I’m beginning to see that part of my calling in this mission field is to begin searching, praying, walking researching, and traveling through Chicago’s vibrant city neighborhoods.

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!

Been thinking about how the Kingdom grows lately. These thoughts have mostly come from my readings in Jesus for President and my aggravation with some poison ivy that’s sprouted up in our backyard.  Jesus says that Kingdom growth a lot like a mustard tree.

I hear that Jews were not too fond of mustard trees.  There were actually Jewish laws against them being planted in gardens.  The reason why is that they essentially took over the area, planting and sprouting and generally being a nuisance.  Those stubborn little bushes would pop up and ruin all the plans and purposes the farmer had for the garden.  No matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t stop those tiny little seeds from spreading and getting into your garden!

Growing up, I always heard nice sermons about the remarkable power of a mustard seed - tiny as it is, growing into a giant redwood or something.  The only problem is, when you actually look at a mustard tree, its pretty scraggly.  Check out this mustard “tree” below that is busting out of some concrete in Bethany:

This insidious viral plant spreads like wildfire and is under no one’s control.  It breaks all kinds of rules about how plants are supposed to behave.  And what’s more - the fowl are supposed to take refuge in its branches!  This is not the cedars of Lebanon that Israel hoped the Kingdom of God would produce.  This looks more like a renegade sleeper cell just waiting to spread its potent seeds of destruction all over your lawn - and attract and house the worst kind of flying beasts - the kind that poop all over your car and hang out with the wrong crowd.

If we think about the Kingdom of God as Jesus taught about it, what might change in how we live as followers of Christ?  It might mean we see growth as slow and insignificant - rather than splashy and impressive.  It might mean that we are not just on earth to be “nice” to everyone and everything, but rather to help upend and nonviolently overthrow the prevailing systems that dominate and oppress humanity and creation.  Maybe it means we spread like a disease, or a terrorist group, or a clan of starfish. (an earlier post on that here).

The neat thing about mustard seeds is how potent they are!  But you have to crush them up for them to be of any use.  The Anabaptists used to talk about how everything on earth finds its purpose through suffering.  The delicious lettuce you eat in your salad started as a seed in the ground, and grew slowly to produce a head.  It was picked, shipped, and carried to your dinner table, where you rip it apart, cut it into pieces, and then grind at it down till it is no more.  And yet, if you hadn’t done that, the lettuce’s purpose in life would have been in vain.  What if the Christian’s purpose is not so much different from that lettuce, or that mustard seed?  What if Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection was not just a one-time event for our esoteric sins, but actually provided an avenue and a model for us to experience our greatest purpose in life?

Jesus moves beyond mustard to talk about yeast mixed into dough, weeds mixed in with wheat, good and junky fish of all kinds mixed up in a net…all stuff that is a recognizable annoyance in the lives of his audience. It’s interesting that Jesus waits till the end (of time) to call out what is the weed and what is the wheat.

To the some, the mustard-tree Kingdom looks like a weed - to Christ, to the world, and to the marginalized, it is the bread of heaven!

It’s hard for me to take much of Frank Viola. He has a harsh writing style to him and though I’m totally into reading about the issues he focuses on, I guess I just don’t get what field he’s playing in. I love the brother and read his Pagan Christianity TWICE before reviewing it (to help make up for everybody else preferring to review first and read later). So he’s written a little article that’s floating around the web called “Finding Organic Church.” Its basically written to answer the question he hears over and over again, “What if I want to experience this kind of body life but there are no organic churches in the area to be a part of and we can’t relocate?” Frank’s basic response is to do what Aquilla and Priscilla did; to do what John the Baptist did - prepare a foundation for someone else to come. To Frank, that means gathering people together and cultivating interest in organic church by starting reading groups, BBQs, etc. Then invite (or cultivate) a nearby itinerant church planter to teach the church how to be led by Jesus rather than by a person.

I see this all through Acts and the New Covenant, and it has some practical/psychosocial handles to it as well (how can someone regularly participating in the group authoritatively tell everyone not to lead?). I know that this will be a useful method for ministry in organic church planting, and I’m thankful for the work he’s done on it. Keeping it in check that it is ONLY a method and not the lynch pin to life, the universe, and everything. (Americans have this love affair with franchising. It’s in my blood too.) But it seems to miss the point that new churches are started not just by existing Christians getting together for a book club, but by new converts who are meeting in a dance club or a coffeehouse! If this “revolution” becomes just another sheep trade, I want out.

He states that he’s writing this article in part because he has seen too many house churches become unwilling to accept outside aid. I know what that can look like. Too many burnt Christians think that they must put “their church” in a “reverse quarantine,” the same way we choose to drink bottled water or organic foods. If the whole world is diseased, then the healthy hole up somewhere till the whole thing passes. The problem is they quickly become insular and infighting usually destroys the group within 6 months to 1 year. Frank’s hope is that there will be healthy, itinerant church planters that can visit churches throughout a region and keep feeding healthy nutrients of teaching, exhortation, and mission to these churches.

Contrary to popular simple church beliefs, not everyone can plant a church. (There’s nothing simple about it.) Sure, anyone can hold a bible study - but it takes someone who is called, gifted, trained, and sent as a church planter (an apostle) to help center a spiritual family on Jesus Christ and the Way. It takes intense training to instill healthy DNA into a church, then to support that spiritual family - many times it takes failing and falling hard on your knees. The difficult work of inviting communities of people to die to themselves is not a role many should covet, nor are many called to. But it is a good calling.

However God arranges your spiritual family, remember that he will also arrange for cross-pollination of your family and others in the extended family of God. Keep your doors open, not just for the teacher or church planter, but especially for the stranger, the poor, and the lost - they may have even more to help us discover just want kind of person this Jesus really is.

As for Frank, I am thankful for his ministry and I hope that he continues to participate in uncovering for all of us what it means to be the body of Christ. I’m less inclined than he to think that institution is a bad thing (its actually an inevitable thing, even a group of friends choosing a movie to watch is by definition an institution). I believe that for every insular, cynical, and paranoid house church out there, there are 10 vibrant, transforming, and multiplying churches with open hearts prepared to accept whatever God gives them. May we be part of that transforming revolution of love.

My friend and mentor, Kent Smith, has recently made publicly available a book he’s been working on for over a year. It’s small (about 40 pages) but its profound, and I believe it has the potential to revolutionize one’s spiritual life, as well as how North American’s understand what following Jesus looks like.

Think about the universe, think of a flower, think of your DNA, think of just about anything we consider beautiful…what do they have in common? A repeating pattern around a center. But what are the patterns in your lifestyle? What is your center? Or rather…WHO?

Kent is interested in a little experiment - and needs your help. Read below to find out more.

Friends,

I want to invite you to join me in testing an exciting new tool I have developed with the help of some friends. It’s a short gift book called Centered, and it is designed to help people take a deeper look at what it really means to follow Jesus.

Last Sunday 250 Million people in the U.S.A. did not attend church. That’s five people out of every six—and their number is growing by about 10,000 per day.

Many of these people are very interested in spiritual reality, just not church. Chances are you know some of these people. If you’d like to take your conversation with them to a deeper level and help us learn from your experience, here’s what you can do:

1) Buy a copy of Centered at the website listed below, read through it and jot down your impressions, good and bad.

2) On reflection and prayer, give or lend the book to one of your friends who seems open to spiritual things with the offer to discuss what they think of it over a cup of coffee (or whatever!).

3) After that conversation, write out your impressions of what impact the experience has had on you and your friend and e-mail them to me.

That’s it. Early indications are that this tool will make a big difference for many people—and I will be delighted and grateful if you choose to be part of the team that helps us refine it even more. (But still love you if this isn’t a good time for such a venture!)

Here’s the website

Blessings in this season. Looking forward to hearing from you!

Kent

So go ahead - purchase a copy; help out a missionary here in North America, and then be blessed by a great message! If you don’t have Kent’s email, feel free to drop me a line by commenting on this post. We’ll make sure the message get’s back to him!

Watch the first 5 minutes of this video, then read the section of Scripture below. What do you notice about church planting? What do you find frustrating, or liberating?

What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor. For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building.

By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as an expert builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should be careful how he builds. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man’s work. If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames.

–Paul, a missionary and planter of the Good News; 1 Cor 3: 5-15