In 2007 the number of people who live in urban cities was larger than the the number of people in rural areas for the first time. This is an irreversible trend. Church and ministry leaders must now determine the best way to minister to cities. At least, this is the contention for Eric Swanson and Sam Williams in the book "To Transform a City". Swanson and Williams deal with transforming a city into a better place to live as a means to share the gospel using work they've done in the Boulder, CO area.
Initially, the authors make a great point as they open the book that the best way to transform any population is to love them unconditionally. Through loving on your city you can make things better for the least of these and share the gospel with everyone who asks why your doing these works. But this idea gets lost over the next 200 pages.
This book is a tough read. The writing is dry and the concepts are overcomplicated by the authors. Graphics in the book are simple and lack any pop much like the text. The information is useful as a study of how churches should interact as part of a city but I fear only the very dedicated reader will be able to push through and glean the best of the text.
Overall, I would recommend this for leaders of large churches of ministries. Lay leaders or smaller churches will find very little of this information useful and the text is not entertaining enough to recommend for these groups.
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