There is a legend in Chicago city history - the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.  It was possibly the greatest U.S. disaster of the 19th century, and only from the immediate rebuilding of the city and support from cities all over the world was Chicago able to emerge as global city and economic hub for the country.  It’s why the city is sometimes known as “the Second City” because so much burned in the fire that the rebuilding essentially created a whole new community.

Over the past week, Hurricane Ike partnered with a Pacific tropical depression dumped over 90 billion gallons of water over Chicago this past weekend, flooding sewers and rivers, and eventually streets and whole city blocks.  Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich declared Chicago and the 7 surrounding counties disaster areas.  Though Chicago is far from any coast, the combination of both storm systems actually gave the city more rain that Houston!

Over the air waves, I kept hearing stories of families whose basements had been flooded out, or others who had evacuated from their homes and were living in temporary shelters.  During an age of extreme weather, I have seen New Orleans and Indonesia and others get hit hard, and yet still felt disconnected from the disaster and did not involve myself in assisting those in need.  Usually the voices in my head say something like, “I’ll just get in the way,” or “I don’t have time to do this - I’ve got to take care of myself.”  When disaster came to us, I felt God saying, “The body of Christ helps its neighbors - you are a part of the body of Christ, and your neighbors are in need of your help.”  It was pretty obvious what I was supposed to do next.

I put on my oldest clothes, put some of my personal stuff in a ziplock bag and headed out the door.  I didn’t have any tools, and virtually no knowledge of how to safely deal with a flood, but I went with hands to serve.

The streets in Albany Park were either filled with cars trying to get out, or water pouring in.  I walked up to a water managment truck waiting in the long traffic lines and asked where to help out.  They pointed me toward St. Louis street, and I set out.

There I met a river where once was a street.  No body was out except an old man named Pete, who was fuming mad that no one in the city was listening to him.  He had worked on sewers and flooding back in Greece, and knew that all they needed to do was vaccuum the clog in the sewer system, and the water would recede.  In the meantime, he’s trying to figure out how to drain his completely flooded basement, check his foundation and turn his power back on.

More city crew began arriving at the dead end street.  Most were wearing nice shoes and weren’t getting into the water.  I hadn’t yet gotten wet either.  And when I saw some locals at the end of the street repositioning sandbags against the riverbanks (they were just sitting out in the street), I felt like I needed to join them in the filthy waters.  A city official stopped me after he saw my intentions, telling me how nasty the water was since the sewers had overflowed.  It was tempting to turn around and find some other way to help out - I’ll be honest - I’ve never been fond of tuberculosis.  I paused, waiting for the Spirit to give me some confirmation that I truly was supposed to wade into the waters.  Maybe against sound judgment, but certainly not against the model Christ gave us, I joined my neighbors in the mess.

We worked for several hours, pushing back the power of the river.  There is something deeply spiritual and worshipful in tossing sandbags.  Among the dozen or so out there were Mark and Tanya, a young couple who worked for the Chicago Symphony.  Their whole basement was floor-to-celing flooded, and their first floor was soaking too.  I can’t imagine the feeling, but I kept wondering what good it was to fight the river since everthing was submerged already.  Then I heard some talking about how the water had severely weakened their foundations.  Yeah - that would put me to work too!

Some were really angry at the city for doing so little.  While I was there, it seemed the city was doing everything it could with all the redtape it has established for this sort of thing.  It was disappointing to see neighbors in the mud and waters while city workers still had nice, dry shoes on.  One city official came over and helped us with a sandbag line, saying, “I just can’t stand back and watch - this is what I’m here for…”

It became a great mix of neighbors and city workers.  Those working for a paycheck and those working to save their home, and me, just watching the momentary community rising above the disaster.  I did not go to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, in fact, I’ve never been to a disaster area in my life.  This was a sort of baptism into serving those in crisis - just a few miles from my own home.

John 1:14 says that Word of God became flesh and moved into the neighborhood.  If the powerful, pure creative power of God can become something as lowly, frail and decaying as a human, shouldn’t we be able to walk through sewer water and share in the burden of humanity with fellow neighbors?  This is a struggle for me - but it is the message of the cross.  It is, like Ghandhi and Jesus agree, how we lose ourselves to find our true self.

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.

Welcome to my ongoing series on prayer walking and discovering God in the wildly diverse city of Chicago!

I’m not doing this alone - there is a collaborative effort underway to encourage city street prayer walking and discovery with church planters, churches, and college students all across the city. Find our wiki here.

Chicago is a mission field, it is our mission field.

There are 77 recognized community areas in the city, making it one of the most glocal, ethnically diverse, and contrasted cities in the world. The people of Chicago are fiercely loyal to their ‘hood and many (though they live in a global city) rarely leave the boundaries of their blocks for another part of town.

My hopes are to make good use of my CTA Chicago card; using buses and trains to travel to and in these different communities. I will do my best to write reflections on what I saw, felt, and heard from God as I navigate through the city. My assumption is that God is already at work in their neighborhoods (in bars, churches, and city streets), and a missionary’s job is to find him and point him out for others to see. My centering prayer will come from Luke 10, asking God our Father, the Lord of the Harvest, to raise up workers in the desperate harvest field of that particular neighborhood.

With so many villages to pray through, (there are 77 recognized areas, but most maps draw up about 237 neighborhoods), I’m thinking I may also look for teammates in this work, and start a collaborative project to draw out a complete “spiritual map” of the city. If you are a church planter in Chicago or would like to work on this with me, please email me (see “Contact Us” on this blog’s sidebar).

Why spend so much energy on this project? My firm belief is that first and foremost God’s people depend on God through prayer. If there is to be a church planting movement with lives transformed and the gospel proclaimed afresh, it will come through a prayer movement. One that has its ear close to the ground, to see what God is doing in the streets.

This will be sort of a “live” post, meaning I’ll be updating it as a directory to posts about each neighborhood. To learn what I found from each neighborhood, click on the name of each below:

Following is a list of the Chicago Community Areas by community area number (see map).

May God get the glory!