Ray Bakke passed away on February 4.
Ray was a huge influence on the founding of BGU and its vision and values. Much of what BGU is today was built on his shoulders and his influence continues long after he retired in 2011.
Please pray for Ray鈥檚 family and join us in being grateful for the contribution Ray made to BGU and so many of us BGU students, alumni, faculty and staff.
Here we quote Ray Bakke's obituary that was published in Christianity Today.
to that article.
In 2014, Ray Bakke received the Missio Nexus Lifetime Service award in a presentation in front of a large audience.
The video prepared for that award can be seen .听听听
Died: Ray Bakke, Who Believed Christians Are Called to Cities
Urban missiologist urged evangelicals to cross racial and cultural lines for the sake of the gospel.
Ray Bakke believed that 鈥淛esus loves the little children / All the children of the world,鈥� and he thought evangelicals did too. So he was surprised when so many fled from racial diversity when their children鈥檚 schools were integrated.
鈥淚t was the biggest shock of my life,鈥� he told CT in 2021. 鈥淭he whole Moody-Trinity-Wheaton establishment, all of them singing 鈥榬ed and yellow, Black and white,鈥� but when those kids showed up at their kids鈥� schools, they panicked and they fled.鈥�
Bakke went the opposite direction. He moved his family into Chicago in 1965 and stayed through white flight, racial unrest, riots, bombs, fires, and gangs. He adopted a Black son and became a leading proponent of urban missiology, arguing that the Great Commission called Christians into American cities.
Bakke was a critic of suburban Christianity and a bold voice opposing church growth strategies that embraced and encouraged de facto racial segregation.
鈥淗e taught us urban missiology in ways few of us were prepared to see in the 鈥�80s,鈥� David Fitch, chair of evangelical theology at Northern Seminary. 鈥淗e gave us a vision for how God works in the teeming diversities of urban centers. He had a giant presence wherever he spent time with pastors and students.鈥�
Bakke died on February 4 at the age of 83. His family requested that CT hold his obit until February 28 to give them time to grieve.
The author of The Urban Christian and A Theology as Big as the City was raised about as far from city lights as one could get. His parents, Tollef and Ruth Bakke, settled in Saxon, Washington, about 90 miles north of Seattle, in a valley between the Cascade Mountains and Lake Whatcom, where a community of immigrant loggers and farmers raised children and cows.
Tollef and Ruth both came from Norwegian families but spoke in different dialects and couldn鈥檛 understand each other, so the first language in their home was English. Tollef had once hoped to go to Bible school, but the dream was interrupted by the Great Depression. He had a dairy farm, drove a truck, and was an active member of a local Lutheran church with a deep commitment to personal faith, prayer, and Bible reading.
Ray Bakke was born May 22, 1938, the oldest of four. He was taught Sunday school by 鈥渁 busted-up Swedish logger,鈥� he told CT, who believed Christians should love God, follow Jesus, and serve the world.
A high school history teacher and football coach encouraged Bakke to go study at Moody Bible Institute and 鈥済et a little Bible under your belt.鈥� He left Washington on a bus at 18, with a box of chicken and sandwiches his mother had packed.
鈥淚 didn鈥檛 know where Moody was,鈥� Bakke said in an interview two months before his death. 鈥淲hen we came down Lake Shore Drive in Chicago, I was in awe of everything I saw. I was captured by Moody.鈥�
Studying to be a pastor from 1956 to 1959, Bakke was exposed for the first time to the racial divisions in America.
One of the people he learned from was Corean Jantz, a piano major and pastor鈥檚 daughter from Missouri. Jantz was the pianist for the Moody choir, and her roommate, the choir鈥檚 best soloist, was , a Black woman. When the choir traveled, school officials called ahead to warn churches that the choir was integrated. Bakke was startled to learn that some Christians would refuse to let a Black student into their homes.
Bakke married Jantz in 1960, and the young couple moved to Seattle, where Bakke pastored at a Swedish Baptist church and continued his education at Seattle Pacific University.
As a young pastor, Bakke said, he learned he also had to be a part-time sociologist. To minister to his congregation, he had to understand the social pressures impacting their faith. When a local Boeing plant lost a government contract and laid off large numbers of employees, the effect was felt at the Swedish Baptist church.
鈥淚 began, overnight, to lose men,鈥� he said. 鈥淲hen the lunch bucket group, working-class men, are unemployed, they stop coming to church. They鈥檝e lost their identity. If they don鈥檛 have a job, they don鈥檛 have an identity. These sturdy evangelical believers found it difficult to come to church.鈥�
Bakke decided he needed more education. Then the family suffered a personal tragedy when a daughter died at birth. They buried her and left Seattle. The family鈥擱ay, Corean, and sons Woody and Brian鈥攎oved back to Chicago in 1965.
Bakke enrolled in Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and pastored a church in the Edgewater neighborhood of Chicago, where about 60,000 people lived in a 1.25-square-mile area, including immigrants from about 25 percent of the nations of the world. He recognized his cultural context was, in some important ways, similar to the urban context of Christians in the Roman Empire. Paul wrote to churches in diverse metropolises; Augustine wrote about the Trinity while ministering to Christians in the port city of Hippo.
And yet, in an evangelism class at Trinity, he learned there was no major scholarship on urban evangelism and that some even argued that Christianity couldn鈥檛 thrive in cities, because the Bible was a rural book for rural people.
As an evangelical, though, Bakke felt called to love God, follow Jesus, and serve the world. And the world鈥檚 people were increasingly urban.
鈥淲e can all be timid Christians, when faced with modern urban conditions,鈥� Bakke later . 鈥淏ut it is only by living in a city, with a theological vision for the city, that we can attempt to reach the city鈥檚 people.鈥�
When Bakke graduated from Trinity, he entered the doctoral program at McCormick Theological Seminary, writing his dissertation on urban pastoral work in the Roman Empire and laying the foundation for a modern urban missiology.
As a doctoral student, he cofounded the , which is now a school at Christian Theological Seminary. When he graduated, he took a position as professor of ministry at Northern Seminary and joined the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelism as the senior associate for large cities.
Bakke鈥檚 work ran against popular trends in the study of evangelism, though. Many evangelicals in the 1980s and 鈥�90s embraced a church growth strategy based on the 鈥溾�� that said more people will convert to Christianity if they don鈥檛 have to cross racial, linguistic, or class barriers.
Bakke personally quarreled with Fuller professor C. Peter Wagner about church growth theology.
鈥淧eter once pushed up against the wall of a bookstore,鈥� Bakke said. 鈥淗e said, 鈥業f 2 billion have never heard the gospel, isn鈥檛 it true that reaching them is more important than your theology of the city?鈥�
鈥淚 told him that gangs are segregated and they grow, but that doesn鈥檛 mean they鈥檙e good. There is something missing if your church growth theology isn鈥檛 better than what the gangs are preaching.鈥�
At the same time, integration wasn鈥檛 an abstract idea for Bakke. His sons were enrolled in public school, and Woody, his eldest, frequently brought friends who didn鈥檛 have enough to eat to the Bakke house. One of them, a boy named Brian Davis, stayed for weeks and then months, until the Bakkes finally asked if he wanted to be a permanent part of the family.
鈥淧eople talk about how hard it is to integrate,鈥� Bakke told CT. 鈥淚t only cost me $80 to adopt him.鈥�
In 2001, Bakke cofounded 五楼自拍. The school focused on teaching pastors to apply theology to trends in urban migration and the growth of global cities. Two-week intensive courses are held in six continents, and each student must cross an ocean at least once as part of the program. Bakke worked there as chancellor and professor until he retired in 2011.
He continued to be frustrated, though, that so many white evangelicals didn鈥檛 seem to believe the Sunday school song about Christ鈥檚 love for racial diversity.
鈥淚 watched the evangelical movement panic and turn inwards,鈥� he said a few months before his death. 鈥淲e鈥檝e become fearful as the country has become fearful, and politicians have played on that fear. Too many white evangelicals have forgotten who we are. We are the people who believe in crossing oceans and jungles and talking to people in their own languages. Now we鈥檙e moving into all-white neighborhoods and hoping the globalization stuff will go away.鈥�
Bakke said he hoped Christians would reread Psalm 107 when he died and remember that God is on a mission in the motion of people around the globe.
He was predeceased by his son Brian Davis in 2018 and wife, Corean Jantz Bakke, in 2021. He is survived by his sons Woody and Brian Bakke.
The article was written by Daniel Silliman and was published on Christianity Today's website (www.christianitytoday.com) on February 28, 2022.