so...the last 12 months of digging, building, working, questioning, and seeking have led to the most significant change in my life since leaving Willow Creek 7 1/2 years ago with a little upstart group of people to found River City Community Church. i still remember clearly sitting with our pastor, Daniel Hill, as he expressed the ideas and values behind what he was setting out to do. i still remember him laying reconciliation, especially around matters of race, as a core principle and value and pillar of what the church was to be about. i also remember telling him i thought he was probably overstating the problem of race in America, and especially in the Church, as a whole. those of you who have followed my journey since moving to the city in april of 2003 know how turned upside down i ended up on those thoughts. i could never have foreseen moving into ministry dealing with the race issues that we face, and don't face, every day in the country and church.
the last 7 1/2 years were as adjective-filled as any stretch in my life...more so, even. amazing, stretching, challenging, fulfilling, exciting, tearful, joyful, sad, brilliant, and so many more. i came down here in the cloud of losing my home and business. halfway through these years i lost my father. i made some of the best friends i've ever had. i watched others leave, separated by 35 miles, 1500 miles, different callings, different ideologies, and different theologies. i've seen River City grow from 10 to 25 to 50 to 70 to 100 to 150 and now probably better than 200. i've seen the church grow, and i've seen people grow. i've seen people grow and i've seen bellies grow (some 25 kids under 3 in our church). it's been heartwarming and heartbreaking and some amount of time in both at the same time.
and now i am in the middle of both at the same time again. this move is only 4 miles away, but seeing what happened with 35, i'm sure they're a more significant 4 miles than the streets would make them seem. at some point this summer, as yet undetermined, i will be leaving River City for a small church in the Lawndale community. in many ways it is the inverse of River City...still multi-cultural, but now 80+% black, and 20% or so other cultures.
Westlawn Gospel Chapel is church of less than 100 people, with ranging from babies to the old and wise. the pastor has been a friend and co-worker of mine for the past 5 years at CURE and i have watched and listened as his heart has poured out for his community. my heart broke on more than one occasion as he told us of conversations with Christ-followers and not, with employed and not, with desperate and not...of wanting to be able to do more with the meager resources he has available.
during these same past two years, i was slowly turning over the ideas of commerce as ministry. this might seem odd to some of you who have read the discourse on my facebook page over the past number of months where i've taken to some "pro-socialist" points of view (that's not how i would classify them) including health care, the ills of capitalism, and the scary (in my mind) role of large American and multi-national corporations. still, in neighborhoods where jobs have left in massive bunches (International Harvester (1969), Sears (1974-1987), Zenith and Sunbeam (1970s) and Western Electric (1980s)) and where vacant buildings underscore the lack of economic activity and growth, free markets and the ability to create one's own job...and maybe eventually jobs for others...is as close to God's heart as i can imagine.
so...about a year ago i started investigating moving into Lawndale to work with Derrick Rollerson (pastor and collegue at Westlawn and CURE, respectively). a few months after that i began working in earnest on my i58wear clothing line, both the tangible work parts, as well as the values i hoped to see as the foundation for the business.
in january i was meeting with a group of biblical justice-minded people at Park Community Church when a guy gets up and starts speaking about commerce as ministry being, in his mind, a basic necessity and central to what he hoped to do as he left the corporate world and ventured into new waters. Rowan Richards and i spent some time talking that night, and many hours since. we've discussed our personal businesses (he also has a t-shirt line), what our visions could look like in practice, and how we might begin to develop these ideas on a broader level than just our own small businesses.
one of the things Rowan set up was something called The Stewards Market. it was a place where kingdom thinking businesses could come together and share resources, find information, and be encouraged in the idea of doing business differently. many of the very same things i wrote on the i58wear website about using that business as a way to build economic activity in a community were the ones on Rowan's heart, too. as we started to compare our notes it became clear that we were on the same journey...commerce as ministry.
there are many businesses doing great things around the city in Kingdom ways. what Rowan and i hope to do in addition to building jobs through our own businesses was to develop an entrepreneur incubator of sorts. we want to see people in economically struggling neighborhoods (think unemployment rates that double and triple the national rates) who have the same hopes, dreams, and creativity to start businesses as anyone else in this world...to provide the resources and support to grow those hopes into sustainable businesses.
in the end, The Stewards Market will be a virtual marketplace where social entrepreneurs, micro-enterprises, and the supporting group of people and institutions can have instant and easy access to things like commercial banking, tax advice, financing, micro-finance, as well as be able to grow business through the other businesses in the market.
as the ideas and plans have rolled out for this over the past 3 months, more connections have seemingly come from nowhere. a brief conversation led to an invite to the micro-finance conference here in Chicago a couple of months ago. some of the things we thought we'd have to provide, or that Derrick was already doing through his church, are already available in the city through 3 different micro-lending institutions. i've spoken to tax professionals, marketing people, commercial banking pros, and more. Rowan has built connections into schools, teaching social entrepreneurship as a class, as well as financial classes. he and i both have some background in the financial services industries, and while we'll probably not take on the task of financial advisiing through this, we can point people toward places that can help them grow their businesses in more ways than just a flyer on a windshield.
as the conversations with Derrick and Rowan started coming to a head, we all got together in my favorite little coffee shop and spent 3 hours putting tangible action points together. we are now just a few weeks away from our first meeting with Derrick, the four men from his church who are starting businesses, the two women from River City, the three or four that Rowan has, and the various connecting people to the various resources mentioned. and that point puts into motion the major life-change steps for me...leaving River City, coming under Derrick's and other's leadership at Westlawn Gospel Chapel, and eventually moving into the community.
all this will still fall under my CURE work. each of the CURE staffers has a different part of the city and task we tend to daily. we all come together weekly for staff meeting, and for the corporate ministry of the Cure Winter Conference and The Conversation (which is returning in september under the direction of Noel Ritter). as i've worked out this process, and conversed with Derrick and Russ (our president) it was easy to work this into the daily tasks of me as a CURE staff member. doing this also lets me continue to raise support for my CURE salary, and move greater amounts of the revenue from i58wear and Concept Web Works (a second company i started in march) toward the development of micro-enterprises in the Lawndale community.
Rowan will be doing these same sorts of things in the Cabrini Green neighborhood, and we will all come together once a month. in Lawndale, we will have weekly meetings...almost a small group of sorts. computers will be available with quickbooks, office suite software, and eventually design software. all the micro-enterprises on board at this point are being started by fellow believers, but we do not want to turn away anyone due to any difference in faith. still, we'll probably stick to these eight or so businesses for a while, before trying to bite off anymore.
i will actively be looking to meet with some of you who receive this letter or read this blog post about supporting this ministry through CURE. while the work i've been doing in "racial reconciliation" has been harder to quantify in many ways, this will be a more tangible method to that work. right now i still work three days a week at a part time job for which i'm very grateful, but which does take away from my time and efforts in building this. i need to replace about $400 a week with support in order to spend my full time on this. these are difficult times, i know, and stablity seems further from grasp than ever. if you would consider the equivalent of one dinner out per week (and a cheap one at that) of maybe $7.50 a week, it would not take many people to help me meet my need.
for those who can't afford it, and i truly understand, and know that to be the case for many people, please keep CURE, The Stewards Market, CURE, and me in your prayers. everyone involved has experience in business and business development, but we've never tried this. we need and ask for your diligent prayers.
if you have any questions, please ask. my phone number is on my facebook info page, and you can email me at nate@i58wear.com or nateheldman@gmail.com. (i'm about a week away from having 7 different email addresses to check regularly...oy)
peace...and love.
nate
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on Wednesday, June 16, 2010
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