Wayne Gordon with Randall Frame, Real Hope in Chicago: The Incredible Story of How the Gospel is
Transforming a Chicago Neighborhood (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995), 220 pages.
Review by Pastor Nathan, March 2006
I have heard about the ‘Lawndale Miracle’ many times. Different parts of its story could be heard floating
around the campus of Wheaton College when I was there. Other people I know have either worked there or
told me about it. A college roommate of mine, for example, lived in Lawndale and worked for the Christian
Community Development Association there for awhile after college. He told me several times that I should
read this book, but it wasn’t until my in-laws recently gave me their copy that I got around to actually doing it.
Wow! This is a quick read – two days for me – and it’s a shot in the arm. It reminded me a lot of Bob
Muzikowski’s book Safe At Home that chronicles the inception and growth of his inner-city baseball ministry
(you can listen to his story at www.immanuel-baptist.net/sermons.htm#GUEST). There’s something
energizing and inspiring about tales of God’s work in the city, especially to me as a farm boy still acclimating
to the unmistakable call on my life to be a part of God’s work in the city.
Wayne Gordon grew up in a small city in Midwest Iowa, but felt inexplicably drawn to urban ministry from an
early age. In high school he came to Chicago for a summer to get his feet wet with urban ministry by
working with Uptown Baptist Church and youth from the Cabrini Green housing projects. God confirmed his
call to urban ministry that summer. One of the experiences that he cites as confirmation was an escape
from an older man’s house after the man, whom Gordon was trying to witness to, tried to force him to have
sex. Confirmation??! “It never occurred to me,” Gordon writes, “to allow such a terrifying experience to
dissuade me from my calling. What I learned from this – and from other experiences the summer of my
sixteenth year – was that I could trust God in all situations” (50). Foolish? Some might say. I call it heroic,
radical, fearless faith. I call it the Christian life as it was meant to be lived.
This characterizes the kind of life Gordon has lived – undeterred from God’s call by danger or hardship or
discomfort or crime. He attended Wheaton College in the western suburbs and upon graduation looked for
a place in the city to move into and minister in. He picked Lawndale, a neighborhood estimated as the 15 th
poorest region in the country at the time. When he moved in in 1975 he was the only white guy in his
neighborhood, yet that didn’t stop him from calling it home and putting down roots. His intention was never
to plant a church, but simply to be a Christian citizen in a community devastated by white flight and the
ensuing urban decay – violent crime, drugs, high infant mortality, economic depression, etc… He began by
teaching history at the local public high school and coaching sports. The nickname ‘Coach’ has stuck with
him all these years. Through the trust he was beginning to win with the kids of the neighborhood he was
able to begin having Bible studies in his home with many of them.
One thing led to another and the Bible study eventually turned into a store-front church at the request of the
people. That storefront church began to grow and they realized early on that “discipleship is not just about
memorizing Bible verses. From a biblical perspective, discipleship is about helping people to be whole, to
be restored to the image of God in which they were created” (109). And they also realized that such a
wholistic ministry also entailed what John Perkins – Wayne Gordon’s mentor – calls ‘Christian community
development’. The new church started small in their efforts to minister to the community with a mini
Laundromat where people could safely come and do their laundry. That was the first step along the way
towards thoroughly transforming the 40 square block area that they specifically targeted. The ventures grew
to include things like a gym, a community health center, several creative affordable housing programs, a
local Lou Malnati’s pizza franchise, etc… each project having an amazing story to go with it.
The small beginnings have turned into a large network of organizations spinning off from the church that
have truly transformed a neighborhood through the gospel of Jesus Christ. The thing I appreciated the most
about this book was the example it gives of a church that does not compromise on the gospel, the Bible, and
morality and yet also does not ignore the church’s responsibility to try to transform social structures, engage
culture, and make the neighborhood come to resemble more and more the kingdom of God. The numerous
ideas for community engagement recorded in this book weren’t just talked or dreamed about but were
actually tried (and some failed). But hearing about these stirred up in me a renewed desire to see the
church be the church in the world. Lawndale Community Church did not succumb to the high divorce rate
prevalent among other evangelical churches – the divorce, that is, between spiritual and physical, faith and
deeds, theology and social action, growing spiritually and making a difference in the community. They also
recognized that this could not happen if they were to be a ‘commuter church’ – “Without question, the
linchpin of Christian community development… is living in the community. We are a community church, and
we insist that those who come to our church live in our community” (100).
Our church has the same vision for our neighborhood – the UIC area. Copying the first line of LCC’s
mission statement found in the book we could say, “[IBC’s] mission is to redeem the [UIC] community…”
(107-108). We also have the same emphasis on living in the area, although it’s not quite as strict since our
church didn’t start out as a community church in our current neighborhood.
However, as we’ve tried to distinguish, most of the UIC area would not be considered ‘inner-city’ anymore.
Rather, we use the term ‘center-city’, as taken from Tim Keller (see http://www.monergism.com/
thethreshold/articles/ bio/timkeller.html). The needs of our community look very different than the needs of
Lawndale 30 years ago. A lot has changed in the city since Gordon wrote this book in 1995. The perceptive
dichotomy he makes between the sins of suburbia (“pride, materialism, racism, and systemic injustice”) and
the sins of the city (“substance abuse, petty crime, and sexual promiscuity”) (173), has started to blur. With
the recent wide-scale phenomenon of gentrification you now have many of those ‘suburban sins’ present in
the city among yuppies and urban sophisticates.
So what does being a community church look like for us in the UIC area? Within our immediate
neighborhood you have the loneliness and emptiness of those living in luxury townhomes and condos
directly adjacent to the hopelessness of those living in government housing – the social blights of
consumerism and individualism right next to poverty and gangs. We don’t have the situation of empty lots or
abandoned buildings that we can buy for $500 and fix up like in Lawndale. We have the opposite problem of
inflated property values and the poor being displaced as homes are demolished for three story condos.
What is the church’s responsibility here? Certainly the needs are not the same. We already have gyms and
parks and economic investment and health clinics. The story won’t be the same for us, but there are still
desperate needs in our urban neighborhood and our desire must be the same – to allow the gospel to meet
those needs.
What does it look like for us? This book really caused me to think more deeply about that. I’m not exactly
sure what the answer is yet, but Gordon’s philosophy definitely provides the necessary first step: “…the
answers to the problems of any community can be found right there in the neighborhood. I am… convinced
that the keys to unlocking these answers can be summarized by a single word: listening” (64). By living here
and listening to our neighbors we will first discover the problems themselves and then be able to listen for
the solutions to those problems. And by God’s grace through the power of his Spirit we can begin to have
our own ‘UIC Area Miracle’!