“I think people appreciate it–even those who don’t go to the church at least see that I’m a gate-keeper and have a stake in the community. I’m not just coming to preach on Sunday and then leaving the community for a 30-, 40-minute commute to our quiet home. They know I live here, and so when there are shootings and there’s protest, I’m there,” he says. “I’m there.”
And he speaks of metamorphosis in that oft-troubled neighborhood, the impact of New Life Covenant Church, reaching even the fringe. “The change—gang-bangers, prostitutes, drug dealers—this gospel is real. It’s not something that’s antique. It’s something that is new and real and we’re seeing it in the lives of many people.”
Of this, Wilfredo De Jesús is convinced. He wrote Amazing Faith: How to Make God Take Notice to celebrate those whose exemplary faith Jesus praised in the Gospels and to champion our grace-infused capacity to amaze God with a faith that sparks change. “No one is too lost, too evil, too wounded or too hopeless. No one is beyond the transforming power of God’s love.”
And he authored the recently released In the Gap: What Happens When God’s People Stand Strong? to spotlight a companion truth: Courage matters. He’s convinced people can “make a difference in our families, our communities, our nation and the farthest corners of the globe.” To understand this pastor and measure the impact of the church he leads, then, consider these convictions.
So yes, we are shaped by our community—our place—perhaps more than we know. But if we are courageous and characterized by faith, we will find that we, in turn, may have the opportunity to alter our place and, by God’s grace, reshape a community.
I sense that much of your enthusiasm for evangelism and for reaching people on the margins rises from your own experience. How did your own faith journey begin?
I was 14 years old when the late Mayor Daley decided to hire thousands of young people for the summer to keep them off the street. We’d clean up around the city of Chicago. I signed up for that three-month program and it led me to a small Assembly of God church. My first introduction to Pentecostalism.
I walked in with my paperwork and said, “Here, I’m supposed to report to this building. I’m here to clean streets.” And the guy says, “You’re not going to clean streets, you’re going to do VBS.”
So that summer I worked with kids, but what really moved me was the consistency of these other young people working there. Every day I would sit in the back waiting for my shift to start and these young people would come in, “Hi, God bless you.” “God bless you.” And they were hugging. And they’d go to the altar and kneel to pray. Well, I was from the Catholic Church, I knew nothing about all this. But somehow over that summer it just began to push back the layers of my heart. I would see it every day and, boy, I wanted to have that hug. I wanted somebody to bless me.
There was something so genuine, something so real. Sometimes we lose that in churches today. We become so rigid, so cold with people who are different from us. The gospel doesn’t feel genuine. It feels mechanical. But I saw love. I saw people just like me, young people, but there was always a smile, always a joy. That’s the good news. It should always be reflected in our face.By August of that year I was so ready. I talked to the supervisor and one thing led to another and I accepted Jesus Christ in that small Pentecostal church.
Twenty-three years later, July 9, 2000, in that same small church where I came to know Christ, I was anointed to be their pastor. Talk about the providence of God and how God has his hands on people, and how God uses messed up people to bring out the good news and to bring about grace and mercy!
It started small. I remember 68 people came out to vote for us.
And it became natural for me to do outreach, because I knew about hurting people, I knew about instability. I knew about needing assistance from the government. It was a natural thing to go after the poor and the marginalized.
You know, I got married at the church, baptized my children there, and I’ve been pastoring there 14 years now, and to the glory of God we have over 13 campuses and churches that have come out of us in the last decade and a half. And everything that’s happened is as the Lord ordains.
