Our growth physically was steady, but not phenomenal. In fact, on Labor Day weekend in 1967 (seven months after beginning) we were twenty-eight again! Contrary to normal city church patterns, in five more months we reached one hundred fifty and had registered two hundred by September of 1968.
All throughout the ten years I served as pastor, there was never a morning service, but one, without visitors. (The exception was the Sunday following the rioting precipitated by Dr. Martin Luther King’s death, when the National Guard patrolled our streets.) The visitors usually came because they had been invited by friends.
We had no roadside sign reading, “Jesus Saves,” to identify our location (if any banner flew, it usually proclaimed, “Vote for Mayor Daley”), and there had been little publicity or visitation initiated by ourselves. Consequently, because we built the congregation on spontaneous personal invitations, the congregation usually included 8 to 10 percent non-churched.
The average age of the group was slightly under thirty, and about 15 percent who attended were nonwhite. Our first two baby dedications were a beautiful illustration of this mixture. Each time, three sets of parents presented their children to the Lord—one white, one African-American, and one Chinese.
We differed from one another in background and economic status, in ethnic and cultural experience, and in educational training. Some were new converts, while others were raised in Christian homes. Children accounted for about 10 percent of the congregation. Two-thirds of us lived within a ten-mile radius of the Union building. And, because the expressway system was at our door, a number came from the suburbs.
I invite you to return to this blog. I’m sharing with you some of the key lessons we learned during the time that God used us to give birth to a new work of His grace in downtown Chicago in the turbulent 1960’s. Please come back.
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