REBUILD MY CHURCH
BY JOANNA
The Coalition for Spiritual and Public Leadership (CSPL) is a Catholic-rooted community organizing coalition in the Chicago area. Founded in 2017, we believe that equipping lay leaders with the tools of community organizing and liberative faith formation leads to more engaged and transformative action in our parishes and communities. Through our work, we have had the honor of working with incredible parish communities who are living out the prophetic tradition of our faith.
We had the chance to work with one parish, Our Lady of Africa, during the Archdiocese of Chicago’s “Renew my Church” initiative. Inspired by St. Francis’ call from Jesus to go “rebuild my church,” Renew my Church is a multi-year strategy of parish mergers and evangelization efforts that began in 2016. Since then, there have been over 70 parish mergers, usually comprising two parish communities coming together. This process is marked by deep complexity: On one hand, parishioners express pain and grief at losing the parish sites where they have worshiped and ministered for decades. Yet, on another hand, there is an openness to encountering a new community and forming something new.
In our experience, community organizing provides a promise of possibility, renewal, and action for newly formed parish communities that leads to unmistakable vibrancy, not only for each faith community but for their surrounding communities as well.
Our Lady of Africa is situated in Bronzeville, a neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. Bronzeville is a historically Black neighborhood that was home to thousands of African Americans during the Great Migration. It was a hub for blues and jazz musicians and social change makers such as Ida B. Wells. Many
“Community organizing provides a promise of possibility, renewal, and action for newly formed parish communities.”
residents come from this rich legacy of cultural, intellectual, and political innovation.
Our Lady of Africa formed in 2021 from five different Black Catholic parishes. Prior to the merger, these five parishes each had a distinct history, tradition, and culture that spanned generations of families. They found that they all had something in common though: a strong sense of social justice.
Through time-intensive work, coaching, mentoring, and relationship-building with CSPL, between 2022 and 2023
Our Lady of Africa parishioners held several listening sessions
with community members and local residents. What surfaced led to a deeper understanding and clearer articulation of the most pressing social, economic, and educational needs in their community. Following this listening and discernment process, CSPL staff worked with cohort leaders to form a team of approximately 20 parishioners, which became the parish social justice committee.
The social justice committee at Our Lady of Africa, with CSPL’s support and mentorship, was then able to organize a well-attended public meeting with then Mayor-Elect of Chicago, Brandon Johnson, with over 170 CSPL members and supporters in attendance. Johnson committed to working with CSPL to increase the number of social workers in Chicago Public Schools; to collaborate with CSPL, Service Employees International Union, and the Illinois Child Care for All Coalition to open several free child care centers in former CPS school buildings in low-income communities; and to work with CSPL and other immigrant rights organizations to develop a comprehensive and sustainable plan for supporting recent immigrant arrivals. This meeting, spurred by the work of Our Lady of Africa, was a testament that the longing for justice could be an anchor allowing parishioners to hear one another, listen to their community members, and take action rooted in faith.
A very similar bottom-up process occurred at St. Oscar Arnulfo Romero Parish, a newly formed parish of four Latine parishes in Back of the Yards, another South Side neighborhood marked by disinvestment, violence, and poverty. In the 1880s to early 1900s, the neighborhood was home to Chicago’s
Left: The Coalition for Spiritual and Public Leadership worked with St. Oscar Arnulfo Romero Parish (SOAR) for over two years, including through listening sessions, long-term relationship building, and training.
Below: The first social justice committee meeting at Our Lady of Africa.
meatpacking district and the largest livestock yards in the country—therefore its name. The grave labor injustices occurring in the meatpacking industry led Saul Alinksy to begin organizing there in the early 1930s; the eventual result was the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council. Although Back of the Yards is currently marked by violence and systemic disinvestment, it is a neighborhood with an incredible legacy of organizing that continues today.
CSPL began our work at St. Oscar Arnulfo Romero with a series of listening sessions. Then, in February 2023, CSPL hosted a public meeting at the parish with the aldermanic candidates for the local ward. This public meeting was a result of the longterm relationship building, listening sessions, and training that CSPL staff had invested in St. Oscar Romero Parish for over two years. Two of the three candidates attended, along with over 120 CSPL members and supporters. What emerged was a declaration from the community that more resources were needed to prevent gang initiation and violence among youth. Since then, we have been continuing to train parishioners in organizing, and they are now developing a plan to create a cultural center in their neighborhood.
These parishes are only two examples of the many new communities of faith currently forming in Chicagoland. Both Our Lady of Africa and St. Oscar Arnulfo Romero are situated in neighborhoods that are deeply impacted by poverty, violence, and the city of Chicago’s enduring legacy of segregation and racism. At the same time, there are a multitude of people within these faith communities who are eager to form authentic relationships within their newly formed parishes and to put their faith into action.
It is beautiful to witness how equipping lay leaders with the fundamentals of community organizing and liberative faith formation promises a sense of unity, hope, and possibility. Organizing is a very synodal process because of its emphasis on a bottom-up approach that begins with the people who have the most at stake, recognizing them as the primary protagonists in God’s ongoing work to develop more just, humane, and equitable communities. It is our vision that as these parish mergers continue, community organizing serves as a model to “rebuild and renew my church,” thereby creating vibrant faith communities.
Joanna Arellano-Gonzalez is the director of training and spiritual and theological formation at the Coalition for Spiritual & Public Leadership.