It happened during our second service on a Sunday morning in March 1999. I was preaching about the importance of vision. “Where there is no vision, the people perish,” I declared, quoting Solomon. Enthusiastic amens rose up. The crowd was with me. But then—bang, bang, bang. The unmistakable sound of gunfire, right outside the church, interrupted my sermon.
The congregation gasped collectively as we listened to the relentless shots, coupled with the frenzied shouts of male voices, and heard men running down our street.
Dear Lord, I prayed, protect us from this madness.
Then my horror turned into steely indignation. I was at once fearful for the safety of my people and enraged that these young men—gangbangers, I surmised—would have the nerve to fire guns in front of our church on Sunday morning. The gunshots soon subsided, but we did not allow the congregation to be dismissed until we were certain there was no more shooting.
At the beginning of the next service, at 12 o’clock, I gathered about 500 men from the congregation and went down the block to the house where we knew the gangbangers hung out. Emboldened by prayer and the visible strength of 500 brothers in Christ, I called the young men out. I told them that this kind of activity would not be tolerated on a Sunday morning—not in our neighborhood.
“We’ve got women and children who come here to our church,” I said. “I don’t know what your problems are with each other, but you can’t do this on Sunday.”
The young men listened. They knew who we were. And, in their own way, they respected our presence in the community. We have not heard gunfire during a service or any other church activity since that day.
The war for Roseland
When my congregation, Salem Baptist Church, moved into its present home, we found a community suffering from urban decay, white flight, economic depression, and gang infestation.
The Roseland neighborhood, on the Far South Side of Chicago, is not the most scenic locale. Vacant buildings dot the streets. The buildings that are occupied house pawn shops, currency exchanges, beeper shops, storefront churches, and tiny grocery stores encased in metal bars to dissuade burglars.
It’s not the finest looking place, but it’s my home. And to me it’s beautiful. I’m not being sappy when I say that. When I look at Roseland, I don’t see what’s there now. I see what it can be. I see what it’s becoming by the transforming presence of God’s people in the community.
Something you soon won’t see in Roseland are liquor stores. That’s because the saints of Salem Baptist decided to add feet and political muscle to our prayers that the community would be rid of alcohol. We committed to shutting down every liquor store in Roseland. Besides looking bad, these places destroy lives. My heart breaks at the sad faces of men hanging out in the doorways of these shops, or standing on the corners with nothing to do but swig from a bottle in a brown paper sack.
Alcohol is one of the deadliest drugs in America’s inner cities, maybe deadlier than crack cocaine. It saps able-bodied men of their productivity, wrecks families, leaves children fatherless and men and women jobless. We had to get it out of our neighborhood.
In 1998, we mobilized the residents of Roseland and surrounding communities and led the charge against the liquor shops and taverns. We got a mandate put on the local ballot to ban the sale of alcohol in our community. On election day, residents voted to close down 30 liquor establishments.
The ensuing legal battle has delayed the closure of many of the businesses, but notice has been served. The people have spoken. We want something better for our community. We want a neighborhood where our children can play safely, where families remain intact. God’s people are having their say about how their neighborhood will look.
This kind of change can only happen by the power of Jesus Christ. But God’s people must be willing to add deliberate action to their prayers: to engage the political process, to march on the streets, to say the unpopular thing when it needs to be heard, to abandon their comfort zones and put themselves on the front lines for justice, holiness, and reconciliation.
Dream big, don’t quit
Salem Baptist Church has strived to be used by God in Chicago since we began in 1985. For five years the congregation met in a rented church building on the Near South Side before being transplanted to our Far South location.
We purchased our current facility—a brick cathedral and school building—from the Catholic archdiocese in 1990. In addition to church services, we run a daycare, a 500-student grade school, Chicago’s largest Christian bookstore, and outreach ministries to assist the poor and needy.
More than 10,000 people come to four services every Sunday. Many come back during the week for Bible studies and Wednesday-night worship.
My philosophy has always been, “If you’re going to dream, you might as well dream big.” Consequently, we’ve set high goals for our congregation. Of course, we work our way up to those radical goals. You first build the church’s confidence through small victories and then steadily advance to the big goals.
Fifteen years ago the church set a goal to become the largest Sunday school in Chicagoland. We started with just 50 people. Today we have 2,000. In 1999, we set the goal of seeing 25,000 people come to Christ. The saints of Salem hunkered down in prayer and fasting—and nonstop evangelism. What happened? By year’s end, we saw almost 27,000 people profess faith in Jesus Christ. And several hundred of them have become active in the church.
When we moved into the community, many residents were wary of our intentions. They worried that we would bring needless noise and traffic. With hundreds of cars parked along the streets on Sundays, it does get crowded. But we went to our neighbors and asked them to be a part of the church. We told them we were there to be a positive, transforming force in the neighborhood.
Through time, we earned their trust by putting action behind our message. For instance, we provide jobs. We are currently Roseland’s largest employer, with more than 140 on staff.
Down the street from us is a three-flat apartment building that once served as a post for neighborhood drug dealers. Salem eventually bought the building and turned it into a daycare center. The residents could see that we were indeed there to be salt and light—to help bring needed change to the ‘hood.
Raising a new standard
No, it has not been easy living in Roseland. Early on, vandals and burglars targeted our cars and other property. This year, in a nearby area, a rash of murders of young women has cast a cloud of terror over many South Side residents. But these are exactly the times at which the church must assert its role as a redemptive force.
I sometimes ponder just how much worse the area would be if Salem Baptist and other churches were not planted in the community, praying for change and taking a stand for truth.
Long before the Sunday-morning shooting incident, I had spoken to Roseland’s gang leaders. In fact, one of the first things I did when we moved into Roseland was to meet with the two rival gangs on the stairs of the church to tell them who we are.
They actually wanted to meet me as much as we wanted to meet them. They wanted to know who these people moving into this church were. The meeting showed them that while we refused to take any junk, we actually cared about their future.
I told them we would help the young men find jobs, that we would allow them to play basketball in our gym, that we would do everything we could to give them a better life.
However, I added, we would tolerate no graffiti on the church, vandalism of our vehicles, or intimidation of our members. We wanted them to consider our building and our area a gang-free zone.
The Sunday-morning gunfight notwithstanding, we’ve had few problems from the gangs. In fact, at least 20 former gang members are now members of Salem.
When I ask them why they made the risky decision to leave the gang and dedicate their lives to Christ, they tell us what it took for them to change was somebody who cared—someone who cared enough to offer them a way out.
Leaving a gang is no easy undertaking, of course. The departing gang member is often beaten brutally by the remaining members—and sometimes killed. But as the various gangbangers decided they wanted to come to Christ, we talked to them about how to “drop their flag.” We told them that living a life for Christ involved laying down our lives every day, and that they had to trust God to take care of them once they devoted themselves to him. None of the young men, so far, has been attacked for leaving the gang.
Win, disciple, transform
When pastors from safer communities ask me how we manage to keep going, I remind them that God has a special calling for each of us. For those of us whom he calls to the cities, his grace is indeed sufficient.
As Paul said, “God has not given us a spirit of fear but of power and of love” (2 Tim. 1:7). The church sings songs that speak of this power each Sunday, but sometimes the way we live suggests we really don’t believe them. We sing “we are soldiers in the army” and “we’re on the battlefield,” but do we really believe it?
I believe it. That’s why I’m in Roseland. I believe we’re soldiers. We are called as Christians to combat the enemy. When we don’t, we often end up fighting each other.
In its simplest terms, the biblical mission of every church should be to win people, to disciple them, and to transform the world in which they live. Win, disciple, and change.
Discipleship entails more than weekly Bible studies and small-group meetings. These inward activities need to be combined with practical, outward demonstrations of faith that move us from individualized spirituality to one that has an impact upon the world around us.
I believe my task as pastor is to give people something to do with their faith. I take them out on the street to evangelize the lost, take them to the soup kitchen to feed the hungry, take them to the jail to encourage the prisoner, take them to the many places in our society that so desperately need to hear and experience God’s Good News.
Authentic faith not only changes our inner souls—it spills from within to transform our world.
James T. Meeks is pastor of Salem Baptist Church in Chicago, Illinois. www.sbcoc.org
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