Jakarta: City of God Erich Bridges imb Venture into Jakarta’s “Grapes” neighborhood after dark and you might not live to see daylight. When the sun goes down on this rowdy slum, the families there take cover while criminals take to the streets. Gang-run nightclubs open for business. Prostitutes perch on barstools and stand in doorways. Liquor flows and drugs change hands. On especially lively nights, knives flash. Mornings, however, belong to the kids. From the open windows of a formerly abandoned building, you can hear their voices: 30 or so children laugh, sing with their volunteer teachers and work on learning activities. Their hand-drawn pictures adorn the walls of the little school. After finishing one last song, they give thanks to God and dig into plates of fruit before heading home. All the families of Grapes are Muslim. Most are poor. Parents who have jobs tend to work for the clubs. Some send their children out to beg during the day. Odds are none of these kids would attend school if this one didn’t exist. Their parents can’t afford school uniforms, much less books. Here they pay what they can — but they pay something. The little school belongs to the community. In fact, government officials have recognized it as a model of community-based education. The children of Grapes now have at least a chance of advancing to more schooling. A community effort “We started the school,” says ‘Lucinda Arroyo,’ a Southern Baptist worker in Indonesia’s capital city. “But they’re the ones who fixed up the building, plugged the leaks and built the tables.” Indonesian sisters “Shirley” and “Ann,” both college students, love coming to teach at Grapes. “This activity has opened my eyes that there is another side of living in Jakarta,” Shirley says. “Jesus blessed me so much. Why should I waste my time going to the mall? Why not help them? We want to show them that we, as Christians, care.” Christians caring about the families of Grapes began with basketball. Even that is typically beyond poor Jakarta youths, since organized leagues charge for teams, court fees and such. Enter Lucinda, her husband, Rick, and their ministry team. They offered to teach Grapes young people basketball basics, rent a court and challenge local school squads to play games. It took some doing. One basketball court owner raised rental fees twice; he didn’t want slum kids practicing on his property. Grapes parents also were suspicious. “They thought we were going to steal their kids,” Rick says. That all changed when the Grapes kids actually beat one of the top school teams in the area. “It was like a movie,” Rick recalls. “The kids were intimidated at first, but they ended up winning. The parents went crazy. That’s how we started the school. They wanted something more, and by then we had made inroads in the community.” Laboratory of hope Grapes has become a laboratory of sorts for community ministry in Jakarta. The Arroyos believe the model can be adapted for lots of places in the sprawling urban area. Communities need schools. Other neighborhoods need relief from the chronic flooding that torments the city. Countless Jakartans need job skills (Click “menu” in the window above to see “Shoemaker for Jesus” video). “Community centers get us into neighborhoods,” Rick explains. “They are bridges. People ask, ‘Who are you? Why are you here? What can you do for me?’ This gives you the right to share [your faith]. ” That’s only one part of their overall vision for the city. It begins with round-the-clock prayer and massive distribution of God’s Word throughout Jakarta. It culminates with the start of cell churches — up to 24,000 of them, if the team’s ambitious dream is realized (Click on menu in the window above to see “I thought I was going to die” video). That would put a cell group within reach of every group of 500 people in Jakarta — home to an estimated 12 million people. The greater metro region contains up to 20 million, according to some estimates. For inspiration, they look to Nehemiah, the humble cupbearer of Old Testament renown. If Nehemiah could organize the rebuilding of the pulverized wall around ancient Jerusalem in 52 days, they believe modern-day followers of Christ can evangelize the city of Jakarta. Their vision: “Jakarta becomes a city of God, because there will be a true movement of God so that communities are changed and thousands of new believing fellowships started.” Yet to be reached Jakarta, like all of Indonesia, is overwhelmingly Muslim. Yet Protestants count more than 500 churches in the city. Evangelical missionaries and ministries have been at work in Jakarta for at least half a century. So why hasn’t the city been reached with the Gospel? When Rick arrived in Jakarta a decade ago to teach urban evangelism, he put that question to his Indonesian seminary students. “They basically said, ‘There’s no vision’” — no single, unifying purpose and strategy to push the church to get it done. Now he shares the Nehemiah vision with believers across the city. He’s under no illusions about the magnitude of the job. “It’s a huge task; I’m often overwhelmed,” he admits. “As far as a challenge for the Gospel and the need for God’s love, Jakarta is it. This is the biggest city in a nation of 240 million people. That’s a lot of people you can influence.” City of extremes The task goes beyond sheer numerical size. There’s ethnic and cultural diversity: Han Chinese, Javanese, Sundanese, indigenous Betawi and members of nearly all of the 300 distinct people groups of Indonesia. Ancient Hindu tradition still influences society, mingling with the Islam that has dominated the region since the 13th century. More than 2,600 mosques and 5,800 Muslim prayer centers saturate the city, along with numerous Buddhist and Hindu temples. “Jakarta is a city of extremes,” Rick says. “You’ve got the extremely rich and the extremely poor, the top leaders and the illiterate, the most fanatical Islam and the most nominal. It’s the most modern city and the most poverty-stricken.” Other challenges include massive traffic jams (one forecast warns of total gridlock by 2011). There’s also a lot of fear: Ethnic Chinese fear periodic attacks by indigenous Indonesians. Christians fear persecution from Muslims. Churches shy away from stepping out of their cultural-religious comfort zone. Too much to overcome? If hope can bloom amid the hopelessness of Grapes, the Arroyos and their co-workers think it can bloom anywhere — and everywhere — in Jakarta. One day, they believe, Jakarta will be a city of God. Names in quotation marks have changed.