Minister Jerome Adams (Class of 2010)

Though his parents didn’t attend services, Queenie Steen took her grandson, little Jerome Adams, to church with her faithfully, and he was baptized in 1958 at six years of age. It was the beginning of a saga that would take decades to complete. On the other side of a 31-year-battle with alcohol, drugs and HIV/AIDS, Jerome’s abiding faith in God is the thing that kept him alive, because it kept him from giving up.

“Without that early foundation in Church, I would not have known I could call on God’s grace,” he said. “I would not have known that I could examine myself and do things differently. That was a continuous message as I was growing up: We have control over life’s circumstances – we have access to God’s power in our lives.”

A member of the neighborhood parish First Church of Deliverance since the 1930s, Grandma Adams helped Jerome become quite involved in church life. He became a junior trustee and a member of the young adult choir. His first job was as an orderly in a nursing home owned by the church. Jerome received the call to ministry as a child, but ran into roadblocks of education and class and substance abuse as he took steps to become who he knew God made him to be.

After applying to Morehouse College, an all-male, historically black college, Jerome was denied admission because his grades were poor. He attended nearby Kendall College for two years before re-applying to Morehouse, finally getting accepted.

Unfortunately, those with whom Jerome had fellowship with in Church were the same people who introduced him to alcohol as a teenager. When he moved to Atlanta for school, he stopped attending church, but retained his drinking habit.

After much hard work to get there, Morehouse was not entirely what Jerome had expected. His first time away from home for an extended time – in Atlanta – brought him face to face with an unexpected class reality.

“It was a black bourgeois setting,” Jerome said. “Doctor’s kids and lawyer’s kids. That’s when I really found out that I was poor and that there were people who were not poor like me.”

Jerome Adams was one of two alumni honored for outstanding work in HIV/AIDS ministries at the recent HIV/AIDS Summit at McCormick.

Jerome stayed one semester at Morehouse before returning to Chicago and eventually moving to the Big Apple to study theater at NYU. Jerome joined the Negro Ensemble Company and soon learned that he liked working behind the scenes better than acting. Newfound connections helped him secure a position managing Broadway shows such as Carousel Production’s Mahalia (1980) and Scott Joplin’s Trementia (1975).

In 1981, he toured in Europe as company manager of Bubbling Brown Sugar, Loften Mitchell’s musical about the Harlem Renaissance. It was during that time abroad that Jerome, still in the grip of his addiction, contracted HIV.

“There is a direct correlation between addiction and diagnosis,” Jerome said of the HIV virus. “That’s how people engage in unprotected sex – they do things they wouldn’t ordinarily.”

City nightclubs and the social life of the advertising industry introduced Jerome to the destructive power of cocaine. While doing theater work, Jerome was also employed with an advertising firm, where he helped to cast actors for commercials.

“The pay off for wrapping a campaign was an evening in the senior vice president’s office with a table just spread out with cocaine,” Jerome said. “Those perks and payoffs became such a bad habit and addiction that I was going to be fired.”

Rather than be fired, Jerome quit his job in 1985, the same year he learned he was infected with the HIV virus. At the time, Jerome said HIV was considered a “gay man’s disease” and that more was known about it in New York than anywhere else. What Jerome had seen of the disease personally wasn’t pretty. Those with HIV saw their health spiral downward until, finally, their failing immune systems left them to die.

After 16 years of risky living in the big city, Jerome returned home alone and diagnosed with a deadly disease. He watched those around him crumble because they had nothing to fall back on in times of crisis. Still, he was not without hope. In time, Jerome’s faithful roots paved the way out of a desperate situation.

For a time, Jerome kept using drugs, sacrificing even his own integrity and family relationships to continue the addiction. This prevented him from receiving care from those who loved him.

“I was trying to get them to feed on sympathy for the diagnosis to feed the addiction,” he said. “I would manipulate them to get the drug by any means necessary. There is such a level of dishonesty in addiction that people don’t know how to respond to you.”

As Jerome gradually became more honest, family members who had originally blamed him and forbade him from even using their own bathrooms started to become more understanding.

Jerome Adams and Dr. Sharon Ellis Davis presented a newly crafted quilt on World AIDS Day, which will become part of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, the largest ongoing community art project.

Though he may have stopped going to church years ago, Jerome knew God hadn’t given up on him. He even credits the divine with urging him to stay away from what may have been the most lethal drug Jerome encountered. He said that early formulations of AZT, the antiretroviral drug first used to treat HIV, actually contained toxically high doses that many believe actually left those with HIV worse off than before. Jerome said he placed his pills on the cupboard shelf instead of ingesting them and that is the reason he is still alive today.

Since Jerome didn’t fall into any immediate major episodes of illness, he went back to working in theater and tried his best to get on with life. Though on the outside he seemed to bounce back – securing a job with the ETA Theater from 1987 to 1993 – inwardly he was crushed by continual loneliness.

Addictions are fed by lies and maintained through manipulation, Jerome said, and he felt as if he was hiding from everyone and was utterly isolated – even his parents did not know how serious his condition was.

Fed up with secrecy, Jerome finally confided to his employer about both his problems with addiction and his diagnosis and entered treatment at Jackson Park Hospital in 1993. He wanted to be clean, but relapsed after treatment again and again because he was relying on his own willpower and not taking advantage of the resources that were available to him.

By 1995, there would be no more hiding for Jerome. He was hospitalized with a dangerously low CD4, or “T-cell,” count and his body was not producing any more. The average person reportedly has 9,000 to 12,000 T-cells. Those with fewer than 200 T-cells receive a non-reversible diagnosis of AIDS. Jerome had six T-cells and his symptoms included pneumonia, shingles and a yeast infection in his throat.

After three weeks of hospitalization, Jerome was discharged. He moved from apartment to apartment and occasionally stayed with his parents for months at a time. Since he was still spending all of his $700 to $800 social security check on drugs, he had no money for rent and started just leaving places before they would have a chance to evict him.

In 1998 he sought treatment at Vision House, an outpatient AIDS treatment home in South Side Chicago run by Liberty Baptist Church. Counsel he received there helped him discover some of the core reasons he formed an addiction in the first place and kept relapsing when he would kick substances for a while.

“I became more aware of the detriment of street drugs on the virus,” Jerome said. “I was in less denial of the problem and stopped blaming my illnesses on AIDS only and admitted that some of the decline of T-cells was due to drug use and not taking prescription medication properly.”

Though Jerome was still an active addict in 1998, he began going back to church because a friend kept picking him up and making sure he was there. Though he didn’t follow a traditional 12-step program, Jerome believes his faith, along with the third step of turning one’s life over to God and the eleventh step of prayer made his recovery possible. Being filled with God’s Holy Spirit as a result of his earnest prayers, Jerome regained a sense of purpose in his life that he had lost long ago.

The turnaround he experienced in attitude as well as health inspired him to become an advocate for health and wellness. He facilitates support and spirituality groups through Test Positive Aware Network (TPAN) and Chicago’s Haymarket Center, working with those who struggle with addictions, HIV/AIDS and other diseases that occur at higher rates in the African American community. He believes education is a vital key to overcoming addiction and illness of all kinds.

“Not being open to education gives you nothing to work with,” Jerome said. “How else will you understand why you are behaving in certain ways and acting out?”

Jerome said his own participation in Haymarket Center’s relapse prevention program was instrumental in helping him break through the faulty thinking that kept him bound to drugs.

“We don’t act out of what is true; we act out of what we believe to be true,” he said.

Jerome reports being sober since 2001, marking 10 years of clean living. He said that he is able to be around drinking in moderation, but that he avoids situations where drugs are around or people will not be drinking responsibly.

“The sheer knowledge that God delivered me from the experience of addiction that would have ended my life gave me the impetus to share with others that it could be done,” he said.

Events Jerome describes being delivered from sound like something from a suspense film: being chased, robbed, choked, held at gunpoint and pressed against the floor with an ice pick against his throat.

“God saw me through situations I shouldn’t have gotten out of,” Jerome said.

For Jerome, kicking addiction and accepting his AIDS diagnosis means that most days, Jerome has a relatively normal life. Though on bad days nerve damage can make his feet go numb or muscle problems can make it difficult for him to hold a pen, most of the time life doesn’t revolve around having AIDS.

In 2007, Jerome decided to finally answer the call to ministry and enrolled at McCormick. He graduated last May and claims his time there transformed him and allowed him to open his mind to a variety of different faith traditions.

“I had to take that chance and believe God,” Jerome said. “Health is improving for a reason – so I can reach back and help pull others forward. I’m just responding to God’s grace in my life by being an instrument to help others.”

***

How can I help someone caught in addiction? Lessons Jerome Adams learned on his journey:

1) Do not be judgmental. Be a listening ear and a caring and open heart. Have compassion and a desire to see someone else experience God’s grace in the same way God has extended grace to us.

2) Know that those using alcohol and drugs undergo severe “personality change” when they are using. Avoid even loved ones when they are under the influence and do not help them get alcohol or drugs even if they try to manipulate you into helping feed their addiction.

3) Know that you cannot take responsibility for the recovery of someone else.

4) Remember that God is gracious. Don’t just focus on how terrible things are – think of how many tragic things could have happened that have not.

5) Pray and ask for God’s intervention – addiction is not something that can be overcome only through willpower or community. It literally means starting a new life.

The following sermon was delivered by Tony Hoshaw (M.Div., Class of 2005) at a service in honor of James Nelson (M.Div., Class of 2005) hosted at Chicago Theological Seminary on November 17, 2010. James was declared missing several days after embarking on a solo hiking expedition in Colorado on October 3. Tony and James were roommates at McCormick.

One among the many memories I have of James (and one I like to recall often) is the time James came over to my Lake View home to participate in a post-seminary reading group I had organized. I recall greeting him at the door, and as he walked into my small apartment, I went into the kitchen to finish cooking and otherwise preparing for the arrival of the rest of the group. When I came out of the kitchen a few minutes later, I was only half-surprised to find James, sitting naked, in my Ikea chair. I was only half-surprised to find James naked because I had lived with him for several years; we were roommates at McCormick Theological Seminary (2002-2004), so I knew James to be pleasantly unpredictable. When I asked him why he was naked, he indicated, rather nonchalantly, that he was getting in touch with his body. Marcella Althaus-Reid, of blessed memory, would have been proud: James was doing theology without wearing underwear.

Of course, I have spent much of my time in recent days thinking about the body of James Nelson; James is certainly teaching us to desire the body. And all of the texts read to us today raise the body – the location of the body, the status of the body; the texts raise a profound desire for the body, for every body.

II.
Moses’ body is the subject of the text from Deuteronomy.  James’ teacher, Ted Jennings, gets us situated in the passage read to us from Deuteronomy. Ted wrote this, in an e-mail, several week ago:

“No one would confuse James with Moses. Although, like Moses, he could be pretty irascible at times. But I think Moses came to love the wilderness and to find his true vocation there. When James was thinking about quitting the Ph.D. program, he said to me: ‘I have to decide whether to be a theologian or a forest ranger.’ He loved the wilderness; it was where he felt most at home, I think, where he felt most alive, most truly himself, closest to what he thought of as the holy, God, if you will. Like Moses in that respect, he may have died where he was most happy, most himself. And like Moses, his body is given over to the care of God. And we, like the people left behind in the ancient story, have completed our 30 days of lament. But like them, we, too, shall not forget.”

Ted is right to say that Moses’ body is given over to the care of God. The text does not give us any indication that Moses ever climbed a mountain with others…The text gives us a Moses who enjoys going on hikes alone (even at hundred and twenty years of age), and a Moses who encounters God, another irascible character, quite often on his travels. A lot happens in the wilderness, so it seems. And yet when Moses dies on the mountain, he, that is, the lone Moses, is somehow carried into a valley and buried. Moses is, indeed, in the care of God. Moses, like James, is missing…but not lost.

And that is comforting to hear, no? Yes, but piercing through that comfort is the longing of the narrator: “but no one knows his burial place to this day.”  The toughness of Moses, the texts tells us that he did not need glasses and, though old, he was still as strong as a teenager – Moses’ toughness is contrasted by the weakness, perhaps, of the narrator: God has taken Moses – and God has not revealed where Moses is buried. The tears in this text, thirty days worth of tears, are the tears of those who want this man’s body…the tears of those who have not been granted access to this precious body. It may not be possible to confuse James with Moses, but it is possible to confuse ourselves, those who love James, with those who wept thirty days for Moses, with those who long for the precious body of the one they love.

III.
Skipping ahead in time to one of the earliest texts of the New Testament, we are again confronted by a concern for bodies – every missing body. The folk living in Thessalonica want to know what will happen to their missing, to those they are missing so terribly. In the words of the text, “We don’t want you to be uninformed brothers and sisters about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others who have no hope.”  Grieving is expected; what is to be avoided is hopelessness. But what is the basis of hopeful grieving?  The text answers, “[W]e believe that Jesus rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring those who have died.”  In fact, those who have died take precedence over the living; listen to the text: “For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede [or come before] those who have died.”  These are encouraging Words,  indeed. This good news, the living “will by no means precede those who have died,” is performed by the Gospel of Mark.

IV.
The Gospel tells us that, at the proper time, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the Mother of James, and Salome travel to the cemetery to attend to the body of Jesus. They make their way to the tomb very early on the first day of the week; the sun has just come up. On the way, a practical issue is discussed: who is going to push that huge stone – the stone barring access to the body of Jesus – aside?  It seems the women are talking with their heads down, as the grieving often do, and so they are surprised, when they look up and see, in the words of the text, “the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back.”  But even more surprising is the young man, wearing a white robe, sitting at the right side…this youth, who is causally sitting in the tomb of their Jesus, really startles the women.

This young man, most likely a martyr, is the embodiment of what we have already been told: the stone has already been pushed back. His body proclaims the good news: breaking through, now, in the time of the living, preceding the living, are the missing, those we miss. The light is, indeed, shining, and it cannot be extinguished by death.

And this is not the first time the missing have appeared in the Gospel of Mark. Flip back seven chapters…to the transfiguration of Jesus. The texts tells us: “And he [Jesus] said to them, “Truly, I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the Kingdom of God has come with power.” And then, like Moses – Jesus, Peter, James, and John climb up a high mountain, and we are told, “his [Jesus’] clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them…” And who appears during this rather gay or glittery scene? The very one we have already discussed, whose grave site we do not have access to: Moses. Moses did, in fact, cross over; he is alive; the dead have, in fact, preceded the living; in the time of the living, the missing are appearing.

The appearance of Moses in the here and now, the appearance of the raised Moses, reminds me of my most recent Easter Day experience. I was at work this Easter, and I recall leaving the jet-bridge and walking out into the massive hall of O’Hare’s C Concourse. I was walking to my next flight, not really paying attention to my surroundings. It was early, and I was already tired. But as I stepped onto the moving walkway, I looked up, and I was shocked to see…Matthew Shepard. I was absolutely struck by the resemblance of the young man on the walkway to Matthew Shepard. I was clearly out of my mind, no? The Gospel, however, makes me think that I was not just seeing things after all….

The martyr tells the women that Jesus is, of course, not in the tomb. The stone has already been rolled away; the crucified one has been raised. But where is Jesus, exactly? We like to think Jesus is in heaven. But if Jesus is in heaven, he, just like the grave site of Moses, is radically inaccessible to us. Thankfully, the young man is not interested in a heavenly Jesus. Every martyr knows Jesus is closer than some transcendent, other worldly heaven. The youth tells the women that Jesus is not in heaven; the rebel has been raised, and he is in Galilee – the crucified one has gone ahead of them, back to where all this began. Jesus is back at the trailhead. He’ll meet every body there.

V.
The transfiguration scene does not only expose the resurrected body of Moses, nor does it simply indicate that the Messiah is rather flamboyant or dazzling; the transfiguration is the exposure of the resurrected body of Jesus, the exposure of the life Jesus has been living all along: Jesus’ resurrection life.  The resurrection life is life lived without underwear, if you will. And Jesus certainly did not shy away from exposing himself, from living without underwear.

Jesus exposes himself to his friends, his slow and stubborn disciples;
he exposes himself to the stormy seas;
he exposes himself to the diseased;
he exposes himself to the hungry crowds;
he exposes himself to the powerful – especially the powerful and deadly Empire.

And the light shines; Jesus’ entire life is a witness of the resurrection, the revelation of the human vocation to live toward more and more living. Jesus renders the forces of death inoperative, the grave site becomes a playful site…and this happens long before Jesus is crucified and placed in a tomb. Jesus’ missing body is confirmation of his life’s work: the stone has already been pushed aside.
It occurred to me as I was thinking of James that he lived a resurrection life in many ways. Before I had a chance to meet my new roommate, several students at McCormick warned me that James was really into John Calvin. I guess word had gotten around that a gay kid was coming to McCormick, and so I think they just assumed that I would not be that into Calvin. In fact, I was an evangelical, Presbyterian gay kid – so I was very much into Calvin. Maybe James learned from Calvin not to judge anyone because everyone is a monster – and so he just allowed himself to be with people and to let people be…

As I was learning how to be gay, going on my first dates, coming out to my family, struggling with my calling in the Presbyterian Church, struggling with whether or not to go to church, and reading Calvin in the bathhouse – James was a constant, pleasant, and encouraging presence. This is not to say that James did not have limits. He let me know on more than one occasion that he thought I was crazy (I remember one time, in particular, and I will not share the memory with you, but he was right). In fact, James got to know me better than most. I recall one evening: we were in the kitchen and James was digging something out of the refrigerator…and I made some annoying comment (as I am prone to do). James said, “You know what, Tony? You’re an asshole!” And I looked around the refrigerator door and said, “James, you finally figured me out!” James exposed himself to me – in more ways than one, as I have already indicated – and thus he healed and comforted this emerging gay man in many ways. Like Jesus and Moses – James did not shy away from exposing himself to nature – free from the god called cell phone and other modern barriers. As Ted suggested, James really dazzled in the wilderness. And we should allow James to be the youth in Jesus’ tomb, reminding us that that the stone has already been rolled away; Jesus is back on the trail.

James has been and is being raised…and we wait, now, for his resurrection from the dead to be made manifest. We are living in the time it takes for the resurrection of the dead to be made manifest…the time it takes for James’ precious body, the body we desire to attend to, to touch, to see and taste, the time it takes for James to be raised from the Holy Cross Wilderness Area, and we look forward to meeting him back where all this began. In the words of Saint Athanasius, “Now, therefore, when we die we no longer do so as [people] condemned to death, but as those who are even now in process of rising, we await the general resurrection of all, ‘which in its own times He shall show,’ even God Who wrought it and bestowed it on us” (On the Incarnation, § 10).

The living shall not precede the dead.
The massive stone has already been pushed aside.
Amen.

The Rev. Christine Chakoian, McCormick Trustee, Doctor of Ministry student, and Head Pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Lake Forest, Illinois

Few people in or out of Christian ministry can connect their current professions to their hopes and dreams as a young teenager – but Christine Chakoian is that rare example of someone who can.

With each passing year, Chakoian says her joy increases and she becomes closer to God. She is living the life she once dreamed of and counts among her greatest privileges “Coming alongside people in some of the most sacred moments of their lives. I love being a pastor,” she said.

For her most recent ministerial stint, Chakoian has spent the past five years concentrating on preaching and caring for the congregation as Pastor and Head of Staff at First Presbyterian Church in Lake Forest.

While she initially had some doubts about how well-received she would be as a woman in ministry, Chakoian has found her gender to actually be more of an asset that a liability – her self- assured but soft-spoken nature is disarming and minimizes conflict with those who might disagree with her.

Though she holds the distinction of being the female head pastor with the largest congregation in the entire Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Chakoian is not serving alone.

Her “stellar staff,” as Chakoian refers to them – of nearly 20 people includes McCormick alumni/ae Amy Pagliarella, Donna Birney and Corey Nelson.

Her love of education – refined though studies at the University of Illinois and Yale Divinity School – contributes to the joy she feels in crafting a sermon. The discipline of thinking, writing and applying Biblical scripture is a real treat for Chakoian and she sees it as a privilege to have a job which enables her to exercise skills she loves. In addition to her Sunday sermons, Chakoian is compiling a report on the rich history of her congregation, which was established 150 years ago.

Her history project has actually become the centerpiece of her work in McCormick’s Doctor of Ministry Program, in which she enrolled in 2005 just before being called to serve at Lake Forest. She said the program helped make her transition from her last parish at Clarendon Hills much smoother because it was an oasis of diverse perspectives.

Staying in the same Presbyterian circles with people who all think along similar lines can lead to narrow-mindedness, Chakoian said. She found discussing ideas and struggles with a more diverse group of peers in her cohort group extremely helpful as she moved from one congregation to another.

As she believes it will take her six or seven years to graduate, she is not a traditional D.Min. student. But when she is able to carve out a couple of weeks to focus on her thesis, she feels like a kid in a candy store. When she last tucked herself away at an apartment near McCormick, Chakoian completed three of the eleven total chapters in her book. She stayed up late during this time– sometimes until two in the morning – only to fall into bed and get up in the morning to write again.

“It’s good to get out of the context that you are in,” Chakoian said. “It helps you to ask questions that you wouldn’t think to ask otherwise.” Church History Professor Ken Sawyer helped her with professional critiques during this time.

In addition to enjoying her thesis project, one of the things Chakoian cherished the most about her time in the McCormick DMin program was the opportunity to interact with ministers from different theological backgrounds.
“After being out for a while, you become hungry for what seminary has to offer,” she said.

As a minister, Chakoian views her role as equipping those around her to see proper stewardship of relational, economic and political power as expressions of faith. Through preaching, she educates the congregation with spiritual truths as well as practical ways to bring their unique selves into the life of faith.

“Faith can be expressed in thousands of ways, but we are all part of the same body,” Chakoian said.

Chakoian thinks there is no such thing as a typical Presbyterian church and that every congregation has a unique flavor and special gifts to offer the universal body of Christ. Within her large congregation, theological, political and socio-economic diversity is the order of the day.

A believer in Barth’s idea that faith should be expressed with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other, Chakoian challenges those in her congregation to engage the world that God loves.

Chakoian first knew she wanted to serve as a pastor in high school. Ministry runs in the family – her twin sister, Karen Chakoian, is also a head pastor in Granville, Ohio.

Though others in her family are not professional ministers, Chakoian said they share another important trait: “nerdiness,” she says.

Chakoian said her husband, who has his Ph.D. and her 19-year-old daughter, who is a student at Northwestern, spent their last family vacation at a conference for the American Psychological Association. “We’re all wired the same way,” she said.

Decades after assuming her first pastoral position, Christine Chakoian has deepened her personal theology. After several seasons in ministry, she is asking a whole new set of questions than the ones she had when she first entered the pastorate.

Today, she wants to know how to express individual faith in a manner conversant with today’s pluralistic world. Within the Christian faith, no believer can thrive in isolation.  Chakoian makes it a priority to find ways to love those around her.

In addition to regular rhythms of scripture reading, prayer and walking the dog, Chakoian credits her colleagues with enabling her to retain her enthusiasm for the ministry.

“I could not do this by myself,” Chakoian said. “I have many friends in ministry and I know how to pick up the phone and ask for help.”

Chakoian met her husband, John, when she was working as an associate pastor at the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago on Michigan Avenue. She later moved to Oregon for another pastoral position. Due to family responsibilities for herself and her husband, Chakoian gladly returned to live near the city she loves in Lake Forest.

In addition to enjoying the distinctive skyline and expansive Lake Michigan, Chakoian said she treasures the diversity of the city and never-ending stream of new things to do.

“I have a sense of belonging here,” Chakoian said. “It feels like home.”

The Rev. Michael McConnell, 2010 Distinguished Alumnus

Michael McConnell, 63, McCormick Seminary’s 2010 Distinguished Alumnus has passionately advocated for peace since his college years as a student at the University of Wisconsin.

While an undergraduate, McConnell underwent the first of three major life conversion experiences that shaped him into the man he is today.

Though he entered college in 1964 as a supporter of the Vietnam War, an information sheet containing unpublicized statistics on the human cost of the conflict there radically changed his perspective.

After becoming a passionately outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War, McConnell knew he needed to pursue further study at an institution which would enable him to serve in a creative manner – he chose McCormick because it offered alternatives to traditional parish ministries and an atmosphere that engaged real issues of urban living.

Through his time at McCormick, McConnell underwent the second major conversion experience of his life – a shift facilitated by his field work, community meetings and discussion groups.

“[Seminary] was not just Hebrew and Church History Studies. It opened my eyes to the reality of how most people in the world actually live,” McConnell said.

Through his internship with the Northwest Community Organization, McConnell was assigned to a neighborhood comprised of Polish and Puerto Rican people.

Though there was a general atmosphere of racism, McConnell gathered people from both backgrounds to address issues of common concern such as safety in streets and parks.
Working together helped residents to see past their stereotypical differences.

“When individuals got to know one another, they’d say, ‘He’s my neighbor – I like him,’” McConnell said.

Through this community organizing experience, McConnell learned that working adults – not only fiery, activist students – were willing to protest for an important cause.

McConnell also learned a fair amount about Chicago politicians – much to his disappointment, as he witnessed corruption and neglect of the needs of the poor and marginalized. McConnell, an Ohio native, calls this time his introduction to “real-life.” He said it felt like living inside Division Street, Studs Terkel’s profile of urban life in Chicago.

Michael McConnell, Cynthia Campbell, Marilyn Pagan-Banks (Class of 1997)

Though he claims gentrification has been a central issue in Chicago since the 1950s, McConnell met so-called “Urban Renewal” face-to-face in the 1970s.

“The city wanted to get rid of homes and bring in a school to bring more upper class people into a desirable area close to downtown, but the community itself didn’t want the school,” McConnell said. “It would have destroyed the neighborhood as it was.”

The effort to build Roberto Clemente High School was spearheaded by Alderman Thomas Keane, an official serving Mayor Daley who was later indicted for corruption.

“We knew Keane was corrupt at the time, but we couldn’t prove he was making money from the developers who would stand to profit from building a school in that neighborhood,” McConnell said.

McConnell said Keane only attended one community meeting regarding the school. He arrived in a limo.

Though the school currently has a mostly Puerto Rican student body, McConnell claims that the school was originally intended to push out the Puerto Rican community.

“If they had really wanted to help the community, then they would have built the school in Humboldt Park,” McConnell said. “It would have made the park less dangerous and also saved the homes.”

McConnell believes the school was intended to be an institutional anchor to upgrade the neighborhood, similar to the United Center in upper-west-side Chicago. Since his eyes were opened though his field experience, McConnell more fully understood the devastating effects of gentrification. He sees it happening today all across the city, especially in places such as the Loop, Carl Sandberg Village at North Avenue and Clark Street and Cabrini Green.

“It made me commit to staying in the city, because I would see the problems and issues that people dealt with,” McConnell said. He kept his commitment to the city even when it meant being what is now called “bi-vocational,” because there were not full-time ministry positions available in thriving churches at the time McConnell graduated in 1971.

“It felt like a lifetime because it was so transformative, but I was only there one and a half years,” McConnell said.

His third major conversion experience occurred in 1983 when McConnell traveled to the border to Honduras and Nicaragua. While there, he met the families of those killed by fighters funded by the United States government.

One of McConnell’s most significant memories from that time is staying with a family who had recently lost a son about the same age as he was. McConnell was astounded that they would extend such warm hospitality to someone who was from the same country that funded the killing of their loved one.

“I witnessed the Gospel, Liberation Theology and forgiveness taken seriously – I returned a changed man,” McConnell said.

This change within McConnell was evident in his newfound desire to change policy, communities and individuals by exposing the hidden pain of refugees. He made it his mission to raise awareness of the kidnapping and torture which was tearing apart families daily in Latin America.

He traveled to many churches encouraging them to live out their faith through providing sanctuary to refugees.

Though it has been nearly three decades since the days of that war, McConnell still speaks enthusiastically about the renewal of courage and faith he witnessed in the churches he partnered with.

“Providing sanctuary to refugees was an act of civil disobedience punishable by prison or fines,” McConnell said. “It was not something to enter into lightly.”

One of his best-known books, Sanctuary: The New Underground Railroad, was co-written with Renny Golden as a response to the growing interest in this new ecumenical group practicing the ancient law of sanctuary and protecting the displaced from authorities.

In addition to providing theological foundations and historical background regarding the movement, the book weaves personal tales of refugees into each chapter.

Another of McConnell’s works, Lost Voices: A Multicultural History of the United States was published on the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ voyage to America. McConnell’s mission in this work was to tell stories of resistance that are often left out of traditional history books.

With its short vignettes and graphics, even the book’s format is a departure from more mainstream texts. McConnell said he felt drawn to this work because many important efforts to enact social change have remained under the radar.

“People shouldn’t only study history,” McConnell said. “They should feel empowered to make it.”

Through the multi-sensory exhibit Eyes Wide Open: the Human Cost of War in Iraq, McConnell hopes to create a public forum to enable the families of those who lost their lives in Iraq to speak out.

“It’s common ground – an open space where all can mourn the death of those who were lost,” McConnell said. “Some see it as worth it and others do not.”

Through displaying thousands of combat boots representing those who died, McConnell hopes to remember the lives of those lost in Iraq, as well as enable everyday people to see more tangibly the impact of war and United States policies on the rest of the world.

The boots in the large displays are replicas of what troops actually wore, but some families have donated footwear their loved ones actually wore in combat and these are kept as a separate, guarded part of the exhibit.

After its debut at Chicago’s Federal Plaza in January 2004, the exhibit now exists as a series of smaller exhibits shown in several states to commemorate the more than 4400 soldiers killed in Iraq.

“Moms say this helps their kids to understand war,” McConnell said. “It’s a visual depiction of the human cost of war that numbers cannot convey.”

For McConnell, the issues facing refugees are not problems in the abstract, but are very personal. His wife, Maricella, a refugee from Guatemala, deepened his understanding of those who survive trauma and displacement.

During the first years of their marriage, McConnell said Maricella would keep a bag packed and close by just in case she had to return home on short notice. He watched her struggle deeply with the pain of wanting to return home, but knowing that it was not a safe possibility.

McConnell said these experiences have made Maricella a strong partner as well as a respected local, national and international leader of the fight for immigration rights. She was able to help him develop a kind of empathy not otherwise possible with his background of white privilege.

“It is one thing to work on an issue that you feel is unjust and another to feel what it does to you viscerally,” he said. “There is a whole level of injury that you don’t always hear about.”

After several years of working with families for the Eyes Wide Open exhibit, McConnell claims that returned troops and refugees share common post-traumatic stress experiences. He said both struggle with the inability to believe they are really safe and with difficulty feeling at home.

Since 1990, McConnell has served as Regional Director of the Great Lakes Region of the American Friends Service Committee. Though he might not be leading the lifestyle of an activist as he did in college, McConnell sees his current position as a continuation of a lifelong commitment to peace and social justice.

Jennifer Bing Canar, AFSC’s regional coordinator of programs said McConnell leads in a supportive and inspiring manner. “He has a vision for social change that is just infectious,” she said. “You come up with ideas and he makes you feel like you can really do it.”

Pastor Julio Ramirez-Eve

Though his humble disposition doesn’t make it immediately apparent, soft-spoken Julio Ramirez-Eve (Class of 1996), has lots of responsibility riding on his shoulders.

As newly commissioned pastor of Northgate Presbyterian Church in Durham, North Carolina, as well as leader of Iglesia Presbiteriana Emanuel, a Hispanic fellowship group that also meets at Northgate’s building, Ramirez-Eve is pioneering an unusual model of ministry. He is leading not one congregation merged from two, but two distinct congregations with their own operating budgets and leadership teams bound together under this one pastor’s care.
Before becoming the formal pastor of Northgate in December of 2009, Ramirez-Eve spent five years lead the Iglesia Presbiteriana Emanuel fellowship using the Northgate church facilities as a guest.

Since the Hispanic fellowship has 50 to 60 members while the English congregation has about 15 to 20, for now, the majority of Ramirez-Eve’s congregants are those from minority groups in larger society. And yet this particular mix, as he sees it, is appropriate as the face of the city of Durham is changing to become steadily more Hispanic.

According to an economic and demographic profile produced by the city of Durham, there were 225,093 people living within city limits in 2009. About 49 percent of this 2009 population is European American, while Hispanics are by far the most rapidly growing segment of society in Durham; growing from one percent of the city’s population in 1990 to 12 percent in 2009.

While most pastors struggle to balance responsibilities of church and family, Ramirez-Eve names his parents, wife and personal faith as significant sources of support as he pastors two yoked congregations and works to reconcile the dominant white culture with the influx of Hispanic immigrants.
Since he is also part of a community leadership team that works to bring many cultures together, for Ramirez-Eve, this ministry of reconciliation is about much more than his yoked church project – in fact it extends even beyond the city of Durham.

“The North Carolina community is changing,” Ramirez-Eve said. “People want to be a part of that change; it’s significant to the culture of the church.”
Two important tools for unity are food and worship, he says. The two groups bond through sharing meals and worshiping at the same time. They grow closer to their neighbors by feeding the hungry through Emanuel’s food pantry.

The biggest challenge facing Ramirez-Eve at the moment is making contacts with the greater community so that the members of the Hispanic fellowship do not become an isolated cultural island – instrumental to this effort are bilingual people who can navigate both cultures freely. He credits this cross-cultural facility in part to his experience at McCormick.

“Experiences at McCormick with people from different backgrounds and nationalities has helped me a lot.” Ramirez-Eve said. “It’s a big challenge to grow two congregations at the same time.” Ramirez-Eve is one of more than 250 Latin@s who have received a masters degree or higher from McCormick.
In his current position, Ramirez-Eve gains perspective from his associate in ministry Sam Miglarese, who volunteers to preach twice a month at Northgate.

“McCormick should take great pride in Julio’s accomplishment,” Miglarese said. “He’s got a great opportunity to build a multicultural community with hope for the future.”

Miglarese, who is Director of Community Engagement at Duke University and an Associate Pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Durham, helped nominate Julio for the head pastoral position at Northgate.

Miglarese believed Ramirez-Eve was the right man for this church yoking project because of his training, pastoral skill and affable nature.
“The chance for that community to survive was to get involved with this multicultural opportunity,” Miglarese said. “Without Julio being their pastor, the community would have died a long time ago.”

The chance to survive by becoming a yoking church isn’t something all members of Northgate embraced – some left the congregation rather than take on the challenge of becoming multicultural.

Since their congregation is only 15 people, the Presbyterian Church would not have assigned a pastor to Northgate, Miglarese said.
Though it is three times smaller than Iglesia Presbiteriana Emanuel, the Northgate congregation contributes a comparable amount in offertory money. Most of those in the Hispanic congregation are recent immigrants working in the service industry.

“There is no sugar daddy in either congregation,” Miglarese said. “Money from the Presbytery makes ends meet.”

In addition to the denominational funding – which pays Julio’s salary and benefits – rent from small businesses using parts of the church’s space also helps pay the bills.

“Although we need more money, we need people more than we need money,” Ramirez-Eve said.

For the Hispanic fellowship, which consists of many young immigrants, Ramirez-Eve‘s main areas of concern include members’ strong need for community and struggles with economic instability. He wants to help the Northgate congregation learn how to open their hearts to the new immigrants and really understand them.

“Change has to happen today so we can enjoy tomorrow,” Ramirez-Eve said. “Finding out how to make one congregation can be difficult, but they want to try. That’s the good news.”

Joe Harvard, Pastor of First Presbyterian Church – a neighboring presbytery which helps financially support the yoked church – also has hope for Ramirez-Eve’s effort to help these two separate groups work as one unit.

“He’s been a bridge-builder,” Harvard said. “He doesn’t draw rigid lines. People experience each other’s culture and grow together.”

Benedictine of Holy Wisdom Monastery

For Sister Lynn Smith (Class of 1982) and the Sisters of the Benedictine Order in Madison, being green isn’t a fashion statement; it is a way of life.

The Sisters, who have been in Madison since 1953, originally came from Iowa to start a Catholic girls’ school. The school was closed in 1966 and the building was converted into an ecumenical retreat center. The new building is half the size of the old school, which was too large to be efficient for their needs.

In 2008, the Sisters began tearing the old school apart and recycling it in favor of a new, more environmentally friendly, spiritual home.

As an important Benedictine value is to care for the earth, the Sisters took care to make their new building as green as possible. While monastery staff expected the structure to receive a Platinum Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification, they didn’t expect their score to be as high as it actually was. They received 63 out of 69 possible points from the U.S. Green Building Council for new construction. This is a higher score than any new building in the United States.

According to the rule of Benedict, Sisters have a responsibility to care for the earth, as well as a profession of stability – which means they are deeply rooted in the local community.

Through living moderately and caring for the community, the Sisters hope to care for the lives of the people around them as well as the environment.
“The building expresses our culture,” Lynn said. “As we were designing it there are certain characteristics of Benedictine life that we wanted to express.”

The monastery's assembly room for prayer

Some of the characteristics include lots of open space, natural light, no humming machinery and sparse décor. “It’s like silence for the eyes and ears,” Lynn said. “It helps people to turn inward and deal with their inner lives.”

Placing the prayer room in the center of the building is an expression of the Benedictine emphasis on the centrality of prayer. To show hospitality, the walls of the retreat center curve inward to a large gathering area, like giant open arms welcoming people to fellowship.

While the Sisters did receive a Focus on Energy Grant to help offset building costs, they are still accepting donations to pay off their mortgage. Each monastery within the Benedictine order is autonomous and funded by donations.

In addition to holding the highest Platinum LEED certification score, the building has received several other awards at the state and national level from the Green Building Counsel as well as the Association of General Contractors.

Throughout the two-year planning and 11-month building process, Neil Smith, Executive Director of Holy Wisdom Monastery, said he learned a lot about new forms of environmentally friendly technology and how to balance top concerns of the monastery.

Neil believes that the city of Madison sees the monastery as an example of what can be done in terms of green architecture.

One day in the life of 11 months of construction

While the monastery used to not even give tours, he said that last year the building received thousands of visitors specifically wanting to see its environmentally conscious construction.

The goal of the building was for it to enhance the mission and vision of the Benedictine order while being as green and cost-effective as possible, Smith said. To use space efficiently, Smith aligned spaces with complementary functions – such as a worship space and a gathering hall. Minimal hallway space and lots of natural lighting also help to cut down on energy use.

No natural gas is used other than in the kitchen for cooking – all heat and cooling systems are powered by electrically-operated geothermal wells. Solar panels on top of the building supply between 13 and 15 percent of the monastery’s electrical needs.

“No other building has this exact combination of elements,” Smith said. “The gas bill is $53, which is about a quarter of what a small house would pay in the winter.”

Ecumenical Personal Retreats

Though she is still a Presbyterian, Lynn Smith enjoys living a Benedictine communal life. In addition to prayer, meditation and promoting her order’s values in the community, Lynn preaches once a quarter and leads the monastery’s worship service as part of a rotating schedule.

Though she didn’t know what “green living” was at the time she graduated, Lynn said she has always connected with God through gardening and being outside. She acquired a more specific passion for sustainable living after joining the Benedictine order.

The order of Benedictine Women of Madison, which consists of Sisters Lynn Smith, Joanne Kollasch & M. Mary David Walgenbach, is pleased to invite single Christian women from all backgrounds to follow in their footsteps. Even if visitors just take small steps toward the contemplative life and don’t want to become full-fledged nuns, the Sisters want to make everyone feel welcome. They offer space for contemplative, communal living as well as personal or communal retreats. During the summer, there is also the opportunity to volunteer to work on the prairie grounds surrounding the monastery.

The next opportunity for a two-to-four-week retreat will be July 11 2011 – August 6, 2011. There is no fee to participate in the program and room and board are provided. Those presently affiliated with the monastery come from many Christian traditions. The Monastery in Madison, which is the first ecumenical community for women, is one of 50 Benedictine communities in the United States and 600 worldwide.