Chicago Named 1 of 10 Alpha Cities in World January 25, 2008
Posted by Steve in : Weblog , add a commentAccording to the Globalization and World Cities (GaWC) Study Group, Chicago is one of the 10 Alpha Cities in the world, based on its position as a a global service center. Just one more reason to live and work here in this “City in a Garden”. The GaWC summarizes these global cities as:
Although there is a general consensus on which are the leading world cities, there is no agreed upon roster covering world cities below the highest level. This paper reports the construction of an inventory of world cities based upon their level of advanced producer services. Global service centres are identified and graded for accountancy, advertising, banking/finance and law. Aggregating these results produces a roster of 55 world cities at three levels: 10 Alpha world cities, 10 Beta world cities and 35 Gamma world cities. These are found to be largely geographically concentrated in three ‘globalization arenas’, northern America, western Europe and Pacific Asia.
A. ALPHA WORLD CITIES (full service world cities)
London, New York, Paris, Tokyo, Chicago, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Milan, Singapore
B. BETA WORLD CITIES (major world cities)
San Francisco, Sydney, Toronto, Zurich, Brussels, Madrid, Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Moscow, Seoul
Baptism Sunday — What a Day! July 22, 2007
Posted by Steve in : Chicago, Inside Park, Missional , add a commentEach year, on the third Sunday in July, we gather at 7 am at North Avenue beach in Chicago to hold our annual baptism service. This year, there were 71 people who were baptized in Lake Michigan in front of their friends, family and the Park Community Church family.
It is so cool to have our baptism service in the shadow of the skyline of this world-class, global city. What a great day to hear the stories of people’s live who have been transformed by Jesus Christ working in their lives! … To hear how their lives were before Christ and the impact that Christ has had on their lives…..and to remind myself of how much Christ has transformed my life in the 23 years since I accepted Christ as my Lord and Savior. This day rocks!
Here is the setup in Solheim Center, the site of our Baptism celebration service for about 1,000 people
2007 National New Church Conference April 18, 2007
Posted by Steve in : The City, Chicago, Church, Urban Church, Methods & Strategies, Missional, The Cultural Conversation , add a commentSeveral of us have been graciously been given the opportunity to attend the 2007 National New Church Conference next week and it is going to be a great one. The National New Church Conference is a cross-denominational gathering designed to connect, inspire, equip and challenge church planting leaders to the next level of collaboration. Speakers will include Bill Hybels, Wayne Cordeiro, Ed Stetzer, Dave Ferguson, Bob Roberts, Bil Cornelius, Mark Batterson, Jim Putman, Rick Rusaw, Matt Chandler, Darrin Patrick, Shawn Lovejoy, Vince Antonucci, Bob Logan, David Putman, and more. and several others. As Park looks to make a bigger impact in Chicago through multisite and church planting, the sheer energy that will come out of this conference will give us all a great emotional boost!Check out this interview by Ed Stetzer of Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle. Its part of the 2007 National New Church Conference podcast which is available at http://exponentialconference.org/podcasting/. In addition to this interview there are a bunch of great messages available from Dave Ferguson, Ron Sylvia, Dan Smith, Bob Roberts, John Burke and many more.
Chicago - Our Olympic Hope April 16, 2007
Posted by Steve in : Chicago, Olympics , add a comment
On Saturday, Chicago was selected by the U.S. Olympic Committee as its candidate to bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics, ahead of two-time host Los Angeles. This is a huge step forward for Chicago and now puts us on the international stage. We all think this is the greatest place to live, work and do ministry, but now we hope to be able to host the Olympics and show that to the world!
Chicago will likely compete with Madrid, Prague, Rome, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo to hold the 2016 Summer Olympics. The International Olympic Committee is to decide on a venue for the 2016 Summer Olympics in October 2009. Chicago will start from scratch in hosting the games, unlike Los Angeles that had almost every infrastructure in place to host the games. However, the local Olympic committee intends to build an Olympic stadium with a seating capacity of 80,000 at an estimated cost of $366 million. This would be supported by a lakefront village in the downtown area at a cost of $1.1 billion.
