Stop and Listen to the Music

Look at this video then read the rest of the blog post: The scene is a Washington, DC Metro Station on a cold January morning in 2007. The man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time approx. 2 thousand people went through the station, most of them on [...]

Chicago Free Fridays 2: How to Score Free Oprah Tickets

We tell you how to get free tickets for one of the most popular free things to do in Chicago — an Oprah taping in the West Loop at her Harpo Studios. Audience reservations for The Oprah Winfrey Show are available almost exclusively by phone. As you can imagine, demand for free Oprah tickets far exceeds supply.

Resurrection Sunday

What a  great day it is in Chicago and around the world!  Today as we attend Park Community Church with lots of friends, we celebrate the resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It is not a day to celebrate Easter bunnies, nor Peeps, candy, hard-boiled Paas-dyed eggs,  not even Easter, but Resurrection Sunday.  [...]

Spiritual Help In Hard Times

The Sun Times just published an article where they asked some Chicago-area faith leaders what they have to say to people who have lost their jobs, homes, tuition and sense of security.   What do they say to congregants who feel as if God hasn’t provided and isn’t going to?  Check out what our own J.R. [...]

Thanksgiving Top 20

In September of 1620, a small wooden ship called the Mayflower set sail from England, headed for the New World. Crowded on board were 102 passengers, most of them Christians who believed that God was leading them to establish a new community where they could worship freely. After sixty-five days of tossing on the sea [...]

Burma Disaster Relief: Park To Send a 10,000 gallon/day Water Purifier

As many of you are already aware, last weekend Tropical cyclone Nargis claimed thousands of lives in Myanmar early Saturday morning 2:30am. By daylight, the full effect of the storm was obvious. Homes were destroyed, giant trees crashed through buildings, and were lying uprooted, blocking roads. Blackouts, water shortages and rapidly rising prices were reported [...]

Are you part of an Expeditionary Force?

The Missional Challenge has an excellent article about the local church becoming a Expeditionary Force in the city — take a read….. Dr. Ray Bakke describes the church as an expeditionary force in The Urban Christian (1987). He views Christians as ministers to their worlds of relationships. For example, a banker who is a Christian [...]

Willow To Eliminate Mid-Week Service

(Christianity Today.com) For three decades Willow has been focused on making the church appealing to seekers. But its detailed and thorough research (summarized in their new book REVEAL) shows that it’s the mature believers that drive everything in the church—including evangelism. Greg Hawkins, the Executive Pastor says, “We used to think you can’t upset a [...]

Chicago 33rd Most Affordable Metro Area

A new study by Bizjournals.com, a group of business publications, ranked housing affordability in the nation’s metropolitan areas, with terse advice for those seeking a financially manageable place to live: ABC —-That is, Anywhere But California. Bizjournals compared median home payments and household income levels in the nation’s 50 largest metros. The study was based [...]

Worship Top 25

As we sit each week at Park, and have worship times with Joseph Tenney and his team, I began to wonder what are the main worship songs that are played? So I did some research on the CCLI site and thought I would list out the top 25 played worship songs in churches around the [...]

In Memory of Abby-Jill — We Will Miss You

This week, Park Community Church suffered a great loss, when one of its former staff, Abby-Jill Brauhn , lost her fight with cancer and went to be with the Lord on Tuesday morning, surrounded by her family in Wisconsin. Abby-Jill was a Godly woman who loved the Lord and loved people. She made a huge [...]

Barna — A New Perspective on Unchurched

According to a new study released by The Barna Group, popular measures such as the percentage of people who are “unchurched” – based on attendance at a conventional church service – are out of date. Various new forms of faith community and experience, such as house churches, marketplace ministries and cyberchurches, must be figured into [...]

Think You Know Chicago? Test Yourself

As you most know, I love Chicago and everything about it. I found a great new show on our local PBS station WTTW, called Hidden Chicago, where Geoffrey Baer takes you all over the Chicago region in search of often-overlooked fragments of our city’s history. Many are in places you pass by every day. But [...]

Which is the Urban Church?

I came across this great illustration series by Steve Collins of what an urban church is not and what it is — tell me what you think. Check it out the excellent slideshow here.

DWELL: Driving Urban Church Planters

At Park Community Church, our vision is to be a Biblical community where the Gospel of Jesus Christ transforms lives, renews the city and impacts the world. Being a city center church, we are focused on reaching the city of Chicago and would like to reach 1% (29,000 people) of the city in the years [...]

Great Reminder on Stewardship as a Leader

Tim Stevens, the Executive Pastor at Granger Community Church is a person I respect greatly, and he has another great nugget of wisdom for leaders of all types concerning how to get a strong financial framework in your life. As I move out of the church business and into my sports-oriented social networking start-up, FanFuego.com, [...]

Reminder: We are in the Hope Business

As we see more and more people step over the line of faith each week at Park Community Church, I was reminded this week in an article by John Ortberg, Senior Pastor of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church that as Christians, we are in the hope business. And as a leader, the one task a leader [...]

Appel, Frazee Out at Willow Creek

Not sure what is driving this, but last weekend, the Elders of Willow Creek announced that both Randy Frazee and Gene Appel, the two lead pastors, would be leaving Willow Creek. WOW! What a bombshell……The announcement is on the Willow Creek website: Today the Elders of Willow Creek are announcing that two senior staff leaders [...]

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