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Christmas Eve at The Common Cup

December 22, 2014
Rev. John Hoekwater officiates at a communion service in Willie Whyte Park.

Rev. John Hoekwater officiates at a communion service in Willie Whyte Park.

Pastor John Hoekwater will be holding a Christmas Eve service in a north Chicago coffee shop, not in the nearby building where his congregation rents space for Many Peoples Christian Reformed Church on Sunday mornings.

He says several of his church members will be out of town for the holiday and that gathering in The Common Cup coffee shop makes more sense, since the service will be particularly for community members who have no other place to go.

Likely to attend, he says, are people living on the margins — the elderly, the poor, the mentally challenged, those dealing with drug addictions.

“We will do a service of reading, song and reflection,” says Hoekwater whose congregation on Sundays is comprised of a variety of people from different economic and ethnic groups.

“We will tell the Christmas story at the coffee shop. We’ll look at how God is at work and speaking to us during this season. We’ll reflect on belonging to God, of being people of God.”

Across the Christian Reformed Church this week, congregations will meet to celebrate this same thing — the coming of God into the world.

Some churches will hold formal services, replete with choirs and programs that church members have worked on for many months. Some churches may hold a low-key service. Others may not hold special services.

But doubtless the message this week and/or on Sunday will touch on the birth of Christ and what that means.

At Many Peoples, the focus of the message this season has been about paying attention to how God is already at work in the world.

“Often we ask ourselves what do we want God to do,” says Hoekwater. “We live in a violent world and there is a lot of bad news. We would like God to get rid of all these things.”

But he is advocating for a less passive approach and instead paying attention to what God is doing and going there to join God, rather than waiting for God to, for instance, “get rid of all of the guns in the city,” he says.

Many Peoples was founded in 2001 and helped on its journey for several years by Christian Reformed Home Missions, which has increasingly put its focus on helping young churches to do mission in their neighborhoods.

“Many Nations is a good example of a church that sees its neighborhood as its mission field,” says Peter Kelder, a Home Missions regional leader for the Chicago area.

“They have  partnered with their neighbors in a variety of ways and shown a compassion for people and a zeal for justice.”

Among their ministry efforts has been to turn an unused greenhouse in the local public school into a working greenhouse at which young people can work.

Many Peoples Church also coordinates a partnership with the school so that the greenhouse helps support A Just Harvest — a community non-profit organization that provides a meal to up to 200 people in the Rogers Park area every day of the year.

As for the church itself, Hoekwater says, some of the prayers of thanks that are offered on Sundays reflect the range of needs and concerns many people bring to the church.

You might hear, he says, someone giving gratitude for another day of sobriety, or thanks “that no one got shot in Rogers Park this week,” or gratitude “that my electricity didn’t get shut off” or “that my son is doing well with his adoptive parents.”

The church is also active in broader issues.

Recently, Hoekwater helped to hold a communion service at Willie Whyte Park in response to recent grand jury decisions and to remember and pray for current racial problems in the U.S.

“We believe the two work together,” says Hoekwater. “We focus on the word and deed. Especially in an urban context, you need the deed.”

In the last several months,  Hoekwater says, he is finding that holding Bible studies in the community, often attended by people who don’t go to Many Peoples worship gatherings, is an important part of the church’s mission.

During a recent Bible study, held in the parent room at the local school, they took time to talk about a killing that had happened the day before in Chicago.

The killing involved identical twins who were walking to a basketball game at their school in the neighborhood of Englewood when four teens approached the pair and demanded they give up their belongings. A struggle ensued and one of the twins was killed. That day happened to be the birthday of the twins, according to news accounts.

“Many of the people in the Bible study know people in that area of Chicago where it happened and they were very upset,” says Hoekwater. The Bible Study focused on the song of Mary in Luke 1.

Another Bible study he leads has in it a few “demoralized” Catholics who may still attend Mass but are eager to learn more about Scripture, says Hoekwater.

They also hold a Bible study at Grais Place, which “focuses on caring for people with a dual diagnosis — usually mental illness and addiction.”

Many Peoples is a church, he says, that seeks to make God’s mercy and forgiveness known in whatever ways that it can.

In doing this, things aren’t always predictable.

They don’t always know when and from where new members are coming. They don’t know what ministries they will be led to embrace next. And then there is Sunday worship — a place in which a seven-year-old recently and unexpectedly broke out in a brief solo, belting out a song learned at school.

“Thank goodness there aren't too many of us grown-ups in our ‘right minds’ to get in the way of these holy happenings. I'm convinced that we are hugely blessed by our unique composition and the experiences we share,” says Hoekwater of his church.

The key for Many Peoples, he says, is to remain open to “our community and open to the possibility that God will do what you don’t expect.”

For his church members, they have learned they need to be willing to follow God wherever he goes, whether that be a coffee shop, an unused greenhouse, a park known for its violence, or a Bible study in a facility for those facing addiction and mental challenges.

“What we have learned as a church is that by doing this, God is showing us where our ministry should be, and he is bringing ministry to us,” Hoekwater says.

All of this, he says, ties into the Christmas season, this time of God arriving in the surprising form of a baby in a manger.

“We have to be prepared and make ourselves known to one another and to be looking for God who comes to us in ways that we didn’t expect.”