What are The Challenges of Pastoring in a Mega City?

Well the challenges can be best described if we understand what we're trying to do in the first place. The church is supposed to make disciples of Jesus Christ, and so we can't think that having programs in the church will make disciples. And so, some of the challenges of then making disciples in a mega city is the sheer amount of traffic there is in the city. It takes a long time for people to get to work. It takes a long time for people to get to church. And so time is a very important resource that nobody wants to waste. So one of the challenges is to find time to disciple people in the city.

The second challenge is that most people who come to the city perhaps don't have plans to settle down in the city for a long time. There are many people that come to the city with an express purpose of a project that work is given or for education that the city provides. And then they try to move out, and so it is hard in the city to get people to commit to a particular local covenant community called the church. That is the other challenge in trying to disciple people in the city. 

And a final challenge is that it is difficult for people to understand that they have to prioritize being a disciple of Jesus Christ. When people come to a city, especially a city like Mumbai, they are there to essentially make themselves better through more money, through real estate, and through other things like that. And so, to take people from a total paradigm shift of selfishness to a God-centered view of their life seems like a waste of time for them. And so we have to, at that time, face that challenge head-on of taking somebody from being about “just work” or “just making themselves” better to seeing the priority of Jesus over everything.