Day Fifteen: Community Development with Extra Pepperoni

Total Mileage: 1,364

Song of the Day: “A Place to Hide” (White Lies)- in honor of the supposedly-impending end of the world on Saturday at 6PM

Book of the Day:

 - Small Is Beautiful (E.F. Schumacher)- What?  I needed a break from all the megachurch stuff, so trying to refresh my memory on Buddhist responses to Marxism seemed like a fun idea.  I barely made it a few pages in though.

I had a delicious pizza for dinner tonight from Lou Malnati’s, and the cashier was incredibly helpful too.

When I walked in and placed my order, they asked for my phone number, and when I gave the 901 area code and explained that I was from Memphis, the cashier exclaimed, “So, as famous as it is, I’m guessing you didn’t come all the way up from Memphis just to try a pizza!”  Actually, that does sound like something I would do, but no, not this time.  I explained a little about my trip, and her response was, “Oh, great!  So you’re going to meet with Coach and Pastor Phil and them?”  Wayne “Coach” Gordon (pictured at left behind Terrence Gadsden and Darryl Saffore, two associate ministers at Lawndale) is not only the founding pastor at Lawndale Community Church; he is also the president of the Christian Community Development Association and the product of a Baptist education.  Even though I’m thinking more and more that I should try to talk to him somehow, one unfortunate thing that I’ve discovered so far in this project is that, for every day I spend at a church or doing an interview or volunteering at a ministry of some kind, I typically need about 24 hours of solitude afterward to write everything down from the experience and pray over it and process it.  I’m already pushing my luck in Chicago by studying LaSalle Street and trying to get in worship experiences at both Willow and Lawndale, so as much as I want to sit down with Coach (especially with how highly Pastor Thurman spoke of him back at New Song), that’s more work than I can handle in a week.  Pastor Phil also seems like an interesting guy even though I don’t know as much about him.  In fact, all I really know is that he runs the church’s arts program, which includes a hip hop ministry.  All I can really say to that is, “Sweet!”  The cashier assured me that I’d probably get to meet both Coach and Pastor Phil on Sunday though, so maybe I’ll at least get to shake Coach’s hand and ask a question or two, even if my question for him winds up being more practical than academic (like it was with Rob Bell).

The cashier --who I only later realized had never given me her name-- told me that it might be up to 20 minutes before my pizza was ready, so I told her I was fine waiting around.  I had a book with me (E.F. Schumacher’s Small Is Beautiful), but I wound up striking up a conversation with the cashier instead and barely cracked the cover of the book.  The ensuing conversation wound up being a great crash course in all things Lawndale, and, frankly, this is my preferred method for learning about churches anyway.  As helpful as pastors and staff and websites and articles all are, I love talking to people who live around the community and hearing their perspectives, and in my efforts to live on the cheap this summer, it had somehow escaped me until now that restaurant staff are ideal people to ask for information.  They know the area around the restaurant, and even in the event that they aren’t very friendly people, their jobs require them to be at least somewhat social and informative.  This cashier was both friendly and helpful, so I’d say I struck gold.  Having worked at Lou Malnati’s since this location opened in 1995, she told me that she attended Lawndale for a while but now worships elsewhere (through no specific problem with the church), and she continues to keep her kids active in the church’s youth programs.  “They’ve got The House, which is a hip hop service that meets for like 3 hours on the first and second Sundays of each month (I think); it’s Pastor Phil preaching, but he’s preaching in a way that reaches them!  There’s the health center and the gym and all that, and did you know they even have karate classes now?”  Not even that surprised me since I know from the little bit of research I’ve done that this church does everything: youth programs, housing assistance, education, legal assistance, healthcare, the works.

I was first attracted to Lawndale when reading Jim & Casper Go to Church.  Driving up Ogden Street toward the church, Jim exclaims to Casper that they’ve arrived, and when Casper asks where the church is, Jim replies delightedly, “You’re in it.”  The entire block is the church.  Half of the buildings are church-owned and house the various ministries of Lawndale.  From where we were at Lou Malnati’s, the cashier was able to point right out the window at the church’s gym and health center, and she also gestured up the street to Hope House, a program which helps former prison inmates and recovering addicts reintegrate into society.  In fact, Lou Malnati’s even provides volunteer work for Hope House residents, who wash dishes and bus tables in the restaurant as part of their program.

Yep, I picked my dinner location for the evening very carefully.  Lou Malnati’s is a locally-owned pizza chain here in Chicago, and one of their locations is on the same block as Lawndale and shares an affiliation with the church.  Admittedly, according to the cashier, the affiliation isn’t much more than a mutual sponsorship (with no money really being exchanged), but the restaurant does see itself as an active part of the effort to rejuvenate the neighborhood.  A blurb on their website reads:

Carrying on Lou's vision of providing great food at reasonable prices, Lou Malnati's has grown to include 32 family-owned Chicagoland pizzerias. In recent years the Malnatis have felt blessed by their success and wanted to do something to give back to the community. In the fall of 1995 the Malnati's opened a restaurant on the West side of Chicago in an effort to help rejuvenate a neighborhood that has not had much success in recovering from the riots of 1967 that ravaged the area. Lou Malnati's Lawndale Pizzeria is unique in that all profits will be given back to the community to benefit children's educational and recreational programs.

Of course, given the low amount of disposable income in the neighborhood, profits aren’t readily forthcoming for the restaurant, so a monetary giving back has not really occurred as of yet.  An article on the Lawndale Community Church website talks about this Lou Malnati’s location and explains that, rather than making profits, the purpose is to provide a beacon as the only sit-down restaurant in the Lawndale neighborhood and to provide work experience for men in the Hope House looking to transition back into daily life outside of prison or off of drugs.  That is a value that cannot be charted on paper.

So yeah, I had a delicious pizza tonight.  Its crust was thick and buttery, and it had this great crispy rim of dough around the edge from where it had cooked up out of the pan.  The pepperoni was piled two layers deep, coated in parmesan, and then covered in a wonderfully gooey blend of tomato and mozzarella cheese (and this coming from a guy who is not normally a huge fan of tomatoes).  Whenever I bit in, the mozzarella pulled away from the bread and trailed off in little chunks, allowing the buttery goodness of the dough to shine forth from underneath.  Everything about this pizza was amazing.

Still, what is more amazing to me is the work that one church can do on a city block.  With all that Lawndale Community Church does in that community, I’m looking forward to joining them in worship on Sunday morning.

Peace and Blessings,

Tom