On April 7, Salem Baptist Church in Chicago kicked off a 26-week community outreach initiative. That Saturday morning, the Reverend Senator James T. Meeks closed the doors of the largest African American church in Illinois, encouraging its 25,000 members to leave their comfort zones and take their ministry to the streets.

Called Vision 2007, the intitiative includes 14 projects designed to demonstrate Christ’s love and the values of the Church. These projects include Feed the Hungry, a clothing drive, a prison ministry, shelter visits, and a housing project. The church also plans to saturate all street corners within a certain vicinity every Wednesday in June to pray for residents in the area, and groups of six will also adopt one of 100 blocks in the area to clean up.

Meeks said he wanted to shake up his comfortable congregation, forcing them to live out the Word of God. Emphasis is placed on “doing” rather than just “hearing.”

It seems like more groups across the nation are taking action this year — whether it be “green” movements, peace movements, or community outreach programs such as that of Salem Baptist Church. With regard to the Church, such initiatives seem to be a throw-back to the days when the Catholic Church focused so much of its attention on community outreach (through setting up schools, hospitals, soup kitchens, and so on). Perhaps such movements have been going on in the Protestant world in the past couple of decades — if so, those movements have not received too much attention. As for the Catholic Church, the papacy continues to make statements about various political and social decisions, and to both make peace with (circa Pope John Paul II) and perhaps stir up relations with (circa Pope Benedict XVI) members of other world religions. However, less attention has been paid to outreach programs, as many parochial schools have closed and many hospitals have lost their funding.

Thus, Salem’s Vision 2007 gives hope to those who believe in the Church’s ability (and responsibility) to feed the poor, house the homeless, and cure the sick.

As Mike Yankoski wrote in his book, Under the Overpass, God “is calling you — like he does each of His children — to take important risks of faith that are unique to you and your opportunities. I doubt those risks will have much to do with putting on a Christian acronym bracelet or a cross T-shirt. More likely, your journey will lead you toward utter dependence on the King of kings and a resolution to follow Him wherever He may ask you to go. That might be to the streets, to your friends and family, to your neighbor, or to a stranger you haven’t even met yet…There’s only one thing left to do: Walk off the edge with Him.”

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