Day Eighteen: Lawndale-- farewell to Chicago (Part 1)

Total Mileage: 1,563

Song of the Day: “Let It Rise”

Book of the Day: Let Justice Roll Down (John Perkins)- Don’t own it yet.  Want it.  Don’t everybody go out and get it for my birthday though; I’ll track down a copy.

As I walked into Lawndale, I felt like my whole Chicago experience was coming together in this one church service.  Unlike the other churches I had visited around Chicago, I had spent a full week getting to know this neighborhood.  I had stayed here.  Eaten here.  Talked to people.  Done my reading.  I know the Lawndale website like the back of my hand at this point.  I’ve got Coach’s bio memorized and knew most of the staff’s names already.

This was it.  My last two hours in Chicago-- and possibly the most anticipated two hours as well.

Coach

Having served the community for over thirty years, it’s difficult to separate the history of Lawndale Community Church from the history of its founding pastor.  A graduate of Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, Wayne “Coach” Gordon moved to North Lawndale in Chicago’s Westside in 1975 and began teaching at Farragut High School, where he led a Fellowship of Christian Athletes Bible Study.  Eventually, this group decided to start a church together, and Lawndale Community Church held its first meeting in March of 1978 with fifteen people.  It has grown in membership since then, but the church has also expanded its mission considerably.  Like LaSalle and New Song, Lawndale began a series of independent partner ministries, most of which are still housed right there on Ogden Avenue.  While the church’s website includes more partner ministries, the bulletin provided an abbreviated list:

Lawndale Christian Health Center

Lawndale Christian Development Corporation

Lawndale Christian Legal Center

Hope House Men’s Recovery Home

The “House” Hip Hop Service

Lawndale Gym and Fitness Center

Lou Malnati’s Pizzeria

The Lawndale Gym

Like New Song, Lawndale does not have a traditional church building, but rather meets in the gym of their community center.  The room has industrial-looking brick walls that are covered in banners related to the church.  They say things like “The Lawndale Miracle-- Ephesians 3:20” and “Loving God, Loving People-- Matthew 22:34-40.”  There were also banners with the church’s logo and the logo of the Christian Community Development Association, of which Coach is the president.  The gym floor was covered in a blue rubberized material to protect the hardwood from the folding chairs that had been set out for the service, and a small makeshift stage had been set up in the center of the room.  While the main singers and Coach would use this stage, the band and choir used spaces over to the side instead.  Somewhat gospel-influenced recordings of contemporary Christian songs were playing quietly as people filtered into the gym, punctuated intermittently by the band’s keyboardist performing a soundcheck and warm-up.  By 11:15, Sunday School still hadn’t quite let out, so the room wasn’t that crowded, and those present were attired in a wide range from very casual to quite formal.  Two screens suspended from the ceiling advertised the subject of Coach’s sermon for the day: “Overcoming Our Giants.”

As I sat there with my notebook, I wasn’t feeling very social.  Perhaps I was still tired from Willow, but I was also just feeling a little more reflective and found myself focusing a little more on preparing my heart for worship this morning.  I also couldn’t help but think back to Jim & Casper Go to Church and how their project was pretty different from mine.  I looked around the room and thought to myself, “I wonder where those two sat when they attended this place.  Where would a former pastor and an atheist conspicuously taking notes on their laptops have sat in a room like this?  How into the worship experience did they really allow themselves to get?  Did they wind up learning things about themselves and about God that never really found their way into that book?  Did anyone in this room remember their visit?”  Maybe I’ll get to ask Jim about it when I’m in Seattle.  I sat there quietly as I watched people filter into the room.

Hope House

There were quite a few people in the room now, and the dress continued to be mixed: everything from t-shirt and jeans to a prim and proper chartreuse suit worn by the woman across the aisle from me.  Sitting right in front of the stage were a group of men all attired in the same blue shirts, and while some looked happy to be there, a few had a certain rough edge to them.  I got a closer look at one of the men’s shirts as he walked by on his way to his seat, and I realized that these were all residents of the Lawndale Hope House across the street, a program which helps men struggling with addictions or recently released from prison to reassimilate into society and learn to work again.  Part of their program often includes bussing tables and washing dishes at Lou Malnati’s right up the street, and I guess that worship attendance is also expected of them.  Coach would later point to this group during his sermon and praise them for their bravery in confronting addictions.

Whoa, is that a clown?  Yep, I’m guessing he had been there to assist with kids’ Sunday School, but one of the people who walked into the gym was a man attired in a striped jumpsuit and partial clown makeup.  He was wielding a long and menacing balloon sword and laughing with his neighbors.  In fact, people were generally quite happy to see each other, and hugs and handshakes were being exchanged freely.  An associate minister (who I recognized from the website as Pastor Joe) came over and shook my hand and welcomed me, asking where I was from.  I told him that I was a Duke student and asked if it was okay that I would be taking a lot of notes, and he assured me that was fine and that today’s sermon was a good one.  Our conversation was fairly short as he saw someone else across the room he needed to greet, but it was nice to have an associate minister greet me friendlily without being overbearing or invasive.  I looked around the room as the service was starting and realized that we were at about 75% capacity, and of the couple of hundred people there, I would say about 95% were black, which seemed pretty representative of the neighborhood.  Later on in the service, Pastor Joe would ask any first-time visitors to raise their hands and wave, and I barely contained my laughter when almost every white hand in the crowd went up (mine included).  Of course, even though I found it a little funny, I also find a lot of hope in the phenomenon of upper middle class white folks looking for a more diverse worship experience.  I’m not really sure why, but I just find it reassuring.

Perhaps it’s a step toward reconciliation.

Worship

Five singers walked up onto the stage, lyrics appeared on the screens, and as the band played in a soulful gospel style, we began singing:

Welcome into this place,

Welcome into this broken vessel.

You desire to abide

In the praises of Your people;

So we lift our hands

And we lift our hearts,

As we offer up this praise unto Your name.

Coach had entered the gym, and he was walking around and greeting people with hearty handshakes.  I wasn’t sure how into this song the congregation felt, but with our next song, there was a noticeable lifting of spirits:

Let the glory of the Lord, rise among us,
Let the glory of the Lord, rise among us,
Let the praises of the King, rise among us,
Let it rise.

Back at Fremont UMC, our minister of music loved to play that song, but I had never quite understood its appeal.  I realized that it was supposed to have a very strong Pentecostal flavor that appealed to the Holy Spirit, but I had never fully felt that myself.  To me, the lyrics felt repetitive and uninteresting, so I would usually entertain myself by jazzing up the bass line whenever we played it.  At Lawndale, however, that song seemed to have new significance, and I suddenly understood why our minister of music had loved it so much.  Hearing their rendition of it, “Let It Rise” made sense to me, and I jotted this down excitedly in my notes.  There was a little hiccup with the musicians when we began the song, but no one really seemed to mind.  The voices were the real lead instruments in this service, accompanied by the keyboardist with the other musicians behind him, so it was almost as though their mistakes didn’t matter so long as those voices continued to lead us.  As Coach and several others in the congregation started clapping and swaying and dancing, I could really feel a powerful presence in the room.  At one point, the keyboard and several of the other instruments cut out entirely, leaving only the drums and singers, and a little chill ran down my spine.  While I would normally treat a break like that as slightly coercive on the band’s part, you could feel the Holy Spirit in that room.  When the song ended, there was a chorus of hallelujahs and amens amid the clapping, so the band and singers jumped into an impromptu reprise.

Let the spirit of the Lord, rise among us,
Let the spirit of the Lord, rise among us,
Let the freedom of the King, rise among us,
Let it rise.

Oh oh oh, let it rise,
Oh oh oh, let it rise.

Pastor Joe

Pastor Joe walked up on stage to deliver the welcome and morning announcements, and as friendly as he had been to me, I have to admit that he was talking too quickly on that stage for me to get down half of what he said.  He used the language of being “more than conquerors,” calling on 1 John 4:4 and Romans 8:37-39, the latter of which reads:

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:37-39)

I have to admit that I winced a bit at that “more than a conqueror” language just because I’ve gotten so used to hearing it as part of the Lakewood promotional jingle on my recorded Joel Osteen sermons.  When Pastor Joe said it, I half expected to hear a disembodied voice finish the phrase with “At Lakewood, discover the champion in you!”  Of course, I shouldn’t get judgmental since I still have two more of Joel’s sermons left to go in that series, and just because the last couple left a sour taste in my mouth, that doesn’t mean he won’t finish on a strong note.  We’ll see sometime in the next couple of days, but I’m getting off topic.

We were still standing up at this point, and as Pastor Joe continued to speak, a woman with four young boys sat down next to me.  One of the boys was wearing a Spider-Man shirt, and he decided to sit down right behind my knees in the seat that my backside had previously occupied.  Sensing the movement behind me and feeling a pair of kid’s sneakers bumping against my calves rhythmically, I turned around to be greeted by a huge smile and a feigned look of innocence.  I stood there uncertain as to whether I should move across the aisle to a new seat or ask Lil Spidey to move over.  His mother saw this, scolded him, and had him scoot down a seat, but this kid had won me over.  I thought the whole thing was hilarious, and besides, I can’t be mad at a kid in a Spider-Man shirt!  Lil Spidey spent much of the service drawing in a little notebook, and I happily loaned him my pen (perhaps inadvertently provoking his mother again in the process).  Part of me just thinks there’s something cute about kids cutting up in church, and perhaps it’s just my old mischievous streak surfacing again, but there’s something even funnier about it when it throws their parents into a panic.  Lil Spidey was drawing pictures in his notebook of Scooby Doo and Tom & Jerry, so I had even more respect for him because of his cartoon choices-- all classics.  Nicely done, Lil Spidey.  I wanted to draw with him, but I needed to keep taking notes on what Pastor Joe was saying.

Pastor Joe was speaking enthusiastically about local mission opportunities.  He mentioned a flower-planting group being coordinated by Christ Church of Oak Brook, and his announcement of an upcoming Hope House open house elicited several proud cheers from the men in the blue t-shirts.  I was distracted again by Lil Spidey as he and the boy in the next seat over discussed their drawings excitedly, attracting scornful glances from their mother and amused glances from me.  I’m sure Pastor Joe had other announcements, but between his hummingbird-like speech pattern and the entertaining spectacle unfolding next to me, I missed the rest.  Across the gym from where we were sitting, the Lawndale Community Church Celebration Choir had ascended a set of risers and began singing as Lil Spidey and the other kids of his age group continued to talk and play and walk around the gym.  Again, there’s just something heartwarming about kids still being kids during a worship service.

The choir’s performance was good, but I didn’t pick up on a lot of the lyrics in the first song, and I haven’t been able to match it to anything online.  There was definitely a line in there about “We are the people, and we are blessed!  We are the body!”  The congregation was clapping along, and there was a nice upbeat rhythm about it, but the lyrics themselves just didn’t really stick with me.  The next song had a smoother ballad feel to it, and some of the people in the congregation were now standing and raising their hands.  In particular, one nicely-attired white woman across the room was moving her arms rhythmically as if grasping upward to God in a sort of stationary liturgical dance.  Her hand movements seemed to be simultaneously reaching up and inviting down, and her eyes were closed the entire time as she invited God to wash over her.

When I worship
When I lift up my hands
I acknowledge
I am Yours to command
I surrender
Everything that I am
When I worship
When I worship

It's not for the things that You do
Not the trials You brought me through
Not because You're so faithful and true
But when I worship
It's just because I love You

I didn’t really care for that last line.  It reminded me of the old derogatory term for Christian contemporary: Jesus-is-my-boyfriend music.  Also, being thankful for what God has done --i.e. “the things that You do” and “the trials You brought me through” mentioned in that chorus-- is definitely one of the reasons I worship, so that part of the song just flat-out did not speak to me.  I completely agree on the importance of loving God, but love and thankfulness are complimentary, not mutually exclusive.  The song lyrics weren’t quite doing the worship experience justice, and they sort of gnawed at me a bit.  Still, the congregation were getting into it, and the overall feel of the choir’s performance was very uplifting.  There was definitely an effervescence about the room.

(Continues in Part 2)