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.
Compassion and City Living: Cultivating a Life of Mercy
Compassion and City Living: Cultivating a Life of Mercy
Throughout the Bible, God shows us his heart for the needy and vulnerable. In the Old Testament, God calls on Israel to advocate for the downtrodden and oppressed. In the New Testament, Jesus dedicates much of his ministry to those on the margins of society - the widow, the orphan, the sojourner, or the poor. As followers of Jesus, many of us encounter needs in our city and want to love as God does, but don’t always know how to respond or where to start.
This seminar will explore the significance of mercy to the heart of God and offer resources to help you better respond to needs in your community. Together we will discuss biblical foundations for the discipline of compassion, the unique challenges of city life, and some practical ways we can respond.
We will meet in person from 9 AM - 11 AM. Childcare will be provided, but you must register by February 7 to guarantee availability.
Please register below and email us if you have any questions!
Open Forum: C.S. Lewis and the Transforming Power of Imagination
Join us for an evening exploring how C.S. Lewis used imagination to reveal truth and shape faith, featuring special guest Dr. Jerry Root.
Cultivating Creativity: Art as an Expression of Life, Grief, Faith and Love
Join us for a night of songs and conversation as we explore how music and the arts help us tell the stories of life, faith, grief, and love
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.