Cultural Engagement
Our fast-paced, post-Christian, urban culture elevates a story of consumerism, moralism, and relativism and asks us both in subtle and overt ways to keep our faith out of the public sphere. We want to challenge that story as well as positively engage our culture with the hope of the gospel through a variety of venues including workshops, open forums, and city renewal projects.
Open Forum: Living with Hope in the Brokenness and Pain of our City
Violence, poverty, abuse, depression, injustice and inequity. Pain and brokenness mark our lives every day as we live and work in the city of Chicago. How can we live with our eyes wide open to this reality and not be swallowed by despair? The Christian faith calls us to hope, but what does that actually look like here and now?
Join us for an evening with Dr. Esau McCaulley and Paco Amador to consider formational practices and the source of living with hope in our world of brokenness and pain.
The event is free, but you must register below to reserve your seat.
Meet the Speakers
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Pastor Paco Amador was born in Mexico City. At the age of 14 he came to North Carolina where he finally committed his life to the Lord Jesus during his high school years.
In 1991 while studying at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago he visited the Little Village neighborhood and immediately felt like he had arrived at the place of his calling. Little Village is the largest Mexican immigrant neighborhood in the Midwest. To a Mexican kid lost in this great city Little Village just felt like coming home.
Following a 2year missionary experience with OM in Spain he came back to Chicago where he was immersed into the transformative community principles of CCDA while working at the Lawndale Christian Health Center. He then taught as a public school teacher for nine years, and in the summer of 2005 he was called into full time pastoral ministry leading the New Life congregation in Little Village.
Paco is currently working on a doctoral degree from Bakke Graduate University, enjoys running the Chicago Marathon, loves dancing with his 4 growing daughters, wrestling with his 3 boys and bike riding through the hood. Pastor P and his wife Sylvia have been married for twenty-two years, have seven children and a crazy black labrador. They can’t imagine a better place to live in the entire world than in La Villita.
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Esau McCaulley, PhD is an associate professor of New Testament at Wheaton College in Wheaton, IL. He is the author of many works including Sharing in the Son’s Inheritance and the Children’s Book Josie Johnson Hair and the Holy Spirit. His book Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope won numerous awards, including Christianity Today’s Book of the Year. His latest project is a memoir entitled: How Far to the Promise Land: One Family’s Story of Hope and Survival in the American South. He is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. His writings have also appeared in places such as The Atlantic, Washington Post, and Christianity Today. He is married to Mandy, a pediatrician and Navy reservist. Together, they have four wonderful children.