Our memories of this beginning time are fond. Often the union would rent the hall on Saturday nights to various groups that would hold large and riotous parties. A few of us would arrive early the next morning to clear out the chaos so that we would have a relatively uncluttered place in which to worship.
Once, the call telling us that there had been a party the evening before failed to come. When we arrived, the room was littered with one hundred party tables covered with the refuse of the night before. Rolling up our sleeves, we pushed the confusion aside and cleared a small corner around the piano. The first hymn was one of praise, “This is my Father’s world…” With the fumes of liquor floating around us, with the shambles of cigarettes, leftover dinners, and torn paper cloths cluttering our surroundings; with the unhappy world outside, broken glass littering its sidewalks and grime staring from every corner of its streets, we sang “…and to my listening ears, all nature sings and round me rings the music of the spheres.”
Often the Teamsters would hold meetings on the heels of our services, and we found ourselves the objects of their puzzled stares. Such strange juxtapositions existed between the diverse groups. The contrast of the go-go dancers of the night before or the rough-and-tumble Teamster policy meetings, with our little group quietly worshiping in a corner with bowed heads and open Bibles. In fact, the contrast of faces was incongruity in itself: the Circle Church people, young and hopeful, idealism and openness unabashedly there for all to read; the Teamsters, heavy-jowled and world-aware, an agony of expression written in facial lines and planes and muscles. How animal-huge they loomed to us! What must we have seemed to them? Besides which, our miniature Volkswagens looked ludicrous parked next to their armada of quiet black Cadillacs, powerful Pontiacs, and impressive Oldsmobiles.
One Sunday morning, with the hodgepodge of disorder from the night before still in evidence, Mr. Peick wandered upstairs. He took one look, mumbled something to the custodian about “letting my people meet in this mess,” and disappeared downstairs. Since that time the hall was always clean and shiny when we entered. Often, on his order, men came at two and three o’clock in the morning to clean the hall for the “church service the Reverend has tomorrow morning.” Despite the unpredictability of those days, we were thankful for each unusual moment of them.
Please join me for the next blog post, as I continue to describe how God used us to give birth to a new work of His grace in downtown Chicago in the turbulent 1960’s.
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Sunday’s coming. Do you have your sermon ready? Is it relevant? Will it effectively motivate your congregation to walk more in step with the Master? What about that Sermon Series you’ve been thinking about? Or, what will you preach for your Easter Sermon, your Advent Sermon, your Christmas Sermon? David Mains and Mainstay Ministries can help you learn how to create better Bible Sermons and how to turn Sermon Ideas into Sermon Outlines, and then into effective, meaningful Sunday Sermons. Just click here to visit David Mains’ website.
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