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!

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.

Google is up to its old tricks again. This time its Google Insights for Search, a nifty tool that reveals who is searching for what, where.  I typed in “Jesus” and here are the results:

(click to expand the image if its too small)

El Salvador nabs the number 1 spot for Jesus, making them the nation God will bless…Ahem.  This kinda gives you a shift in thinking to know that the United States didn’t even make the top ten list in regional interest!  FYI, when I searched for “Jesus Christ” the top country was Eritrea in East Africa.  America is not the hub of the Christian faith, the global south is.

Just for fun, I searched by city, and Chicago came up as #10 worldwide - way to go you spiritual seekers (or searchers) you!  In a city where there is the lowest proportions of evangelical Christians of any US city and a church attendance of just 11% county-wide, (the city is only 8%), there is a lot of interest in the man Jesus!  What might these people be like?  How can we befriend them, and in a natural way, present to them this Jesus in their own context and language?

It was also interesting to see WHEN people search for Jesus - as predicted, its always around December and April.  Why then do some churches down play the Christian calendar, when it is obviously the time when most people are “searching for Christ?”

Just thinking…