
7 minute read
A week in the life of Chicago church planters
ast month IBSA hosted a pilot mission project at Judson University in Elgin, one that linked student groups from all over Illinois with church planters in Chicago. We called the experience “ChicaGO,” and welcomed to it over 60 students from 11 IBSA churches For a couple of the days, the IBSA AllState Youth Choir joined us, bringing our total to over 100 that helped a half dozen church planters
After leading a brief devotion with the larger group each morning, I was able to follow individual groups to their work sites Here’s a brief journal of what I saw:
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It’s Monday, and I pull in to Transformation Church in South Chicago Heights. Alex Bell is the planter of this restart in a church building that has been there for years The property had been somewhat neglected under the previous, older congregation, and Alex has the students hard at work sprucing up the grounds for their first outreach Vacation Bible Schoo
Alex is cutting down small tr I join in with a group hau branches to the curb The bu IBSA All-State Youth Choir pulls in, and I walk over to i
Alex and listen as he hop aboard and quickly gives the new arrivals their instructions I’m impressed with his concise, passionate orientation to their mission field, and the people’s most pressing needs there
He tells the students that, for today, they are missionaries from his church out into its community, and asks them to represent them well He sends them out with invitations to Vacation Bible School, and asks them to pray as they deliver them, and to return with any prayer requests they discover

It’s Tuesday, and I follow a group out to the Avondale neighborhood, where Dave Andreson is the planter There is no church building, except the rented flat where Dave and his wife and their toddler and baby live
After orienting the group to his mission field, he leads us down the street three blocks to the school where he is seeking to build relationships Politics and budget shortages have kept the school grounds from receiving any major maintenance for three years
We cut tree branches so the school’s sign can be en We pull weeds from the cracked asphalt playound We trim bushes and drag away debris
The Gospel is urgently needed in the city’s 77 neighborhoods, and in more than 200 towns and communities surrounding it
Reporter’s Notebook
A recent visit with exchange students was like a crash course in geopolitics
“This group doesn’t get along with these people,” they explained before a dinner of sloppy joes Our new friends, both from former Soviet republics, told us about the precarious dynamics in their homelands
“That’s a closed border ”
Giving by IBSA churches as of 8/8/14:
Budget Goal: $3,934,615
Received to date in 2013: $3,887,969
“They’re extremists ”
Their voices were matter-of-fact, unflinching about the hostilities that are, for them, the way things have always been.
It’s hard to imagine being so used to war in your own country On the other side of the world, however, it’s too easy to adopt that kind of nonchalance
Take the recent rash of violent conflict sweeping across the Middle East War, unrest, and religious persecution are such big parts of what we know about the region Many of us are desensitized, disengaged, and even disinterested in who’s fighting who now staff
Until a tweet or Facebook post puts a face on the issue Or until you remember someone you know like my friends at the dinner table who understands and has possibly experienced this kind of personal war that sends families running for the mountains to escape almost certain death
We all know someone who has been persecuted
It’s Wednesday, and I follow a group out to Garfield Park, a neighborhood second only to Englewood in its annual murder rate Heroic planter Jamie Thompson has been seeking to establish a church there, though it is really an urban ministry center as well They meet in a rented building that used to be a Chicago fire station
Our group is helping Jamie host a weeklong Bible club for the neighborhood’s kids While they clean up from the previous day’s club and get ready for the kids to arrive, Jamie tells me how hard it is to build a church in the midst of violence and poverty, and how hard it is to disciple new Christians when they need jobs and freedom from addiction.
It’s Thursday and I don’t get to visit a work site Instead I help interview a prospective new staff member, to fill a position that’s been vacant for over two years He will help us start new African-American churches in Chicago I leave the interview excited that we’ve finally found the right guy Friday the groups head back home Later we will learn that the Friday night we departed, 11-year-old Shamiya Adams, who attended the Garfield Park Bible Club that week, was shot and killed by a stray bullet that entered her apartment and passed through two rooms to strike her Pastor Jamie tells us she knew Jesus as her Savior.
Nate Adams is executive director of the Illinois Baptist State Association Respond to his column at IllinoisBaptist@IBSA org
Sound Off
Jimmy Draper’s encounter with a Chinese Christian informed how the former president of LifeWay Christian Resources thinks about persecution abroad and at home

As militant groups in Iraq continued their assault on religious minorities, including Christians, leaders in the U S urged the western church to remember that. These fellow Christians are our family, Open Doors USA President David Curry wrote this month We ought to “pray fervently” for them, Southern Baptist ethicist Russell Moore said
We all know someone, because we’re family
But when the problems seem distant, how do Christians pray fervently? The International Mission Board is leading the way by including prayer requests at the end of their news articles about the unrest in the Middle East
“Beg the Lord to awaken the world to the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Iraq and provide pathways for Christians and others to respond,” they posted after a story on the Yazidi Kurds forced to flee their homes
“Ask God to miraculously protect the Yazidis and other Kurds who fled into the mountains; ask Him to provide a means of rescue and temporary homes for the refugees ”

And for militants with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS): “Pray that ISIS leaders and soldiers would experience the love of Jesus Christ and that their lives would be transformed ”
We all know someone, so let’s pray
The interview was wrapp i n g u p w h e n t h e r e p o r t e r asked a prominent leader in t h e r a p i d l y e x p a n d i n g C h in e s e h o u s e c h u r c h m o v em e n t h o w A m e r i c a n Christians could pray for believers in China
“ S t o p p r a y i n g f o r p e r s e c u t i o n i n C h i n a t o e n d , ” t h e l e a d e r r e s p o n d e d , “ f o r i t i s t h r o u g h persecution that the church has grown ”
What astounding faith he demonstrated My admiration of his faith was quickly tempered by what he said next “In fact, we are praying that the American church might taste the same persecution, so revival would come to the American church like we have seen in China ”
Once I recovered from the shock of such a d i s t u r b i n g y e t p r o f o u n d s t a t e m e n t , I t h o u g h t about the irony We in America keep praying for God to bless us, while persecuted Christians in other nations are praying God will dismantle our arrogance through suffering so that we will become the vibrant and significant blessing God made us to be
R e s e a r c h s h o w s t h a t t h e m a j o r i t y o f “ u n c h u r c h e d ” p e o p l e a r e n o t a n t a g o n i s t i c t oward the church but have simply never heard the Gospel or been invited by a Christian to attend church We’ve mobilized the church to flex i t s p o l i t i c a l m u s c l e , b u t w h e n i s t h e c h u r c h going to flex its missional muscle and become J e s u s t o a s e l f - d e s t r u c t i n g c u l t u r e ? M o r e plainly, when are you going to become Jesus to your next-door neighbor?
We as believers have to make a choice Do we continue on our present trajectory of selfabsorbed arrogance, confined to our self-cont a i n e d l i t t l e w o r l d s a n d r e a p t h e i n e v i t a b l e consequences, or do we humble ourselves and p l e a d w i t h G o d f o r r e v i v a l , a s k i n g H i m t o “strengthen what remains” so that we can be the blessing we were made to be?