Finding myself drinking coffee more and more these days.  I’ve begun to call it my “liquid intelligence,” but I’m not sure if I like that.  Journaling, coffee, prayer, and an active imagination are the things that usually fill my mornings.  Also, I’ve been gravitating more and more to Pandora’s rockin’ Trance station.  Check out all my fave stations and rock out with me here.  I love the digital age!

I’m finding more and more in the city and region who are experimenting with communal discipleship, organic church planting, and the like.  Yesterday I traveled out to West Chicago and had spent most of the day at the Wyclife Bible Translation center with other church planter types.  Joe Hernandez with CityTeam Ministries was there, leading the discussion.

I notice that in this whole church planting conversation, there are two emphases at least that fill the air.  One group sees house churches as a means to develop more authentic community.  Where you take the programs, clergy, and other obstacles out of the way and just have family life together.  The problem I see with this approach is that these groups usually bring in many more Christians than those unsure of their relationship with God.  And more often than not, these Christians have such baggage from their previous church experience that you spend all your time deconstructing and sometimes criticizing the “institutional church” (as if there is ever a “un-institutional church” - a fallacy) that little gets done in the way of loving neighbors, or transforming lives into the image of Christ.

Besides that issue, there’s LOTS more “authentic” expressions of church than just meeting in a home!  If you want to see a good picture of deep, holistic Christian community, check out Reba Place Fellowship, or L’Arche Communities, or so many other intentional Christian communities.  Why stop at just being “family” when you meet together for worship?  I find that most Christians meeting in house churches either come to it expecting to become the superstar of their little group (thus defeating community), or they are just on the way to the next step of a more full-time intentional expression (like living in a house together, or sharing finances).

These are all awesome journeys to be on, and some days I wish I could have more than one life to do them all.  But in this life I feel called to go the second path in church planting: the path that brings the profoundly lost into a transforming relationship with Jesus Christ.  Joe Hernandez (like Neil Cole and many others) are focused specifically on this goal too.

I’ve seen it happen.  Whole communities come to Christ because one person in their group found something amazing in Christ’s teaching.  She found it because someone showed it to her.  Someone planted the Gospel in her heart, then SHE plants the church in her own group of friends!  This is where the organic church has something healthy to contribute to the emerging church landscape in America, and around the world.  Plant the gospel deeply into multiple contexts, worldviews, and people groups (not holding it in just one, and not keeping it for the Christians weighted with baggage.)  It has been almost 180 years since the last real explosion of church planting on this continent.  It’s time to start praying for God’s power to flood our lands again.

This is part of a blog series on the neighborhoods of Chicago:

Last week I took a prayer walking tour through Hyde Park, a fascinating neighborhood on the south side of Chicago.  (My hope in this blog series on a spiritual map of Chicago is to canvas one north side neighborhood, followed by a south side, and/or a west side.

The Red Line (north shore) took me all the way down through the Loop to Roosevelt, where I transferred to the Green Line.  I took the Green Line down the east branch to 63rd St and got off at the end of the line.  One of the opportunities in a mostly elevated train line is that you get to see the big picture of the city as you travel to your destination.  As I looked out over the south side, it was like seeing a forgotten, war torn country.  Buildings were gutted and left to the elements, vacant lots with 6ft tall weeds, refuse filled backyards and abandoned factories filled the skyline.  I noticed to that I was now the only white person on my train car, with only one Asian and two Hispanic.

I could feel myself becoming anxious, intimidated.  I thought about how silly this was, and this fear seemed instantly mixed with a measure of euphoric oneness with all of mankind.  This unity came with conviction - that their plight was my plight.  I realized in that moment how spending more time in these impoverished neighborhoods was going to be better for me than I ever realized, and how racial barriers can only come down when people are willing to sneak over the wall and begin looking people in the eye as brothers.

I was thankful for all the smiling faces and jokes thrown around on the train, and I heard from the Lord just how much all of us need the joy of others, and how different colors from the rainbow bring greater joy to each other they they cross boundary lines to share it.

As I got off the train, I continued to ruminate on the north side and south side racial tensions over the years: German Protestants in the south, and Irish Catholics in the north, Blacks, Whites, gangs, it doesn’t matter who “the others” are - what matters is that we CHOOSE to treat “the others” with love and not fear.  I looked around at my surroundings and felt how society feeds this divide, this “other-centered fear;” in architecture, government funding, schools, retail…most of it is put into one ethnic group’s hands, giving the others something to hate, which breeds despair and crime.

The sense of community and catharsis was so present I could taste it in the air.  I walked past a guy with an electric guitar and an amp singing and jamming along with the listeners.  I saw children playing “basketball” with a honest to goodness basket.  I saw men and women displaying flagrant emotions of all sorts - anger, laughter and joy, sadness… I thought I’d see more beggars, but I guess this is not the kind of neighborhood where beggars go looking for money - either that or they’ve all been taken off the streets and now have a couch to bunk out on.  Everyone was outside, and I began to feel strangely welcome.  I got honked at a few times by cars as they went by, and my mind began to play fearful tapes of violence and gang colors, etc.  I wondered what my red t-shirt might mean…

I tried as hard as I could to fight the fear inside me, and continue in prayer for the residents on S Cottage Grove Ave.  It’s certainly the first time I’ve ever not felt safe in broad daylight.  But just about the time I felt I was feeling free to walk without the Spirit of Fear, I stumbled across the University of Chicago.

UofC is a world renoun school, that has more Nobel Peace Prize winning alumni than any other school.  Its highly regarded as a intellectual stalwart, and draws in a most diverse crowd of students (its mostly grad school studies).  My good friend Trevor Thompson and his family live in Hyde Park, while he finishes up his PhD work on early Christianity and New Testament studies.

When I stepped on to the UofC campus, I felt a Spirit of Isolation and Emptiness.  Everyone was out, but they were all walking somewhere with eyes straight forward.  I have explored this campus before, and just as before, I could not find anything in the way of common space besides their on-campus Barnes and Noble bookstore.  I was writing in my journal reflecting and praying for the campus when a guy named Belle walked by playing on his Irish flute.  I complimented him on his playing and he stopped to talk.  We chatted about the importance of putting life into every step, and taking time to get to know people on your path.  As he left, he called out, “Keep spreading the positive energy!”  I’ll try my best, Belle.

I came across a sculpture which heralded this spot as the location of the first contained nuclear release of energy - or atomic bomb.  This is the place where we moved into the atomic age, and ushered in so much fear and capacity to destroy ourselves as a whole planet (America has enough nukes to blow up the earth not just once, but almost 30 times over!)  I sat at its steps for about 15 minutes and cried and prayed.  Where will we go from here?  When will there be peace?  When will we rid ourselves of this madness???

Got to talk and pray with some Jehovah’s witnesses.  I told them I was walking through the neighborhood, canvasing the streets and asking God’s peace on the city.  They told me about how this very world would be redeemed by God and that a righteous humanity would be resurrected and live on this earth in communion with God.  I didn’t disagree with a thing they were saying, but they were talking to me with this trepidation that any moment I would begin to argue with them.  Seems to me that heaven on earth is exactly where this whole thing is headed (Revelation 20-22), and that we as followers of Christ have something to contribute to the redeeming work!  We ended up eating gyros together.  Good times.

Finally, I met Rick in a small food market.  He was drinking a free sample of wheatgrass.  He was a tall, skinny guy, with strange stretch marks all over his face and body.  I later found out he used to be over 300lbs, but after congestive heart failure, decided to put his faith in God and get start fresh.  His life of transformation is inspiring, and his positive attitude toward life (at 65 years old) is inspiring!  You go Rick!

I feel there is more happening in Hyde Park than first meets the eye.  There needs to be more prayer and more research done into what God is up to in this area.

Thanks to Jenna for getting my butt off the blogger bench.

Today I spent almost the whole day doing some of my favorite things: traveling and networking.  My little dirty secret:  I actually LIKE public transit - it gives me great delight in playing the game of transferring buses, deciphering train map puzzles, and timing the whole thing just right.  Today I took Pace Bus 250 all the way from one end of the route to the other - all the way to O’Hare Airport’s Kiss n’ Fly.  The bus driver looked at me a bit suspiciously as I looked longingly into his eyes…

From there, I met Dave Rudin, who is pastor at Summit View Christian Church in Hoffman Estates, and we carpooled it the rest of the way.

It’s amazing how church planters are really most interested in the same things.  They are interested in how to bring someone in desperate need of Jesus to a place where they are ready to follow him, and grow them even beyond that to the point where they are a mature believer helping others come to know Christ.  This process of reproducing disciples is the heart of what church planting is all about.  In fact, most of my interactions with the term “church planting” have left me somewhat wanting, since Jesus never asks us to “go into all the world and plant churches” - but rather make disciples.

Today’s group conversation however centered around our own discipleship.  The process of spiritual formation and personal growth is a favorite topic of mine - especially when talking like this in groups.  It’s inevitable that people will start throwing resources and new ideas around, and I’ll start writing them down like a crazy person.

Speaking of sweet resources: check out 48 Days to the Work You Love by Dan Miller, and this sweet quote by Kahlil Gibran:

Work is love made visible.

And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste,

it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple

and take alms of those who work with joy.

For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread

that feeds but half man’s hunger.

And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes,

your grudge distills a poison in the wine.

And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing,

you muffle man’s ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night.

All work is empty save when there is love;

and when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself,

and to one another, and to God.

What is it that gets your heart racing - that makes the time fly by?  If you’re only working for the money, chances are good you won’t last long in the job.  If you just put your resume out there and hope someone bites, chances are good you’ll hate your job just like the rest of America.  But if you discover your calling - your vocation - and can think of some way in which your job fits into the higher calling, then even cleaning toliets or sweeping floors can be genuine work and worship to God!  May we all find our calling, and enjoy the work God has brought us to.

“For in Christ, there is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, Cubs or Sox…”  (Gal 3:28…ish)

Wore this outfit to a Sox/Royals game, Sox hat with a Cubs shirt…hoping for a protest from the crowd.  There was one guy who yelled, “Figure out which side of the fence you’re on!”  I told him I was sure I was on the right side. :)  Its interesting that over a hundred years ago, the Sox were the south side German Protestant team, and the Cubs were the north side Irish Catholic Team.  Somethings never change…but one day they will!

Note: This is part of a blog series on Chicago and its neighborhoods.

Rogers Park (wikipedia) is the northernmost neighborhood in the city limits. Evanston borders it to the north and we drive through Rogers Park regularly on our way to the loop. It’s been a village of immigrants from the very beginning, from mostly nomadic Native Americans to Germans to Hispanics today. The anchor in the community is Loyola University, one of the largest Jesuit universities located in the southeastern part of the neighborhood. The more north you go in Rogers Park, the more culturally diverse the neighborhood gets. Its got beaches galore, and its still the most affordable neighborhood in the city’s north shore.

I gotta say, I love the movement of Rogers Park. It seems like a happening place, with lots of culture (a big community well is the Heartland Cafe - a spot for spoken word poets and in-the-closet anarchists!) and pride. CAPS is the largest community policing program in the country and has actually drastically reduced the crime rate significantly over the last 10 years.

God is obviously at work in Rogers Park. I found a coffee shop that is offering free massages to its impoverished neighbors, murals painted by children under the train tracks, a funky “gathering place” book store called Armadillo’s Pillow (pic below). Children playing, new green construction projects, and incarnational, missional church plants.

I met John Hoekwater, pastor of Many People’s Church, co-owner of the Common Cup and on the board with Neighbor’s United. His commitment is to the transformation of lives in Rogers Park, and he’s seeing it happen.  With John was Don, a recovering alcoholic who is fully invested in the people of Rogers Park.  Currently he works at a laundromat, and as he and I walked down the street together he was waving to kids on the street and friends in the barber shop.  I kept thinking, “This is the kind of ‘person of peace’ Jesus talks about in Luke 10.  He told me that more than anything, people of Rogers Park need freedom from the oppression and death of drugs.

Praise God that John is helping him on the road to recovery and the Way of Christ.  It was great to pray with them for the peace of the city - I hope for more of that in my travels!

Lewie Clark is an intentional discipler and gospel planter who just moved to Rogers Park from another neighborhood.  He’s helped me keep my head about me and think carefully about what prayer walking and spiritual maps might look like.  I pray for him and the emerging church network he’s a part of in the neighborhood!

This is my first entry to this “neighborhood map,” and honestly I don’t know exactly what its fruit will be, except that the city will be covered in prayer, maybe I’ll meet some Kingdom workers and people of peace, and I’ll have a better picture of this great city I’ve been called to.

You can travel “the world” visiting the neighborhoods in Chicago.  I am amazed at the convergence of culture and life here.  It reminds me of what heaven will be like.  I think that is ultimately the draw of the city for humanity, whether it is conscious or subconscious.  I pray that in this fallen world, Chicagoans will see the glory of God in the midst of the hurting city, and seek him.

- Lord, thank you for your mercy over Rogers Park.  Guide those learning at Loyola and other schools in the neighborhood.  Protect your kingdom workers, John, Lewie, and many others.  Open their eyes to the people you’ve put in their path, and give them the strength to serve.  May your kingdom come in this very diverse place.