Nor does it work to say that the city is black and the suburbs are white. Of course the biggest cities, like Tokyo or Mexico City, are neither black nor white. But even in the U.S., cities are increasingly Hispanic and Asian, not just black. City pastors must be missiologically trained. We would never think of sending a person to a people group without language and cultural study.
Urban neighborhoods are now infinitely more complex than tribal cultures.
They are kaleidoscopically restructuring themselves, and we have no way to prepare pastors before they enter these neighborhoods. We grind up pastors in the city by not giving them the tools they need to work cross-culturally. I used to think that if churches and pastors all over the world had the right information and right motivation, we could reach the cities with the gospel of Jesus Christ. I thought the barriers to mission were the big, bad cities. Christians in the cities are not in the advice business.