Rich Gorman: Outreach From the Ground Up

When Rich and Dori Gorman first came to Chicago’s Edgewater community in January 2011 to plant a new Community Christian Church campus, the couple knew no one in the dense (roughly 300,000 people in three square miles) and diverse (a diaspora of Somali, Burmese, Bhutanese, Bosnian, Russian, Nepali, Iraqi and Latino immigrants, Euro-American and African-American communities, and an LGBT community) area. Since 2012 when Edgewater officially launched, the campus has become a multiethnic, multinational group of 140 regular attendees as the Gormans have focused on what Rich calls the five P’s (Power, Pennies, Parties, Pain, Person of Peace).

Rich, tell us how you and Dori started from the ground up.

It was incredibly confusing at first. It was just the two of us, and so it was very much like a parachute drop. I remember going running one January morning and came back just overwhelmed with confusion, not knowing where to start. I just came to the conclusion that God was saying, “You need to just pray, be immersed in Scripture and just engage in the life of this neighborhood, and I’m going to lead the way.” And so we quickly came upon the five P’s as a way to understand what God is doing in the neighborhood, how he set up the neighborhood and how he’s leading us to engage in the neighborhood.

Briefly tell us about the five P’s.

In any area, these dynamics exist. Here’s an overview:

Power: In every city or neighborhood, there are gatekeepers who hold great influence. In a lot of places it’s city government at the most local level, but also HOAs, condo associations and school boards. They are the power brokers, and that’s a very significant dynamic in the community.

Pennies: This “P” is just the local economy. It’s how people make their money and how the local economy affects them. The economic piece is a vital part of that picture.

Parties: This “P” represents the things people celebrate, what they love to do. It could be anything from football to food to art. Every community celebrates something.

Pain: Each community has an array of pain points—brokenness, poverty, homelessness, failing schools, whatever it is. One of the great challenges in our area is gun violence. During our first year the more connected we got, the more we realized that others were equally grieved and angry over this issue. The people in the neighborhood had answers, but they just didn’t know how to effect change because one of our city’s challenges is disconnection. We live in close proximity to one another, but there’s no real community. So to cultivate healing, we knew we needed to help connect people to each other.

The alderman of our city’s 48th ward asked us to help organize block-by-block listening parties, where we simply ask questions and hear concerns and answers. Through these meetings, we learned about a severe trust deficit between the police and the neighborhood. The kids did not trust the officers, and the officers, not knowing the kids, had no compassion for them. The neighbors identified this as an area that needed to be addressed. So, we (meaning “the neighborhood”) organized summer events where police officers and kids worked together, namely three-on-three basketball tournaments, soccer and other events. It was an incredible success! This community-connecting initiative began to bridge the gaps of misunderstanding and develop relationships. Catch this: It was not our idea. All we did was connect ideas, people and resources and leverage them all for good and for God’s glory.

Person of Peace: The fifth P is the gatekeeper to the whole thing. In each of these areas, God will bring a Person of Peace that will invite you into these arenas to help you get to know them and develop relationships to see his kingdom flourish.

What were some of the lessons you learned the hard way?

We assumed too much coming in. I think all church planters come in with the best of intentions. We want to see our communities transformed, to see lives transformed, to see God’s glory on display. But we come up with a lot of ideas of what it’s going to look like and what we’re going to do before we ever step in. We did that, and there’s something really beautiful about that. But what happens is that you can end up missing it. You can come up with all of your models and all your approaches before you ever step in and then look back three years down the road and realize you missed what God had prepared for you.

The reality is that God has prepared the work, and he just wants you to step into it. When you pursue him, he’ll show you what that is. A lot of those assumptions came from our background, our past experiences and just who we are as people, and we didn’t wait to see what that would look like as we engaged the life of this dynamic, vibrant community.

Another thing we assumed was that we were going to bring the help. But, in reality, what we know now is that God has placed everything in that community that’s necessary to heal that community for his glory. And so instead of going around and trying to figure out how to meet needs, what we need to do is slow down, stop, dignify the neighborhoods we’re moving into, and actually look to uncover the strengths. Once you begin to learn and identify the strengths, then you can apply those strengths to the weaknesses or pain points in the area. Not only is your church meeting the need, but you’re also helping the community meet its own needs. So it’s slower opportunities, but it’s better and much deeper. You can make a much more profound impact if you slow down and literally discover what God has already placed in community.

What are some of the keys to discovering and engaging these existing resources?

We talk about a four-step process to begin to really uncover how God is working in the life of his community already:

Look up. That’s just research—Internet, Wikipedia, city data, a local newspaper. It’s just getting kind of a 50,000-foot view of what life in the community looks like.

Show up. Every time there’s a city council meeting, a school board meeting, an event, you show up. In that process, you’re learning, you’re meeting people, you’re connecting with people and you’re learning about neighborhoods. Look for the people you’re seeing more than once, and then connect with them and start a conversation.

Follow up. You meet with these people you’re seeing consistently. You set up a time to meet for coffee and learn everything you can about their work, the dynamics of the community. It’s not about us being interesting, but being interested in who they are and what they’re doing, because this may be the person God has sent to you. But you may be the person God sent to them to help them find their way back to him, so it works both ways.

Suit up.

You just volunteer. You go out, you roll up your sleeves, get dirty and work hard to establish integrity. You return your e-mails and phone calls on time, show up on time, work hard, be interested and make sure everybody knows you’re about their thing, not your thing.

When you began to address Edgewater’s pain points, what were some of the greatest insights you gleaned and continue to discover through that process?

I can’t say it enough: Everything that’s necessary to heal your community for God’s glory he has already placed in your community. I think we forget that and focus on the challenges. In a way, we often give the demons the loudest voice and the last word. Here’s what I mean by that: If someone asks you about your city, do you lead with the positives or the challenges? All too often, I hear planters and leaders focus on the challenges, explaining how broken their city is and how desperate the city is for “the gospel” (translation: “my church”) and why God has brought them to the city to save the day. That’s how we do fundraising, right?

The challenges of our world are real, and we need to acknowledge them. We should never simply accept that we live in cities where poverty is on the rise, homelessness is common, children are hungry and gun violence is a daily affair. These things should break our hearts. But when we focus solely on the deficits, we undermine the mission on many levels; because for every deficit, there is an asset. For every hungry child, there are people working to provide food. For every act of violence, there are people who want to see change. For every challenge, there are great strengths.

Our primary job as planters is not to address the challenges as much as it is to discover, uncover, connect and empower the existing strengths. Yes, your city is broken, but it is also beautiful, and God has loaded it with potential to be healed for his glory.

Rich Gorman is the author of the free Exponential eBook Just Step In: Joining God as He Heals Your City. To read it or listen to this interview, go to Exponential.org to download the eBook and podcast.