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!

Part of being a disciple of Christ is learning to live in God’s governance; his new economy. In America, we tend to see capitalism as the foundation for our society - production and consumption are the backbone to its market economy. Capitalism tends to put competition at the top of a short list of values for its citizens. We see the vicious, unjust effects of this all the time - the rich are taxed much less than the poor, unemployment, concentration of political and economic exploitation, and environmental rape.

Maybe its time in God’s Kingdom to function more organically in a new economy.

I just found out about time banks! They are really sweet way to use the currency of time to provide services to a local community.

The concept is simple. For every hour you give in service to another Time Bank member, you earn one Time Dollar. You can now use this Time Dollar to spend on a service someone else offers in the time bank community.

Time Dollars are a community currency that members earn by using their time, energy, skills, and talents to help others. Time Banking is about local individuals, organizations or business’s helping each other in one-to-one exchanges or in group projects. Members help rebuild neighborhood networks and strengthen communities. There are lots of time bank communities that set up shop on the internet as a way to search available services and meet their neighbors.

What an amazing way to (1) save money (2) participate in a local, neighbor centered economy and (3) experience the redistribution of wealth and resources. Imagine seeing a white collared businessman doing taxes for a Mexican immigrant family who earned their Time Dollar repainting their black neighbor’s house, who got his Time Dollars by going grocery shopping for the elderly woman across the street. Imagine the crime rate going down as neighbors get to know each other and watch out for each other. Imagine an investment into your own local economy!

“Give and you shall receive” - God’s economy doesn’t include dolla billz, he was talking about relationships!

Maine Time Banks - a time bank up in Portland, Maine

Start Your Own! - no matter how big or how small, why not begin one in your neighborhood?

Living In Story- Reciprocal Missionality in the Image of God - Ron Pate’s participatory seminar that clued me in to time banks. He is a part of SCUPE (Seminary Consortium of Urban Pastoral Education) in Chicago. SCUPE helps communities in Chicago start timebanks (they call it Abundance in the Beloved Community, or ABC’s).

Last night was my first “missional learning party”. I’ve never been to a learning party before - apparently its a lot like a world cafe. There were lots of Jesus followers all talking about how they experienced God’s Kingdom breaking in - and how in other ways we have tried to live the Kingdom life and have failed miserably. The coffee shop we met at was covered in butcher paper, from the walls to the tables, hopeful of getting creative ideas drawn or written down. We shared with complete strangers in God’s family the missional impulses of our hearts…it was great.

We watched a few videos, including the incredible “Escape the Circus” video which I wrote on here. But the MC of the night introduced me to Sigur Rós, an Icelandic ambient band that has an eerily compelling sound. Their song Glósóli sent chills up my spine. Before starting the video, we were asked, “Where do you see ‘mission’ in this music video?”

I’d love your thoughts on this.

So much is happening.  It looks like today’s post might be one of those eclectic, A.D.D. posts.

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Last weekend Katrina and I drove all the way up to middle Tennessee for a family reunion retreat in the middle of Natchez Trace State Park.  It was an amazing journey up (including submitting a paper for a class by email while sitting in a Super 8 Motel parking lot!), and Katrina and I had a lot of time to talk a bunch of big things through.  The weekend itself was very nostalgic/avant-garde.  My family is a mixture of ultra-conservative non-institutional Church of Christ folks, and a branch of extreme-prophetic non-denominational neo-charismatics.  And then there’s Katrina and I who “don’t go to church anywhere”.  So its always interesting when we bust out the song books and break out in worship.  Good ole’ unity in Christ.  I guess Paul said we were “one” in Christ, not one in church.  Surprisingly, we had a lot of people get really excited about our mission work, and committed to praying for us.  Awesome!

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This Saturday is Wikicclesia, a chance for people who are living on the edges of God’s Kingdom and/or leading communities of God to come together and share what they’ve learned so far.  That’s why we’re calling it “Wikicclesia” - “cclesia” since that is the Greek word for gathering or church, and “wiki” because its set up not as a lecture-conference, but with lots of round tables, markers, and huge sheets of paper for brainstorming.  Everyone is encouraged to share what they’ve learned, which informs how the day goes - think of the day as an article on Wikipedia - the whole thing takes shape under the leadership of many, and truthfully, under the leadership of the Spirit.  Cool!  If you’re in the area and would like to attend, follow the link above and contact those at that email address.  Or just leave me a comment.

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We’re reading some great books, thanks to a little book on speed reading.  Here’s a few on our list right now:  Deep Economy: the wealth of economies and the durable future,  Global Chicago, Wikinomics: how mass collaboration changes everything, and The Jesus Way: a conversation on the ways that Jesus is the Way.   Speed reading has been such a “freeing” tool for me and her lately; we have so much we want to learn (and remember) and speed reading helps us through the stack of library books before they’re all due.  And the TV can just stay off for all I’m concerned.

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Yesterday I went out with Kent and Miller to the 411 Project.  Miller and others have been working hard!  Much of the land has been cleared, simple shelters and structures have been erected, goats have a real pen, chickens have their roost…and the well is being dug.  Miller plans to use the dirt dug out for the well to make compressed earth blocks for his family’s house.  It was great fun learning and working with him on the making a few of these powerful bricks.  I’ve not written on this before, but Katrina and I are keenly interested in this type of building as a sustainable and durable alternative (not to mention affordable!) to traditional stick-and-insulation homes for our own living situation.  While the project is just getting started, I can say already that the 411 project has brought beauty out of a forgotten land, and is restoring it to a state that brings glory to God.

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I suppose that’s what I’ve got time to toss up here for now.  I keep waiting for the summer to slow down so I can get in a more blogarific mood, but I’m still waiting I guess.  Time to catch up on reading your blog!

Skype has been a friend as of late. I’ve been able to talk with friends living in Mexico all the way up to Chicago who are trying to show others the joy of living the Christ-life. Skype is a simple “internet phone” tool that anyone with a computer and an internet connection can use and is an incredible means of sharing ideas right across the globe. And I am humbled! Men and women much older and more experienced at life than I am have been cross-pollinating dreams with me and each other and has sparked my imagination more than once. We are truly living in an incredible age.

I’m reading a book right now titled Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything (Check out this link to help contribute to the book!). Simply put, it is a book that describes how ideas are shared in the world we live in. Gone are the days of the entrepreneur personality that used his expertise to solve every problem and steer every ship into the harbor. Now we are seeing tools like Skype, Wikipedia, YouTube, Flickr, and more invade our consciousness - and we will never be the same. Blogs are changing politics, business, the Church and beyond. I liken it to the Gutenberg press that 500 years ago made books commonplace in our lives; finally anyone could be an author…sort of. Now the bar has been lowered once again, only this time anyone who has access to the internet can change the world.

Some call the world we live in the World of the Starfish. The Starfish and the Spider is another book that describes this world we now live in. The metaphor goes: cut off the leg of a spider and you have a lame spider. Cut off the head of a spider and you have a dead spider. BUT! Cut off the leg of a starfish, and what do you have? TWO STARFISH! The starfish has no head and therefore can never truly be killed.

The best organizations in the world we live in today are “starfish organizations”. These kind of organizations have no central headquarters, no visible leader or system of hierarchy, and yet grow and multiply infinitely quicker than any “spider organization” out there.

Recently Congress entertained a bill that would make all identifiable religious organizations on a level legal playing field with lobbyists. Basically, that means that many of the rights and/or privileges of churches today would be taken away (mostly regarding financial breaks, etc). This will probably not pass, but it is a sign of things to come in the near future. The knife is at the spider’s neck.

But, praise God, the Kingdom is not a spider - it is a starfish! Movements of Christ’s body are spreading like a virus right across this country, and right across the planet. More around the world are becoming Christians today than ever before, and the majority of them are poor, DON’T have any church property to be taxed in the first place, and for the most part live under the radar. This is the fire of the Spirit spreading across the earth. These are exciting times.