 |  How to recognize and ride the winds of the spirit
Fall 2001
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Taking it to the Streets
James Meeks
October 1, 2001
I had been wrestling with the question of how our church could effect meaningful change in our community. The hopelessness and despair around us was suffocating, and I knew through Christ there had to be a way to bring light and hope to inner city Chicago.
That's when I picked up a book written by David Yonggi Cho, the pastor of the world's largest church. His church of 700,000 is huge, but the impact it has on its community is even bigger.
Now while my church is nowhere near the size of his, and neither is yours, I was really challenged by how Pastor Yonggi Cho envisioned a church that dreamed big dreams and accomplished big things. The ministry of that church moves way beyond its walls to impact its city, its nation, and the world. What could we do that would have that kind impact on the people around us?
We had undertaken big projects before. In 1998 we led the largest vote drive in Chicago's history to make the sale of alcohol in our community illegal. On Good Friday this year we distributed 30,000 Bibles, one to every address in our Zip code.
But I was growing in the conviction that our church has a powerful means of bringing people into contact with God—prayer—that we were keeping locked up inside the doors. The people around us need to touch the living God, and they need Him to touch their lives. So this summer we launched a big-dreaming plan to bring prayer to every corner of our Zip code.
60628—the largest Zip code on the south side of Chicago. The U.S. Census Bureau broke our Zip code down into 818 blocks. Our vision was to have prayer gatherings going on simultaneously once a week on every one of those blocks. We wanted open prayer meetings, where anyone could come and share their needs. We wanted ...
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