PCA Conversations

Chicago is a great city; heartbreakingly great.  Chicagoans have smiled lately (with the usual midwestern reserve) at the way the rest of the world has only lately noticed Chicago again because one of our sons has been elected to the Office of the President.  Even Gotham has taken notice.  A recent article in the New York Times suggested that ‘A New Wind is Blowing in Chicago.’  The author wrote,

“Chicago has long been a place that seems comfortable — or, at least, well adjusted — to losing, a place where you put your head down and shoulder through whatever hand is dealt you. (How could it be otherwise, considering all the practice that the cursed Chicago Cubs have provided over the years?)”

Forget the fact that the White Sox won the World Series more recently than either the Yankees or the Mets; I’m only bringing this up to highlight how two people can look at the same thing and come to very different conclusions.  The way I see it, the people of Chicago aren’t comfortable with losing.  They’re comfortable with life.  That’s one of the reasons it’s so great to minister here.

Chicago is a city of neighborhoods, and people are very aware about where they live.  The characteristics of each neighborhood can be really distinct: some neighborhoods maintain strong ethnic identities, some are centered on education or commerce, some are about stable family living, and others are about art and entertainment.  Chicago is still deeply divided by both race and economics.  There are some neighborhoods that are notable exceptions to this, but it’s still far too easy to see the dividing lines that carve up the city.

I’ve lived in Chicago for a little over 18 years, and I’ve spent about eight of those years as a pastor in the same place.  Our church is a couple of miles northwest of the Loop, in a neighborhood called Bucktown.  Like many of the neighborhoods on the north side of the city, it has gone through lots of transitions.  Right now, Bucktown is an affluent and, frankly, not very diverse neighborhood.  Lots of galleries and specialty shops line the main streets; they’ve slowly trickled in over the last 15 years or so.  There are a handful of long-time residents here who can remember when the neighborhood was predominantly Polish, and a few more who remember when it was predominately Puerto Rican, but those folks are becoming fewer and further between.  I sometimes characterize Bucktown as one of the neighborhoods where young professionals with families come to live as a kind of ‘last stop’ before they leave the city.

This makes Bucktown a more stable and family oriented neighborhood than, say, Wrigleyville (the sub-neigborhood of Lakeview that is essentially a bunch of bars encircling Wrigley Field), but not nearly as stable as neighborhoods in other parts of the city.  People come for a while and then they leave.  This churn, which is so prevalent in many neighborhoods on the north side of Chicago, is one of the biggest challenges we face.  It’s difficult to develop community, difficult to isolate and develop leaders who will be around for the long haul, difficult to challenge a consumptive view of living, and just plain difficult to say goodbye so often.  It’s also really been a challenge to know how to minister to school-age kids and their families.  We have lots and lots of kids under the age of five, but the number of school-age kids drops off drastically.  How can we best support families who stay in the city?  How can we encourage them to stay?

For a long stretch of time, our church was the only English-speaking PCA church in the city limits.  One of the results was that we developed as a regional congregation, with folks coming from all over the city and occasionally the suburbs.  This was, in my estimation, both good and bad.  The good part was that we grew on a relatively solid foundation of mature believers.  It’s bad because our sense of place– our identity as neighbor– didn’t really exist.  As a result, we were relatively healthy and cared for, but the outward impulse of mission was something that we didn’t feel collectively.

God has been moving in us and changing us.  We have intentionally, and sometimes painfully, turned our gaze and energy and resources outside of ourselves.  I still consider us a regional church, but the majority of the folks who attend our church now are from Bucktown and the surrounding neighborhoods.  On Sunday mornings you can look around and see mature, long-time followers of Christ standing next to folks who have only recently come to faith and folks who aren’t even sure why they’re in church.  Intellectually, I know that’s how church is supposed to be.  Experientially, however, I find it to be the most challenging and rewarding thing I’ve ever experienced as a pastor.  This has come, I think, from emphasizing mission in our place, and not simply in the places where we ‘send’ people.  The metaphor we use is ‘making space’ for the gospel to work among us.

We’ve become convinced that most effective way to make space for the gospel to change the city  will be to be a part of planting churches that are actually not like our church.  This feels like a beautiful gospel irony to me.  We’re thinking ‘small and deeply present’ will be the best way to reach our city.  I know that won’t work everywhere, but in a city of neighborhoods– in Chicago– we think it will.  With so many neighborhoods and their distinct identities, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to church that will work.  Incarnational ministry on the north side of has to look very different from incarnational ministry on the west side.  We want to be a part of the deeply challenging task of thinking about how to make space for the gospel to work in every neighborhood of the city.  We want to do the work, support our sisters and brothers who are already doing it, and invite others to play their part.  We’re hopeful.

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Aaron Baker is the pastor of Covenant Presbyterian Church in Chicago, IL.

“A New Wind is Blowing in Chicago” from the Times

Chicago Neighborhood Map