REFORMATION CHURCH CHICAGO SEEKS TO TRANSFORM ITSELF, LED BY ITS PULPIT MINISTRY, INTO AN ELCA AFRICAN DESCENT MISSION CONGREGATION

This blog’s purpose is to serve as an Electronic Press Kit (EPK) in progress aimed at trumpeting the transformation process of Reformation African American Lutheran Church Chicago, under the leadership of its Pulpit Ministry, from a declined Black Lutheran family congregation on the City's Far South Side, into a dynamic Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) Mission Church in-progress.  This said, REBUILD MY CHURCH BLOG (RMCB) is dedicated to informing the full range of both ELCA and Black Press media outlets of Reformation's new movement-in-process toward becoming, what God has called it to be, a vibrant  ELCA African Descent Lutheran Mission Church serving Metro Chicago while  firmly rooted in Reformation's historic Palmer Park, Roseland, and Pullman National Monument parish.    

2.  Just as the venerable Franciscan tradition of church architecture holds  that 800 years ago Jesus Christ appealed directly to their 13th century founder, St. Francis of Assisi, to “rebuild my Church” while he was praying in the ruined sanctuary of the then Italian countryside church of San Domiano,  so too has Reformation African American Lutheran Church on Chicago’s Far South Side, been directly called today, by that same Holy Spirit, to do likewise i.e., “go and rebuild my Church which, as you can see, is all in ruins.”

3. And just as the Franciscan tradition additionally holds that St. Francis “eventually realized that God’s message to him was to restore the entire (Western) church as a body rather than literally repair one church structure” so too also does Reformation’s Rebuild My Church Mission (RMCM) seek to contribute to restoring not only its own distinctive structure, but also help in restoring similar existentially threatened historic Black Church congregations inside and outside Metro Chicago Synod/ELCA.   

4. This blog, then, serves as Reformation’s standing appeal, via all ELCA and Black media forms, for moral, active, and financial support A) for its very own self-determining efforts aimed at rebuilding, re-positioning, and renewing its historic Far South Side house of worship as an ELCA mission church;  B) support for its very own community service ministries-generated by the African American Cultural Center at Reformation (AACCR) as its core community development project; but also C) supporting the renewal of other Black sister congregations similarly at risk inside and outside Metro Chicago Synod/ELCA.

Respectfully submitted: Rev. Joel Washington (Khunanpu Sangoma), Pastor of Reformation Church Chicago (“Young Barack Obama’s community organizing sanctuary”) and for Reformation’s REBUILD MY CHURCH MISSION/ELCA-as an archetype African Descent Lutheran Congregational Renewal Initiative, Updated 11-13-17

Contact: Reformation Lutheran Church/ELCA, 11310 S. Forest Avenue, Chicago IL 60628, 773-785-4570 or 773-996-1066, Email: JKWASHINGTON@comcast.net

Langston Hughes’ “Ma Lord” Appendix

Ma Lord

Ma Lord ain’t no stuck-up man.

Ma Lord, he ain’t proud.

When he goes a-walkin’

He gives me his hand.

“You ma friend,” he ‘lowed

Ma Lord knowed what it was to work.

He knowed how to pray.

Ma Lord’s life was trouble, too,

Trouble ever day.

Ma Lord ain’t no stuck-up man.

He’s a friend of mine.

When he went to heaben,

His soul on fire,

He tole me I was gwine.

He said, “Sho you’ll come wid Me

An’ be my friend through eternity.

(June 1927, Crises Magazine)

JW (KS), 4-20-17