coming, the new heavens and the new earth?
If I don't understand those many preview passages in Scripture, like Isaiah 65, 17-25, where it's describing the new heavens and the new earth, this is what's coming.
Well, in light of that, then that helps me to know what I'm to do, the redemptive activity that I need to be involved in.
(22:01):
It's the everyday work that God is calling us to do in collaboration as tzaddikim, not a singular tzaddik, but as a collaboration of tzaddikim working together about issues that they care deeply about.
And when they do, it brings about change, personal change, but then corporate change.
(22:21):
And we believe we talk about even institutional change or systemic change.
I imagine that to really see this flourish, we need to break down denominational barriers, the barriers between churches, not to say that they don't exist for a reason, that people want to worship in different ways and that faith will look different for different branches of the Christian church, but to say, we need to work alongside these brothers and sisters in Christ so that we can bring this.
(22:53):
So is that the first step in seeing different churches come together?
I think so.
Rodney, when we go into a city, we look for churches that have a vision for the whole city, not just for their little area, not just for their denomination or their one church, but to say, we care about maybe this larger neighborhood or this part of our city or this sphere that's represented largely in where our church is located.
(23:19):
So they have a vision for the bigger shalom.
They care about their city.
Years ago, I heard someone say Jesus was named as Jesus of Nazareth.
Rodney, I want to be known as Hugh of Denver, that people would see Hugh cares about our city and he's working toward the flourishing of the city.
And yes, that unity.
(23:41):
You know, when I became a missionary and went to Southern Africa, I was 23.
That was 46 years ago.
But I have to say that early on in my Christian life, I was like, why isn't there more unity in the body of Christ?
And I have to say for too long, I did experience disunity and it was disheartening to me.
But in these last years, I'm seeing more and more collaboration, willingness to work with one another, even if our doctrine is slightly different.
(24:10):
We've discovered that we care about the same thing.
Well, let's do something then about that which we care about and willing to work with one another.
And when we do, the world looks at us and says, I want to be a part of that.
I want to be part of this because I see you're working together.
You're no longer divided.
Who wants to join a divided group, kind of inside fighting within the body of Christ?
(24:35):
So Rodney, you're right.
God's calling us to unity.
We need to do that if we really want to see change.
If there's someone listening at the moment who says, I find all this very attractive and it's something I'd like to be involved in.
How does someone get started in seeing this come to their city?
That's a great thing.
(24:56):
There's a lot of good organizations, in particular in my country, but around the world that are now starting to do something like this.
Probably 20 years ago, there was hardly any books being written about faith and work.
Well, now there's many.
Giving examples about how you can begin if you're part of a church and what churches can do, or if you're in a company and things you can do.
(25:16):
But within my organization, our main offering is called the Leadership Circle.
And it's a unique guided journey to help you unlock your purpose and expand your impact and work with others about working on things that you care deeply about that you want to see changed.
So if people are interested in our Leadership Circle, they can go to our website at www.citiesprojectglobal.com.
(25:41):
But also, there's again, as I said, there's many other good organizations around the world that are beginning to catch this vision for the bigger story that God has for us, where they can join in and receive some of that training.
And in doing that, they now discover others who care about the same thing.
So they're not alone.
There's others now that care about, that are wanting to work together to deal with these problems that are systemic in their cities that need to be changed.
(26:10):
And I imagine a big part of it is not just saying, these are the issues that we see, but being open enough to go and speak to those who are leading our cities, those who have power, and saying to them, we as a group of churches want to make a difference in this city.
We want to bring positive change.
That must be an incredible witness to those that you speak to.
(26:34):
Oh my goodness.
Yes, Rodney.
When you go to government leaders and say, we're available, we're willing to go into the schools and help students learn to read when they're six, seven years old.
Doing things like that, or we're willing to go into the neighborhood and paint over the graffiti and to clean up some of the houses that are not in good shape.
I mean, things like that, people stop and say, wow, I didn't know that Christians cared about the poor.
(27:02):
What a terrible thing to have.
But possibly the person that said that to me one day, some years ago, because they had not seen Christians, churches involved in obvious things that are going on in their city, things they can do like helping kids learn to read, or helping kids get a job who now they're in secondary school and they're old enough to have a job and they provide them with work or they direct them toward work.
(27:27):
Yes, it's that practical living out our faith practically that people will notice.
There's a book called To Transform This City.
It talks about one of the authors, he was going in and becoming a pastor of an existing church in San Francisco, California.
And he said, when he was getting there, he thought, I got to get into the neighborhood and find out what people think about the church.
(27:51):
And as he was doing that, what he came away with is many people saw the church as a parasite.
It was located on one of the most prominent city corners in that part of San Francisco.
And they said, a lot of money going in and nothing coming out.
The church was having no impact in the neighborhood.
So they said, it's literally like the church was a parasite.
(28:12):
And he said, we got work to do here.
So that people begin to see that this church here is a place where spreading the common good that people are beginning to experience God's nature and character, shalom, and spreading around the neighborhood.
And we see that there's this partnership between living out the gospel and proclaiming the gospel that neither one of those could be dispensed with.
(28:38):
So often, as I said before, we can either go with, no, it's all about the proclamation of the gospel.
And other groups who say, no, it's only about living it out.
And yet the two should go hand in hand, shouldn't they?
Oh, they have to go hand in hand.
Yes.
If we read the word of God, it becomes very clear that God's calling us to proclaim, but he's also calling us to live like Jesus where we are, where we're planted.
(29:02):
Rodney, recently I've been struck with the question, what's God like?
A good friend of mine, he's a pastor and he was invited.
He was new into a community and he was invited by a friend, a new friend in that community.
And they went to the local pub.
And as they're in there, this new friend said to his existing friends that were there, have a guess what my new friend does.
And they went, we don't know.
(29:22):
He said, he's a pastor.
Well, all of a sudden now they all start kind of complaining, you know, and they're grumbling.
And, and one guy in particular, kind of the bigger, louder guy went on for quite a while describing the God he doesn't believe in.
And finally the pastor said, well, I don't believe in that God either.
Well, that began some conversation that night, but guess who called the pastor the next morning?
(29:43):
That loudest man said, I want to meet and talk about and learn more what God is really like.
Well, he wasn't believing in the real God.
So part of our proclamation has to be, what's God like?
And I think if people understood what God is like, I think they would come running.
They'd want to be a part.
They'd want to know him and walk with him.
(30:04):
But again, they don't necessarily know what God is like.
And Rodney, when I talk with people about this, I say, you know, if you were asking me what my wife is like, I said, I would not tell you how tall she is.
I wouldn't tell you the color of her hair or the color of her eyes.
I would tell you about her character.
I'd tell you about her heart, what she cares about.
And then I would tell you how she lives.
(30:25):
I think that's what we need to do too.
When we talk about God, we need to tell stories about God, stories from the scriptures, but also stories how God has treated us, how God has cared for us through the years.
Stories, we believe Rodney, change lives.
And there's proof of that because Jesus told stories, many of them we call them parables, and it changed people's lives.
(30:48):
Hugh, I know we've only really just scraped the surface of this whole idea of seeking the flourishing of a city, being able to live out the gospel as well as proclaim it.
So if people are to get in touch with you or find out more, where's the easiest place for them to find you?
Well, again, they can go to our website, citiesprojectglobal.com.
(31:11):
They can also go to Amazon.
We have a new book, and Rodney, the book is called The Intersection, Faith, Work, and Life.
And it communicates some of these key ideas that you and I have been discussing.
We now have had leaders from over 40 cities in the world go through our leadership circle.
(31:32):
And we have a dream that by the year 2030, there'll be 700 cities in the world that have at least a million people.
We have this dream.
Imagine if there were a group, a growing group of Tzadikim who were prospering in each of those cities.
And as they prospered, those cities began to rejoice.
They're rejoicing because Shalom is happening.
(31:55):
That's our dream, something God's got to do.
And I will definitely put links in the show notes at bleedingdaylight.net so that people can find you easily.
But Hugh, thank you so much for the conversation.
I've really appreciated it.
And thanks for spending some time with us today.
Rodney, thank you very much.
I have really enjoyed it as well.
(32:15):
Thank you for listening to Bleeding Daylight.
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For further details and more episodes, please visit bleedingdaylight.net
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