Chicago Summer Intern: Weeks 1&2
14th June 2010
UPDATES FOR 614 VANCOUVER by Sylvia Overton
Greetings from my summer assignment here at Cross Generations Church, Blue Island, Chicago.
I have settled in well here in community with leaders Josh and Jen Polenco and their 3 kids. I am living in the War College apartments, a short bike ride away from the church which I share with Abbey who is doing 2nd phase this fall.
Josh and Jen are Envoys with the Salvation Army and were for many years working successfully among the black and hispanic youth in the the Blue Island area. They have just moved into this very new and modern church/community centre complex not far from their old church premises, having opened in April this year. The church is called Cross Generations as the vision was to create a facility and church environment which bridges the gap between seniors and youth and brings people together in common unity. There are two main services, one for hispanic and one for the white/black communities.
Josh and Jen are a spirit led couple and so my first meetings with them were discussing my spiritual gifts in order to place my in a position / ministry within the church that would suit best. Josh heard that I would best be suited to being in a spiritual shepherd role so he posted me in as the Community Centre Chaplain which is my main role here and so I’m here at 7am and get home around 9pm most nights.
The building has two sides, one is the church part and the other is a large interconnecting community centre with climbing wall, basketball court, tag teams for kids, bible study groups, community garden, reading classes, dance and exercise, volleyball, ping pong and internet cafe. On the other side is the church, where I tend to hover most hours.
The Chaplaincy role is a stretch, which is good, I’m enjoying it, I feel made for it, and somehow it seems remarkably familiar in its everyday experience but different and at times surreal that I am here. I meet and greet people coming into the church, direct them, guide them, pray with them and generally just lend and ear. My secondary role is re-working their 24/7 prayer room in the chapel, looking at possibilities of linking surrounding boiler rooms, looking at equipment to do that, the prayer room arrangement, answering prayer line messages etc. I am also in charge of Kingdom Kids, which is the creative bible study for kids 7-13 which I absolutely love doing. Its so well put together, Prezza has done an amazing job of it. So we sing and do movements to music, memory verses, bible reading, video, listening prayer and then usually play tag. I never thought I would enjoy teaching kids so much. I have been asked to put together a Seniors movement/stretch class as the centre currently offers nothing for that age group. I will run this a few times a week. I look after trips to the community garden.
So its pretty busy, but I’m really enjoying the role, its complex and the Lord is revealing things to me through it.
At Rivendell during the preps for this assignment I sat in at the Prayer hour listening to a song called Magnificat and I got a great sense of urgency, urgency for the world and souls to be saved and the gospel to be shared but along with it a revelation that people would know that they had been deceived. It affected me immensely in my lead up to Chicago.
So I find myself in a heightened state of awareness here, in a role of discerning things going on around me, interceding in prayer for people, spending loads of time in the prayer room working out what God is saying. Thank God for Examen, which has been so helpful – thanks Jon for putting this together. Through this discpline alone, I’m staying focused on hearing from God and discerning, and I can feel the pull sometimes not to stay disciplined, to sit back and just see it as a summer thing. But I know the Lord has more in store if I go deeper with Him here.
The Lord brings me people! I don’t go find them like we do in the DTES simply because of the setting I’m in. So someone will come and sit with me and just start talking usually asking questions about faith. I realise this is a God moment and then I fully engage with them and listen to what God is saying through them, to me, about them etc.
In these daily interactions, I’m being challenged to become the Barean Michael Collins talks about when a former criminal, talks to me about spirituality and how its ‘all the same thing’ as christianity, or a confused and talented youth who in a homosexual relationship feels that being both Christian and actively gay is okay, or young boy from a broken disturbed home to whom no one listens or seems to care. Its brokenness, and it turns up at the Salvation Army and God rises up in me as I meet with them.
Wow, what an honour, what a role, what a responsibility. I sense the responsiblity and importance God has in these moments for me, for people and i feel that urgency once more, I have to respond and that means being constantly focused on Christ. To the point where I will need to collect sometimes during the day, so I go to the prayer room.
My relationship with God is in the moment, tangible and directly co-active in my every moment in this role. All of me is called to surrender to the moment. It is not my own, I can’t do it without Him for absolute certain. Now that’s a good place to get me! When I’m tired or want to get something done, but God calls me to talk with this person, I learn to listen a bit longer than normal, bear up with whining and knowing how to direct it. But somehow I know this role, somehow its familiar, but its not…you know?
I teach the kids and they look to me earnestly, I sense the thirst for God’s word through them at little 6yr old girl who stares at me for answers and with such concern…. Is this normal I ask, where have I been? What’s going on, so much urgency. I’m reminded that words do indeed have power.
This weekend I attended Salvation Army Commissioning of the Central Territory. About 4,000(?) people turned up and the General Clifton Shaw was there preaching. It was an eye opener for an Anglican but I enjoyed witnessing the inner workings of a long established part of the body of Christ. I even brought a Salvo hat…wow. I sang along to Chicago Staff Band, a brilliant brass ensemble and I saw the officers graduate and get their posting. A very joyous crowd of people and as I sat there watching these people give their entire lives away to surrender to a post somewhere they had no idea about, I thought, wow, now that’s total surrender….such faith.
I’m enjoying this post and sometimes I have to remember that I haven’t been here for a year already. Its a pivotal time to be here because its a pivotal time for this church, which has recently experienced a split in congregation and having lost a large part of its members. There’s persecution going on and coupled with the relatively dark spiritual atmosphere in the community here, I need to press in. I don’t feel alone though, I’m totally resting in God’s peace and strength as I seek Him deeper.
Please continue praying specifically for protection for me and my role here, that my encounters would give words of life to those who the Lord needs to speak to, and to keep me focused.
Blessings,
Sylvia
