Living Water Community Church in Chicago tries to be a reconciling presence in its neighborhood.

Soon after Living Water Community Church relocated to a Chicago street corner where a gang shooting occurred in 2001, the church discovered that the way to young people’s lives is sometimes through their stomachs.

Disciple-making: A baptism at Living Water Community Church.

Living Water, begun in 1995, was renting space for its Sunday services a couple blocks from this site when the shooting happened. In response, the congregation felt called to pray on the corner. Soon the prayers turned toward the discernment that God was leading them to become a permanent and reconciling presence at this violent intersection.

By 2005, the congregation had renovated a large store front in a mini mall on the corner and called it home. It didn’t take long before the hungry young people who hung out on the corner discovered the congregation’s Wednesday potlucks. They drifted in to fill their plates and sit down for supper.

“It’s a strategic location for relating with young people, because we are one block from the local grade school and two blocks away from the local high school,” says Sally Schreiner Youngquist, senior pastor of the inner-city Mennonite congregation. “Young people are passing by in great numbers all the time.

A congregational dance at Living Water Community Church. Photo by Peter Anderson.

“Some of them got wind of our potluck and came in. We’re trying really hard to relate to them, learning their names and chatting with them while we eat. Being a bridge in our neighborhood between groups of people is why we came here. And it’s happening in surprising ways—such as the potluck—that we didn’t foresee.”

A bridge is built one brick at a time. So the congregation is slowly finding positive ways to provide bread for their souls as well as their stomachs. For example, last August, the congregation helped support a talent show, organized for young people by a church member working for a local nonprofit neighborhood organization.

“It went really well,” Youngquist says. “One young person read a poem, another sang to some taped music, other gals and guys did a dance, and some of them shared artwork and baked goods.

“The event provided positive attention for young people who get negative attention when people call the cops because they are hanging out on the corner. We think this is a good beginning to exploring their spiritual hunger and eventually getting to know their parents and families.”

A girl hugs a member of Living Water after she finished singing at a neighborhood block party. Photo by Peter Anderson.

Feeding many hungers of diverse community: Living Water is also discovering that hungry young people are not the only ones drawn to the congregation. The congregation is drawing other young adults who want to integrate their belief in Jesus with following him in all aspects of their life—immigrants hungry for a welcoming place in a foreign land and believers hungry to have a deeper community focus to their faith.

Within this diversity, about 10 percent of the more than 100 Living Water members (175 Sunday-morning attenders) are ethnic Mennonites. Others are younger people from Evangelical and Catholic backgrounds. Recent refugees from Burma, Burundi, the Congo and from refugee camps in Nepal have also been drawn to the congregation, bringing with them their own languages.

“Many refugees have poured into Chicago because it has good social services and jobs, and our neighborhood is multicultural and has good rental housing,” Youngquist says. “We try to be sensitive to all their many stories, each with their own narrative of suffering.”

Making disciples at heart of congregation: Because of the theological, ethnic and economic diversity, faith/discipleship formation doesn’t look like what it may in more traditional settings, says Tim Peebles, discipleship elder.

The congregation’s vision is to be a disciple-making, parish-church, Mennonite congregation that engages in discipleship through worship, community and mission, he says. The congregation’s cloverleaf symbol pictures worship, community and mission as three intersecting leaves, and discipleship forming the intersection, Peebles says.

“Disciple-making is at the heart of what we’re all about,” Peebles says. “We have nothing like a 10-week discipleship class. Discipleship-forming for us is more informal and includes a whole-life approach to building reconciling relationships.

“Being transformed into the image of Jesus happens a lot by osmosis. People who are attracted to us will pick up the habits of those who have been part of our congregation awhile—including Bible reading, prayer, lots of table fellowship, sharing and transparency and giving and receiving counsel.”

Many members of Living Water live within a block or two of the congregation in order to build closer and more daily relationships, he says. Members also find creative ways of encouraging close-knit community, such as the Peebles, who provide soup and bread for lunch every Sunday after worship for anyone who wants some.

Finding particular path to peace: Discipleship forming for Living Water also involves a lot of risk-taking, Peebles says. Some members are considering developing a youth program that might incorporate martial arts.

“We’ve heard about a Mennonite church in Goshen, Ind., that offers a modified marshal arts program to help youth faced with violence learn principles of character-building, discipline and peaceful response,” Peebles says. “We encounter so much gang violence here and so much street fighting outside our building. We need to engage our kids with peace in ways they can understand.

“Some people in the congregation have reservations about how this might fit within a Mennonite framework. But no one in the congregation has yet said they believe that a modified martial arts component of a youth program could not, in principle, be part of faithful Mennonite practice.”

By trying new things, Living Water does not want to abandon or replace inherited Mennonite practices. The congregation is seeking to retain its Anabaptist roots while growing new shoots in the inner-city soil.

“We are simply searching for ways to supplement, enhance, contextualize those practices for our local community,” he says. “The end result—like at the Peace Academy in Goshen—will include inherited Mennonite practices and skills, together with new developments.”