I’m on to some exciting projects lately.  Don’t have much time to give them the proper introduction to you all that they deserve, but nonetheless, I wanted to give you just a peak into some of the things I’ve been working on lately!

An exciting venture lately has been furthering development of my Chicago Spiritual Map into a full-blown collaborative wiki!  The goal in the near future is to help incorporate others; students, professors, churches, local missionaries, summer interns and others into a city-wide project to discover what God is up to in Chicago.  The ultimate dream is to engage followers of Christ at a ground-zero level, giving them an experience in prayer-walking, spiritual mapping, and of the great mission field of the city. You can find the baby stages of this project emerging at Pray4Chicago.

Second, I’m putting together a site that will help connect other Chicago missionaries, and organic church networks.  Since I’ve been in Chicago, I’ve met dozens of church planters and emerging church planters focused on bringing the profoundly lost into friendship with God.  Some are working with poets and artists, others are sharing the gospel with Somalian refugees, still others are focused on hispanics.  This October 31-November 2 Moody Bible Institute will be hosting Niel Cole’s Greenhouse, a conference/workshop teaching the basics in organic church planting.  This might be a good time to discuss how church planters around the city might resource one another, cross-pollinate ideas and church networks, and serve the city and see God’s shalom reign!  I’ve got the url and basic files installed, but I don’t want to post more on this one just yet.

Finally, I’ve been blessed to share my faith with several at my part time job!  These friends of mine are seriously searching, and I’m praying that God reveals himself to them in a special way as we begin to meet for our first bible study!  Also, there is a new friend of ours interested in reaching out to some of her friends in another neighborhood on the south side of Chicago.  God seems to be moving lots of things at once!

It’s fun being on this journey, and I know its what I was made to do.  God bless you this weekend!

I got these two (count them, TWO) great Chicago maps for my birthday in early August, but just recently had the money saved to purchase legit frames for them!  I’m psyched about hanging them in my office (or sharing one with a friend or placing elsewhere in the house - didn’t expect to have two of them), and studying the layout of the city, as well as learning to pray for the city a chunk at a time.  What do you think would be possible if a whole city began to pray for peace?

A few other church planters and I are looking into Wikispaces as a common ground for spiritual mapping and saturation church planting.  Its a neat site - imagine: you’re own free wiki on ANYTHING or EVERYTHING you like!  How cool is the internet!?!

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.

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.

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!