International missions is shifting focus to urban centers, following migration patterns that in 2008 indicated that more than half the world’s population lives in cities.
Fewer than 30 percent of the world’s 2.5 billion people in 1950 lived in cities. By 2050, almost 70 percent of the world’s estimated 10 billion people will do so, according to the United Nations.
“As the escalation of global urbanization has taken place, so has the urbanization of mission work,” said Doug McConnell, dean of the School of Intercultural Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary. Both local and full-time missionaries from the West are moving urban, he said.