WEBVTT 1 00:00:18.080 --> 00:00:21.320 What is the church go after the minister utters the benediction? 2 00:00:22.700 --> 00:00:26.280 Is it just the four walls that are standing there or is it something that goes out into 3 00:00:26.280 --> 00:00:26.680 the world? 4 00:00:26.680 --> 00:00:28.880 And if it doesn't go out into the world, what good is it? 5 00:00:29.640 --> 00:00:33.660 And this is why I'm so concerned with the North Side Cooperative Ministry. 6 00:00:33.820 --> 00:00:39.100 I think it's a question not of worrying how big a congregation we had this week and how 7 00:00:39.100 --> 00:00:44.180 much was in the collection plate this week, but of what are we doing with what's in the 8 00:00:44.180 --> 00:00:48.260 collection plate and what are we doing with the congregation we hopefully gather together 9 00:00:48.260 --> 00:00:48.940 every Sunday. 10 00:00:49.580 --> 00:00:54.180 Now as long as you're interested in sending people to heaven, a little church on the corner 11 00:00:54.180 --> 00:00:54.940 can do that. 12 00:00:55.700 --> 00:01:02.720 But once you become interested about the heaven or the earth new, the vision of what can happen 13 00:01:02.720 --> 00:01:07.440 with the earth that the science people picked up when the church forgot about this, but 14 00:01:07.440 --> 00:01:12.620 once you become interested in that, then you find out that you just can't do that by yourself. 15 00:01:12.780 --> 00:01:14.020 So you have to come together. 16 00:01:14.540 --> 00:01:17.720 CBS News presents Look Up and Live. 17 00:01:18.340 --> 00:01:20.740 We continue with Reformation Chicago. 18 00:01:20.740 --> 00:01:25.500 Look at the realities of a great metropolis and the church which is attempting to serve 19 00:01:25.500 --> 00:01:25.960 it. 20 00:01:26.100 --> 00:01:31.800 Today, this given place, the philosophy and action of Chicago's North Side Cooperative 21 00:01:31.800 --> 00:01:32.340 Ministry. 22 00:01:33.300 --> 00:01:37.360 What do the men and women who make up the church in a given area of a great city do 23 00:01:37.360 --> 00:01:42.240 when their religious life ceases to mean anything in terms of the community around them? 24 00:01:42.720 --> 00:01:48.220 What happens when neighborhood churches must struggle to stay alive and cannot participate 25 00:01:48.220 --> 00:01:50.400 individually in the making of a great city? 26 00:01:51.020 --> 00:01:55.800 What happens when Christians see that they must turn outward on a mission into the world 27 00:01:55.800 --> 00:01:58.620 if their faith is to have any real meaning? 28 00:01:59.460 --> 00:02:05.920 The North Side Cooperative Ministry in Chicago, an organization of 400 men and women from 29 00:02:05.920 --> 00:02:12.480 24 churches and 6 denominations, is trying to provide at least one kind of answer to 30 00:02:12.480 --> 00:02:16.000 the problems of the church and the community in a great city. 31 00:02:16.800 --> 00:02:18.340 The Reverend James Reed. 32 00:02:18.800 --> 00:02:29.800 It's the chance to be the church in a new way by focusing on mission rather than on 33 00:02:29.800 --> 00:02:36.320 building up congregations or putting up structures for congregations to worship in. 34 00:02:37.400 --> 00:02:42.620 It's also the opportunity to do this together. 35 00:02:43.620 --> 00:02:49.620 Instead of working on parallel lines at the same task, we work within a community together. 36 00:02:50.720 --> 00:02:58.540 Also it's not just a bunch of ministers playing games, but there's real involvement on the 37 00:02:58.540 --> 00:02:59.680 part of laypeople. 38 00:02:59.980 --> 00:03:02.380 They take significant responsibility. 39 00:03:03.100 --> 00:03:10.020 The North Side Cooperative Ministry, or NSCM, was formed three years ago out of the common 40 00:03:10.020 --> 00:03:14.440 needs and wishes of a handful of churches in Chicago's near North Side. 41 00:03:15.140 --> 00:03:21.160 Currently ministers and interested laymen from 24 local churches, two settlement houses, 42 00:03:21.460 --> 00:03:26.740 and a college community meet together and form into inter-denominational workforces 43 00:03:26.740 --> 00:03:29.300 to tackle community problems and needs. 44 00:03:30.180 --> 00:03:35.660 The clergy and laymen who make up the cooperative ministry want the church to be a force in 45 00:03:36.720 --> 00:03:37.240 and action. 46 00:03:37.800 --> 00:03:44.200 And to this end, they have involved themselves in local issues of education, housing, integration, 47 00:03:44.880 --> 00:03:51.000 ministry to the elderly, tutoring, ministry to youth, and a variety of other vital and 48 00:03:51.000 --> 00:03:52.620 quite often political activities. 49 00:03:53.760 --> 00:03:59.880 The active members of NSCM are only a small percentage of the 5,000 people who officially 50 00:03:59.880 --> 00:04:01.940 belong to the 24 member churches. 51 00:04:02.620 --> 00:04:08.960 But the people of NSCM believe the lesson of history, that a strong active minority 52 00:04:08.960 --> 00:04:15.620 can often work wonders and being active can speak for the community it represents. 53 00:04:16.360 --> 00:04:21.280 In the case of the North Side Cooperative Ministry, the community is vast and varied, 54 00:04:21.820 --> 00:04:23.280 a city within a city. 55 00:04:24.240 --> 00:04:30.840 I would say that the general area covered by the North Side Cooperative Ministry, well, 56 00:04:30.840 --> 00:04:35.940 that's the old cliche from the Gold Coast of the Slums pretty well describes it. 57 00:04:37.180 --> 00:04:46.860 We're bounded on the South or we include on our southern fringes an area which is largely, 58 00:04:47.860 --> 00:04:49.660 if not exclusively, Negro. 59 00:04:50.340 --> 00:04:58.480 The rest of the area is not entirely white but almost completely excludes Negroes, as 60 00:04:58.480 --> 00:05:09.440 a large number of Filipino, Nisei and other Japanese origin Americans, quite a Cuban community 61 00:05:09.440 --> 00:05:11.320 since the Castro days. 62 00:05:12.220 --> 00:05:22.700 Probably the largest accumulation of Appalachia north of the Ohio River today and the Gold 63 00:05:22.700 --> 00:05:25.620 Coast along Lake Michigan and various other places. 64 00:05:26.620 --> 00:05:32.240 The area served by the members of the Cooperative Ministry includes rich and poor, the three 65 00:05:32.240 --> 00:05:37.860 major races of mankind and transient peoples looking for a place to settle permanently. 66 00:05:38.740 --> 00:05:44.940 A score of different languages are spoken here making the area rather typical of a 320,000 67 00:05:44.940 --> 00:05:47.220 member section of a major city. 68 00:05:48.720 --> 00:05:53.740 NSCM currently draws its strength from the middle and lower income residential neighborhoods 69 00:05:53.740 --> 00:05:59.520 in this area but it hopes to encourage more support from the wealthier and somewhat isolated 70 00:05:59.520 --> 00:06:03.860 Gold Coast and business communities as it makes its presence felt. 71 00:06:04.240 --> 00:06:09.400 One of the ways it's made its presence felt is through what it calls immediate action. 72 00:06:09.880 --> 00:06:17.560 Well when we first set up the North Side Cooperative Ministry we thought of various areas of service 73 00:06:17.560 --> 00:06:24.500 and opportunities for service are limitless and we called these ministries, ministries 74 00:06:24.500 --> 00:06:30.040 to various age groups, ministries to various kinds of people and various kinds of situations, 75 00:06:30.780 --> 00:06:35.420 ethnic, language, elderly, young adults and so on. 76 00:06:37.620 --> 00:06:42.820 But we came to realize as time went along that the very situation in the neighborhood 77 00:06:44.080 --> 00:06:50.140 made us aware that there were things taking place which we had to be much more ready to 78 00:06:50.140 --> 00:06:56.920 move into immediately and out of this came almost spontaneously a kind of a task force 79 00:06:56.920 --> 00:07:04.200 idea, a group of people who would be gathered together to focus in on a particular task, 80 00:07:06.020 --> 00:07:12.800 work at it and when it was done we would disband and that this task force would be open to 81 00:07:13.700 --> 00:07:17.800 anyone from the community, not just members of the church but everyone who was concerned. 82 00:07:18.280 --> 00:07:22.740 The first task force took shape when the school board announced its desire to build a new 83 00:07:22.740 --> 00:07:29.080 high school in the northwest corner of the NSCM area in Hamlin Park, a predominantly 84 00:07:29.080 --> 00:07:34.920 white neighborhood. The purpose of this was to relieve overcrowding in the existing school. 85 00:07:35.740 --> 00:07:40.820 The ministry rallied together a 60 member task force on public education which determined 86 00:07:40.820 --> 00:07:45.720 that the new high school, in their opinion, would not serve the real needs of the community. 87 00:07:46.020 --> 00:07:52.260 This would mean that the high school which is presently in the community, which has a 88 00:07:52.260 --> 00:07:58.760 high percentage of negro students, would tend to become almost all negro because the white 89 00:07:58.760 --> 00:08:02.740 students from the northern end of the community would be pulled into the new high school and 90 00:08:02.740 --> 00:08:07.320 we saw this as being very detrimental to the community as a whole. 91 00:08:08.040 --> 00:08:12.880 The task force, in its effort to block the building of the new school, picketed a community 92 00:08:12.880 --> 00:08:16.720 organization to the north which had come out in favor of the new school. 93 00:08:17.300 --> 00:08:23.500 This was considered a pretty radical move and it attracted the attention of those people 94 00:08:23.500 --> 00:08:28.480 in the community who really wanted to do something about this. They saw that this was a group 95 00:08:28.480 --> 00:08:32.440 that wasn't just going to play around with it, that was very serious about it. 96 00:08:32.440 --> 00:08:37.180 Andrew Ransom, a member of the task force, describes the aftermath. 97 00:08:37.660 --> 00:08:47.760 We began to tell our concerns and our feelings and our discoveries to the board by individual 98 00:08:49.140 --> 00:08:57.720 contact, and we also went to the Adams Committee and presented our plans and our feelings. 99 00:08:59.440 --> 00:09:08.340 We accomplished a delay or postponement of building or going forward at this site and 100 00:09:08.340 --> 00:09:13.940 right now they're reconsidering what they can do. And since that time they have decided 101 00:09:13.940 --> 00:09:20.500 that perhaps a comprehensive plan would be better whereby they would build two or three 102 00:09:20.500 --> 00:09:26.700 schools at different sites rather than the one school to alleviate the overcrowding. 103 00:09:26.700 --> 00:09:33.420 Churches that deal with explosive civic issues are open to disagreement from unsympathetic members. 104 00:09:33.920 --> 00:09:40.960 Well there has been a certain amount of feedback, but I think generally speaking members of 105 00:09:40.960 --> 00:09:48.600 the churches realized that although they personally might be better off in terms of their own 106 00:09:48.600 --> 00:09:53.860 situation if the new school was built, they saw the rightness of the issue and the necessity 107 00:09:53.860 --> 00:09:55.420 to solve it in another way. 108 00:09:56.280 --> 00:10:02.100 In most inner city churches by now, at least Presbyterian churches, the people who don't 109 00:10:02.100 --> 00:10:08.580 agree have left. They have gone further north or to the suburbs, north or west or to the 110 00:10:08.580 --> 00:10:17.280 suburbs. And so you have the people who have found what it means to be a Christian because 111 00:10:17.860 --> 00:10:24.780 they have to give them a little more in stewardship, they have to work a little harder, they have 112 00:10:24.780 --> 00:10:29.280 to suffer a little more. And really being a Christian means suffering. 113 00:10:29.760 --> 00:10:35.960 Generally speaking we've gotten good support. Actually I think if some of the churches took 114 00:10:35.960 --> 00:10:41.400 a firmer position against some of the activities it might really enrich what we were doing. 115 00:10:42.020 --> 00:10:45.140 But there's a tendency if they don't agree to kind of, on a particular issue, to kind 116 00:10:45.140 --> 00:10:47.660 of slip out of the picture for a time. 117 00:10:48.040 --> 00:10:54.260 Where men disagree and consent to talk about it, there is a chance for understanding. But 118 00:10:54.260 --> 00:10:59.120 too often those in the city who call themselves Christians as well as those of other faiths 119 00:10:59.120 --> 00:11:05.440 or of no faith are unable or unwilling to become involved. They forfeit in the minds 120 00:11:05.440 --> 00:11:11.200 of many the opportunity to shape the future of their communities, a democratic as well 121 00:11:11.200 --> 00:11:14.300 as religious right. The Reverend Herb Davis. 122 00:11:15.140 --> 00:11:21.200 Now for the city to become human, the people within the city have to assume responsibilities 123 00:11:21.200 --> 00:11:26.240 for decisions to take place. So in the church at times we're not going to do what we want 124 00:11:26.240 --> 00:11:31.780 to do simply because if we're asking for people to assume responsibility and make decisions, 125 00:11:32.660 --> 00:11:37.280 then you're going to get bogged down at times. But still now you're going to have a vision 126 00:11:37.280 --> 00:11:41.240 that there's going to be some reconciliation and some movement. If you're going to do that, 127 00:11:41.260 --> 00:11:45.720 you're going to move into the area where the technician does everything. And he decides 128 00:11:45.720 --> 00:11:50.160 when to drop the bomb and when your wife doesn't have any more children and when they change 129 00:11:50.160 --> 00:11:54.320 the curriculum and everything else. And you're cut off totally and you become a nothing in 130 00:11:54.320 --> 00:11:56.400 this city that's supposed to be emerging with some hope. 131 00:11:56.880 --> 00:12:02.580 The members of the NSCM believe that the city cannot emerge with hope and meaning unless 132 00:12:02.580 --> 00:12:09.000 the church directs its energies to service and planning on all fronts. This often means 133 00:12:09.000 --> 00:12:14.380 working closely with government and using government funds to work to build community 134 00:12:14.380 --> 00:12:20.340 on the local level where the church traditionally functioned best. The cooperative ministry 135 00:12:20.340 --> 00:12:26.240 was granted federal war on poverty funds this year to work with local social agencies to 136 00:12:26.240 --> 00:12:31.840 study juvenile delinquency. And a part of the government's operation head start program 137 00:12:31.840 --> 00:12:38.960 is handled locally by NSCM. Head start takes preschool children from low income inner city 138 00:12:38.960 --> 00:12:43.980 homes and attempts to prepare them not only for the stepped up pace of modern primary 139 00:12:43.980 --> 00:12:50.420 education but to make them aware that the world is bigger than the walls of their sometimes 140 00:12:50.420 --> 00:12:54.720 drab surroundings and that they are an important part of it. 141 00:12:55.460 --> 00:12:58.840 I'd asked you to choose a picture. Why did you choose this particular one? 142 00:12:58.840 --> 00:13:04.460 The tutoring of older children is another ongoing task of NSCM. 143 00:13:04.960 --> 00:13:11.120 The tutoring program this year is in its second year in sponsorship under the cooperative 144 00:13:11.120 --> 00:13:17.820 ministry is located in five of the member churches. It's being served by volunteers 145 00:13:17.820 --> 00:13:23.160 from churches themselves, from churches that are not members of NSCM, through college students 146 00:13:23.160 --> 00:13:27.360 that are outside of the area that are giving their time and involving themselves in inner 147 00:13:28.160 --> 00:13:35.480 city problems. They're serving community children, some of them from the churches, the majority 148 00:13:35.480 --> 00:13:39.860 of them not from the churches. One of the traditional needs that tends to 149 00:13:39.860 --> 00:13:46.220 be ignored by a society which worships youth is the need of the superfluous elderly, those 150 00:13:46.220 --> 00:13:51.900 older people who are confined to nursing homes and public developments to wait out their 151 00:13:51.900 --> 00:13:57.980 time, often in boredom and hopelessness. The cooperative ministry maintains a force of 152 00:13:57.980 --> 00:14:03.840 laymen who visit many of the 25 nursing homes in its area and some of the private and public 153 00:14:03.840 --> 00:14:10.440 apartment residences for older people. Wherever possible, this ministry goes beyond traditional 154 00:14:10.440 --> 00:14:16.280 hand holding and is in keeping with the general action philosophy of NSCM. 155 00:14:16.640 --> 00:14:19.100 Mrs. Marsha Harmon explains. 156 00:14:19.780 --> 00:14:34.760 Well quite frequently the elderly rather lapse into the old religious patterns that perhaps 157 00:14:34.760 --> 00:14:41.460 were meaningful to them. For example, the ministers who have developed a ministry to 158 00:14:41.860 --> 00:14:49.560 the nursing homes in our area find that the old songs of course are the good ones, the 159 00:14:49.560 --> 00:14:54.200 ones they want to sing. These are the things that make them feel good in that they represent 160 00:14:54.200 --> 00:14:59.380 something that hasn't changed, something that will always be the same for them. 161 00:14:59.900 --> 00:15:05.460 I think the Christian church in the world today is in the revolution of our times. An 162 00:15:05.460 --> 00:15:11.200 elderly person who is alert and capable of communicating I think needs to be reminded 163 00:15:11.200 --> 00:15:16.580 that the world is going on all around them and that they can be a part of the world even 164 00:15:16.580 --> 00:15:24.220 if it's only by listening to the newscast instead of the movie or reading a newspaper 165 00:15:24.220 --> 00:15:31.300 and not just scanning it. Become involved, become interested and even a person who isn't 166 00:15:31.300 --> 00:15:37.080 able to get around with a great deal of flexibility can maintain a good deal of interest in the 167 00:15:37.080 --> 00:15:40.380 world and keep alive in this sense too. 168 00:15:40.380 --> 00:15:46.480 In a very real sense, the men and women of the North Side Cooperative Ministry are concerned 169 00:15:46.480 --> 00:15:52.200 with all the work of building a human city. The racial revolution of our times and the 170 00:15:52.200 --> 00:15:58.160 proximity of a huge Negro ghetto to the NSCM area prompted the Cooperative Ministry to 171 00:15:58.160 --> 00:16:03.800 set up a permanent task force on integration. Donald Moore, a stockbroker who lives with 172 00:16:03.800 --> 00:16:08.520 his family in the all-white Lincoln Park area, is a member of that task force. 173 00:16:08.520 --> 00:16:14.380 Well I think we started out with a group who were pretty much of one purpose and that was 174 00:16:14.380 --> 00:16:22.980 that we felt that some sort of action need be taken to save the inner city from the spreading 175 00:16:22.980 --> 00:16:29.000 slum, the spreading Negro ghetto. We feel the only way this can be accomplished is through 176 00:16:29.000 --> 00:16:36.720 some sort of direct action by groups such as ours whereby we stimulate the Negro to 177 00:16:36.720 --> 00:16:43.680 parachute into all-white areas so to speak and to break up this pattern of expanding 178 00:16:43.680 --> 00:16:48.400 block by block on the ghettos. And we have the Negro ghetto on a very bad slum area, 179 00:16:49.140 --> 00:16:53.940 it borders almost on this area served by the North Side Cooperative Ministry which is the 180 00:16:53.940 --> 00:16:55.080 near west side of Chicago. 181 00:16:55.560 --> 00:17:01.000 The task force admits to great problems. For one thing, they've concluded that it's more 182 00:17:01.000 --> 00:17:06.320 difficult to integrate in the city than in the suburbs because city people often do not 183 00:17:06.320 --> 00:17:11.660 own their own homes or have a sense of community and they are more willing to pack up and move 184 00:17:11.660 --> 00:17:17.080 away if they think their neighborhood is destined to become a part of the ghetto. Part of the 185 00:17:17.080 --> 00:17:24.320 task then is to stabilize an area, make it a community, thereby pave the way for integration. 186 00:17:24.900 --> 00:17:31.820 I think you stabilize it not through apartment, more high-rise apartment buildings, but through 187 00:17:31.820 --> 00:17:37.800 single family dwelling. I think you can have all economic strata in a city if you appeal 188 00:17:37.800 --> 00:17:43.040 to the family. This is the problem. Certainly urban renewal has been greatly criticized 189 00:17:43.040 --> 00:17:47.360 for this and I think rightly so. We've seen a beautiful example of it here in Chicago. 190 00:17:47.540 --> 00:17:48.840 This gets way off the subject. 191 00:17:49.200 --> 00:17:55.100 A project that was primarily conceived to bring the family back into the city and it 192 00:17:55.100 --> 00:18:00.000 has worked as far as I can see totally in the other direction. It's just another new 193 00:18:00.000 --> 00:18:06.800 area of high-rise appealing primarily to single people, elderly people that want small apartments. 194 00:18:07.540 --> 00:18:12.640 As far as the cooperative ministry is concerned, the problems of housing are intimately allied 195 00:18:12.640 --> 00:18:18.860 with planning for a cordial and meaningful integration of the races. NSCM member churches, 196 00:18:18.920 --> 00:18:24.220 which are already integrated, provide impetus and encouragement in a difficult situation. 197 00:18:24.760 --> 00:18:29.200 All of the Presbyterian Church is an integrated church and it has a unique feature because 198 00:18:29.200 --> 00:18:34.920 we also have a Spanish section, which means not only integrated but it has the different 199 00:18:34.920 --> 00:18:45.500 cultures in the one church. I believe that because of the population explosion with most 200 00:18:45.500 --> 00:18:59.180 of the world becoming more and more dark with the Negroes and Indians and Orientals and 201 00:19:00.140 --> 00:19:02.680 I think it's good to begin now. 202 00:19:03.240 --> 00:19:10.120 One of the words used a great deal in a renewing church is reconciliation. This does not mean 203 00:19:10.120 --> 00:19:15.280 merely the church finding its way back into the world or even the church assisting Christians 204 00:19:15.280 --> 00:19:21.560 to live with one another with a common purpose. It entails an even larger vision of Christians 205 00:19:21.560 --> 00:19:26.560 reaching out to groups which have no formal connection with the church or any other institution 206 00:19:27.080 --> 00:19:33.120 but who seek to explore their problems with sympathetic friends. The North Side Cooperative 207 00:19:33.120 --> 00:19:40.600 Ministry serves a portion of this vast populous through the door. The door is a coffee house 208 00:19:40.600 --> 00:19:46.440 on Chicago's North Broadway staffed by volunteer workers which attempts to minister in the 209 00:19:46.440 --> 00:19:52.680 broadest sense to the concern of young adults, people from every background, mostly in their 210 00:19:52.680 --> 00:19:58.540 20s who for the most part have no real roots in the community. In so far as it provides 211 00:19:58.540 --> 00:20:05.620 a place for contact, good talk and discovering who you are, the door is an experimental church. 212 00:20:06.560 --> 00:20:12.800 In other words, I don't think that you explode into life just kind of full blown with your 213 00:20:14.140 --> 00:20:21.500 ego, with your self-assuredness, with your self-confidence, just all there and you go. 214 00:20:22.080 --> 00:20:28.620 I think there's a process of discovering yourself, of discovering who you are and becoming very 215 00:20:28.620 --> 00:20:31.360 clear about who you are and what you want to do. 216 00:20:31.500 --> 00:20:36.540 You mean like even your enemies do you the favor of telling you who you are, you know, 217 00:20:37.420 --> 00:20:39.080 it's the greatest thing they do for you. 218 00:20:39.080 --> 00:20:44.660 Yeah, yeah, right. But you also find out who you are in the process of doing something. 219 00:20:44.920 --> 00:20:50.540 This is not within a vacuum that you find out who you are because you're always doing 220 00:20:50.540 --> 00:20:55.880 something. To say, I'm going to sit back and sort of contemplate myself until I discover 221 00:20:55.880 --> 00:20:56.420 who I am. 222 00:20:56.420 --> 00:20:58.300 Wait for the butterfly of happiness to come. 223 00:20:58.400 --> 00:21:03.040 Yeah, right, yeah, right. But this isn't so, you know, that you are continually doing things, 224 00:21:03.060 --> 00:21:07.220 whether you choose to do so or not or whether you just live by instinct. 225 00:21:07.220 --> 00:21:09.440 Yeah, and choose not to do is also an act. 226 00:21:09.440 --> 00:21:14.040 Right, right. And that you discover your identity in this. I think everyone has to go through 227 00:21:14.040 --> 00:21:20.520 the process of in process discovering who you are and where you are and what you have 228 00:21:20.520 --> 00:21:21.000 to do. 229 00:21:21.580 --> 00:21:27.020 An average of 200 people a week come through the door and their number includes everyone 230 00:21:27.020 --> 00:21:33.640 from atheists and skeptics to seminary students, folk singers, and even managers of other coffee 231 00:21:33.640 --> 00:21:39.860 houses come to see what all the fuss is about. An operation like the door, which provides 232 00:21:39.860 --> 00:21:44.080 a meaningful home base to people who have little contact with the Christian faith, would 233 00:21:44.080 --> 00:21:49.700 be difficult for one city church to maintain. In a cooperative ministry, however, it is 234 00:21:49.700 --> 00:21:56.320 a reality. Making things happen through cooperation and pooling of resources and becoming more 235 00:21:56.320 --> 00:22:02.100 aware of the mission of the church and city and neighborhood problems are tangible results 236 00:22:02.100 --> 00:22:10.540 of a cooperative ministry such as this. As the members imply, the NSCM is a two-way street. 237 00:22:11.500 --> 00:22:15.940 It's a kind of learning while doing. The Reverend Fred Trout. 238 00:22:16.640 --> 00:22:20.800 Well, I think one of the basic problems that's given rise to the cooperative ministry has 239 00:22:20.800 --> 00:22:26.640 been the fact that here we sit, number churches with North Side Chicago, still with a certain 240 00:22:26.640 --> 00:22:33.780 amount of resources in terms of property and finances and personnel. And at the same time, 241 00:22:34.060 --> 00:22:42.100 we see our congregations as kind of caught up in a vicious cycle of self-centeredness 242 00:22:42.100 --> 00:22:47.560 and institutional concern. And this is a given fact. And there's a given fact that we've 243 00:22:47.560 --> 00:22:56.460 been granted in our time the rediscovery of certain basic insights as concerns of nature 244 00:22:56.640 --> 00:23:03.040 of a congregation, how it really has as its only reason for existence to be a servant 245 00:23:03.040 --> 00:23:09.320 people in the world. We look about us and we see human need spelled out in so many different 246 00:23:09.320 --> 00:23:15.680 ways. The problem becomes on how to move from self-centered institutionalism to a kind of 247 00:23:15.680 --> 00:23:18.260 servanthood in the communities in which we are located. 248 00:23:18.640 --> 00:23:21.740 Lauren Walsh, president of the NSCM. 249 00:23:21.740 --> 00:23:27.680 In other words, the NSCM started with an understanding that as we reviewed all of our programs, they 250 00:23:27.680 --> 00:23:32.140 were almost without exception were failing. We were not serving youth, we were not serving 251 00:23:32.140 --> 00:23:36.680 the elderly, we were not serving young adults, we weren't doing much with children, our finances 252 00:23:36.680 --> 00:23:43.720 were going to pot. You know, almost everything statistically was going downhill. So there 253 00:23:43.720 --> 00:23:50.740 was a real desire to see how we could strengthen the institution. Now through the process of 254 00:23:50.740 --> 00:23:56.780 trying to work out a cooperative ministry where we could serve more effectively and 255 00:23:56.780 --> 00:24:02.420 also strengthen the institution, because we were involved in mission in a new way, we 256 00:24:02.420 --> 00:24:07.040 really began to see what was happening in the world in this near north part of Chicago 257 00:24:07.040 --> 00:24:12.980 than we ever did before. And one of the basic troubles with the NSCM right now is although 258 00:24:12.980 --> 00:24:17.980 we have four or five hundred people who are really involved in the NSCM and have some 259 00:24:17.980 --> 00:24:22.440 theological understanding of where we are today, the remainder of the five thousand 260 00:24:22.440 --> 00:24:27.300 people in our churches are still where we were three years ago who do not have this 261 00:24:27.300 --> 00:24:30.760 theological understanding of working in the world and are still concerned with increasing 262 00:24:30.760 --> 00:24:34.540 membership and finances and they are really beginning to rebel. In the particular church 263 00:24:34.540 --> 00:24:39.040 that I attend, now that the pastor is gone, the old guard is really coming to the fore 264 00:24:39.040 --> 00:24:42.720 and are raising questions that they didn't dare when the pastor was still there. 265 00:24:42.720 --> 00:24:43.860 Aaron Sharp. 266 00:24:45.320 --> 00:24:55.940 All churches of all religious faiths in America have been faced for many years with the problem 267 00:24:55.940 --> 00:25:02.980 of increasing professionalization. The church was the ministers, it was his business. He 268 00:25:02.980 --> 00:25:07.560 got paid, he was supposed to run it and that's all there was to it. And all a congregation 269 00:25:07.560 --> 00:25:14.300 did was come to services on Sunday or whenever they held services and this got increasingly 270 00:25:14.300 --> 00:25:22.940 ridiculous in an urban society like ours. And frankly in the old style church the layman 271 00:25:22.940 --> 00:25:28.300 just found no meaning aside from his attendance at a service, that was all was expected. He 272 00:25:28.300 --> 00:25:37.540 paid his dues in a sense and let the minister run the church. The minister made all the 273 00:25:37.540 --> 00:25:37.540 274 00:25:37.540 --> 00:25:42.160 What ought to be stressed is that the Northside Cooperative Ministry is not just a professional 275 00:25:42.160 --> 00:25:47.800 ministry. We're fighting tooth and nail to get more and more and more lay involvement 276 00:25:48.460 --> 00:25:55.360 and I'm speaking here as a layman myself. The day the thing fails to attract more lay 277 00:25:55.360 --> 00:26:01.660 people into active work in the ministry, it will be a failure. 278 00:26:02.400 --> 00:26:07.360 Undergirding all their action programs in the surrounding city is a deep desire on the 279 00:26:07.360 --> 00:26:12.560 part of the members of the Northside Cooperative Ministry to change the very nature and structure 280 00:26:12.560 --> 00:26:18.540 of the church. They feel that the only reason for a congregation's existence is to serve 281 00:26:18.540 --> 00:26:25.220 the community. They believe in an equal partnership of minister and layman in service to the community. 282 00:26:26.080 --> 00:26:33.060 They insist that the presence of many denominations within Christianity makes no sense. They believe 283 00:26:33.060 --> 00:26:38.500 that a community of Christians acting together with others of good will can bring about a 284 00:26:38.500 --> 00:26:45.800 better, more humane life in the city. These concepts, revolutionary in our time, can either 285 00:26:45.800 --> 00:26:51.860 make an organization like NSCM the church of the future or they can bring about its 286 00:26:51.860 --> 00:26:59.580 death through opposition and apathy. The members are willing to take the risk. They feel there 287 00:26:59.580 --> 00:27:00.900 is no alternative. 288 00:27:00.900 --> 00:27:11.180 Well, I think it's the spirit of the group. And we have one thing in common that other 289 00:27:11.180 --> 00:27:18.800 groups who are working in this field, I think, is that our deep commitment to Christ and 290 00:27:18.800 --> 00:27:27.200 service to people. And as we work together, we come together on Sundays in different churches 291 00:27:27.200 --> 00:27:33.760 and we worship, which strengthens us for going out again. And then when we come together 292 00:27:33.760 --> 00:27:39.580 in communion, this is heartening and strengthening and meaningful. 293 00:27:40.560 --> 00:27:46.700 CBS News has presented Look Up and Live. Today you saw the second program in our series, 294 00:27:46.980 --> 00:27:52.220 Reformation Chicago, a look at a great metropolis and the church which is attempting to serve 295 00:27:52.220 --> 00:27:58.660 it. This week, This Given Place, the philosophy and action of Chicago's North Side Cooperative 296 00:27:58.660 --> 00:28:03.020 Ministry. This program was brought to you in consultation with the National Council 297 00:28:03.020 --> 00:28:10.000 of Churches. Next week, The Bold Community, the story of an exciting experiment in 20th 298 00:28:10.000 --> 00:28:10.800 Century faith. 299 00:28:15.780 --> 00:28:18.820 The Bold Community is a production of the Chicago Public Library.