The Chicago Memoirs:
Our Redeemer Lutheran Church, 1967-1972

Postscript
“There were 43 murders, 78 sexual assaults, and 753 robberies in the Englewood police district from January through September 2011, the worst of any district in the city. Poverty, unemployment, drugs, substandard schools, and substandard housing still plague the community.”

— Joel Nickel, Stayton, Oregon, Christmas 2011

The congregation of Our Redeemer survived our leaving by 18 months. Marie Sternberger, bless her, president of the Altar Guild and rock of dependability, was present for the final closing of the doors as she had vowed. I had visited Our Redeemer shortly before its closing and found the mite box lying on the floor in the narthex where it had been pried loose from the wall and abandoned. I took it home to Champaign as a memorial. George Bornemann, Lutheran pastor in Elmhurst and now president of the English District, officially finalized the closing of Our Redeemer on July 1, 1974; its name was removed from the official roster of the Synod. The District sold the property to an AME Zion congregation just two blocks away, whose property St. Bernard’s Hospital wanted as a parking lot. This congregation thus had money to purchase a larger church, repair the seriously warped stained glass windows on the south side of the nave (the stained glass was removed and replaced with glass blocks). The cost of repairing those buckling leaded glass windows — a safety hazard — would have been astronomical.

A fifty-year run
Our Redeemer, built in 1923, closed as a Lutheran church on July 1, 1974; its name was removed from the official roster of the Missouri Synod.

Thanks to Tom Gieschen’s confession, I finally found out who the “angel” with the $1,000 was. It turns out that an unnamed organ builder wanted to bribe Tom into promoting their product for some new, under-construction churches where Tom served as an organ advisor and music consultant. Tom refused their offer, but told them that if they wanted to give money away, he knew where it would do some good: Our Redeemer. Angels, after all, can make use of the “dark side.”

The church building has gone through a series of owners and incarnations — “the beautiful House of Prayer” was one. The most interesting development came in 2006 when Bobby Rush, one of the founders of the Illinois Black Panther Party in 1968 and now a U.S. Representative, who had served breakfast to kids in the Our Redeemer community center during the time we lived in Englewood, now had also become an ordained Baptist minister and established the Beloved Community Christian Church at 6430 South Harvard Avenue. The Chicago Tribune described the interior of the “1922 Gothic building, whose “radiators hissed and struggled to warm the ... building which features spires and seven towering stained glass windows — along with water stains on the ceiling and missing plaster.” The Trib stated that “Rush is leading an effort to build 550 affordable homes near the church” and provide social services for the entire neighborhood. He formed a development corporation called Rebirth of Englewood, which has some ambitious plans.

Still there were skeptics: “The people of Englewood have been lied to so many times ... promised redevelopment ... and haven’t been able to get anything.” And then there is the inevitable jealousy and competition for small change from other organizations, like the “Greater Englewood Community and Family Task Force.” Deja vu all over again. But Bobby Rush has staying power; Barack Obama tried to unseat him (Rush was a Democratic machine candidate with Daley backing) as a state representative and failed — the only election Obama ever lost. More power to Bobby! Today Bobby Rush is Barack Obama’s congressman, recently reelected for his tenth term with 80 percent of the vote. Rush has the political connections to raise money and fund some of the social services run from the church community center, but has been battling cancer for the last year.

Yet Englewood is still “abandoned” according to the Tribune. The Norfolk Southern Railroad has been buying houses and tearing them down to make room for an 84-acre freight yard in an area just six blocks straight north of Our Redeemer in the neighborhood where the original Lutheran Church was located, started by Guido Schuessler in 1903. The railroad suggested that they may seek federal eminent domain court proceedings to seize the land if people refuse to sell. Police still run amok, fatally shooting a prisoner in the back who was lying prone on the ground (Tribune, 10/23/2011). There were 43 murders, 78 sexual assaults, and 753 robberies in the Englewood police district from January through September 2011, the worst of any district in the city. Poverty, unemployment, drugs, substandard schools, and substandard housing still plague the community. Katherine Gilbert wrote an article for the Christian Century in 1996 titled “Learning in a war zone,” which described Hoover Elementary School just two blocks west of Our Redeemer, located near the “L” tracks and operated in a lock-down mode. “The landscape of the men’s prison in downtown Chicago, with its trees, flowers, and benches, is more pleasing.”

Ambitious plans
Now serving Englewood as the Beloved Community Christian Church, the building has empty lots to the south and bits of tended lawn near the old parsonage to the north. Englewood, however, is still abandoned.

So here I sit at age 72, writing about an experience of ministry at age 28-33, forty-some years ago. I marvel at my youth and risk taking. Some of it may have been foolhardy, but I figured we never had much choice. We survived, and the experience changed my perception of life theologically, socially, and politically. I often think of Sherwood Nelson, pastor of Bethel Lutheran Church in Englewood. Sherwood stayed behind after Norm Theiss and I left, and ministered through the cocaine epidemic, which curiously had the effect of mellowing out the gang-bangers and lowering gang activity while still sowing death and addiction and multiplying property crimes. All three of us had arrived in Englewood in 1967; Sherwood died of a heart attack in the late 1980s, a servant pastor to the end. In thinking of Sherwood I have tinges of survivor guilt, as just another person who moved away from Englewood because he could. I wonder how the Redeemer Royals fared growing up. I wonder what Otis Flynn is doing and what route his life has taken. I think of all the ideal plans we formed, hoping against hope that something would work, raising expectations that led to disappointment.

I think of Art and Helen Wuerffel, married at Our Redeemer in 1923, admonishing me in their letter requesting a transfer to another congregation because Our Redeemer was being used for purposes other than the worship of God. They took issue with my mention that nostalgia for the old glory days of Our Redeemer was getting in the way of present-day ministry. Art explained how uplifting nostalgia was for the elderly, remembering the joy of organ and choir music and Easter celebrations long ago. Having now attained their age, I regret my impatience with nostalgia because now I know what Art was talking about. Art and Helen moved into the Lutheran Home in Arlington Heights; I visited them in 1974 while also visiting my aunt Frieda who worked there as a practical nurse. Art even introduced me to his friends, proudly letting them know he was on the call committee that issued the call to me to come to Our Redeemer. I guess that was a gesture of reconciliation after all.

While I was ambivalent toward the title “Cathedral of Gospel Art” because it always sounded a bit grandiose and inappropriate in a community racked by poverty, I still developed a deep appreciation for what it implied — that we give “our best for the Highest.” In our visual age the artistic image can heighten awareness of the presence and purposes of God. There was an undeniable spiritual quality to the sanctuary, and I spent much time alone in that holy space trying to ponder our circumstances, trying to control my “angry young man” judgmental impulses, praying and wondering aloud why God had placed us in Englewood. Along the way I had become an art student while working as a pastor, and my vocation and avocation merged into one. I was the husband of Susan, the father of Philip, Joy and Daniel, and drew my identity from my baptism into Christ, my vocation, avocation, and family. There it all must rest.

Joel Nickel,
Christmas 2011