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August 1965. R to L: Ed Bulane, Forwarder. Pete Feddema, Agriculturalist. Henry Hubbers, Coordinator. At Chicago Clothing Center.
Members of Oraland Park CRC in the Chicago area has sent teams of volunteers to work with CRWRC's Disaster Response Services every year since Hurricane Katriana (2005). For six consecutive years the church has committed to building an entire house for disaster survivors. |
Chicago Clothing Center visitors and board members.
Chicago – the windy city – has a special place in CRWRC’s heart and history.
“In the 1960’s, CRWRC had its headquarters in the Roseland neighborhood of Chicago. Its primary focus was warehousing clothing and other donated items, which were collected and then sent to Korea and other war-torn or disaster-afflicted countries,” said Jay VanGroningen, former CRWRC staff member.
In fact, the Chicago Clothing Center – later known as the CRWRC Material Resource Center – opened its doors in 1963 and was one of the first initiatives that CRWRC undertook. From 1963 through 1980, clothing and other relief goods were gathered from Christian Reformed Churches and individuals all over the United States and then shipped to Korea, Taiwan, Haiti, the Philippines, Greece, Honduras, Vietnam, Nicaragua, and Guatemala.
It was a great way for the many CRC congregations to work together to provide a response to needs overseas, and the churches in the Chicago area led the way in receiving and sorting goods, managing the distribution center, and promoting it across the country.
By 1980, however, demand for material goods in response to disasters had diminished. By that time, CRWRC had expanded into doing more long-term community development and could not make good use of donated clothing and supplies.
“August 1980 will be the final month of operation for the CRWRC Material Resource Center,” CRWRC staff reported in a CRWRC Newsletter in 1980. “To all who organized drives, sorted clothes, sewed, or knitted, we want to say thank you.”
Closing the doors on the resource center, however, did not mean closing the door on CRWRC’s ministry in Chicago. In fact, working and being with the poor in Chicago and other parts of the United States has continued to be an area of focus for CRWRC, and the people of Chicago continue to be great supporters of CRWRC’s work.
In the early 1980’s, CRWRC hired Chicago-native Don Zielstra, to be a Regional Diaconal Consultant for churches in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Indiana. His job was to organize deacons in these churches, provide them with training, and encourage them to be involved in ministries of mercy within their own communities as well as around the world. Through this initiative the Chicago CRCs were able to meet many needs right in their own neighborhoods.
“While the clothing center closed, the tradition continued. CRWRC was instrumental in the formation of a network of deacon conferences including the Chicagoland Diaconal Task Force (CDTF),” said Bill Van Wyngaarden, who served as the first director of the CDTF. “In 1992, CDTF held a clothing drive to send a container of clothing to a refugee camp in central Africa. A smaller container of medical supplies was also sent to Kenya. These two drives were done so that CRWRC workers and affiliated agencies could minister to refugees in the camps.”
CDTF also began to respond to natural disasters and meet the needs of the many refugees coming to the Chicago area providing them with clothing, household items, and even Bible studies and church plants in the refugee community’s language.
While CDTF – later Christian Service Ministries- continued to work with local deacons, in the 1990’s CRWRC began to support non-profit organizations and regional institutions within the United States that were working at the community level. Many of these agencies were connected to churches, but had separate non-profit (501-c-3) status and their own staff and volunteers, which were more effective at achieving long-term results.
“CRWRC saw evidence that when a church developed its own 501c-3 non profit to serve as the vehicle for relief and development ministries, that the church would consistently out-perform other congregations in number of families served and those whose lives were changed in sustainable ways,” said VanGronignen. “The number of side door and target ministries grew.”
In the Chicago area, CRWRC hired Lyman Howell to train, equip and coach deacons in the region and to develop partnerships with these local organizations. He provided training to several churches, and focused the majority of his time with urban churches in poor neighborhoods.
In the 2000’s, CRWRC took this one step further to launch Communities First Association – an umbrella organization that brings together a variety of community non-profit organizations in the United States and equips them to carry out Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD).
“CRWRC learned that individual development is very often linked to neighborhood and community development,” said VanGroningen, to explain what ABCD is all about. “Healthy neighborhoods are those where neighbors work together, using what they have, on the things that affect them. They work together for the common good. Individuals help each other succeed and they improve the community together.”
Today, many churches across the United States – including those in the Chicago area – are making use of Communities First materials to reach out to their neighbors and work together for long-term change.
~ by Kristen deRoo Vanderberg, CRWRC Communications