Rooster In the Hood

Preface Almost anyone who hears the familiar crow of a rooster knows what it is. If you were visiting a farm with chickens you would expect to hear roosters, or at least one. When I was growing up in rural Nebraska the sound of a rooster was not that uncommon. We had friends who owned a pig farm and the crowing of roosters, along with the oinking of pigs, was normal. I have a confession to make: I’ve always been a little afraid of roosters. One of my friends lived on a farm with a ravine that seemed to go on for miles. This was the place where we would go sledding during the winter, taking our lives into our hands as we maneuvered sheer drops-offs that could have been our undoing. They also raised chickens. One day when my brothers and I were over playing in the barns, we started a game of hide and seek. I ended up hiding in one of the chicken coups. Bad idea! They had always warned me about this one rooster that was “mean.” I didn’t know that roosters could be nice or mean; I thought they were just chickens. Up to that point I had little interaction with chickens, let alone any roosters, although we did have our own chickens for a little while (just long enough for us to slaughter them in our back yard). Plucking a chicken is no fun! I’ll save that story for another time. Little did I know that the whole time I was hiding, there was a pair of little beady eyes glaring at me from the corner of the coup. I still remember the hot smell of hay and droppings along with the cackling sounds of chickens. I was priding myself in the great place I had chosen to hide when, all of a sudden, this ball of red and black feathers came running at me, crowing. I swear I heard it growling. I ran out of that chicken coup as fast as my husky nine-year-old frame would carry me! Once out of the coup, the rooster chased me, wings spread out, neck feathers standing on end, around the back of the barn until I was able to climb up the side of the ravine. As I recovered from my near- death experience, I gained a new respect (and disdain) for roosters. Even though my experience with the rooster was a bit unnerving, it really wasn’t all that unusual in rural Nebraska on a farm. Fast-forward about forty-five years to one of the most impoverished areas in the city of Toledo, Ohio. An urban neighborhood filled with high crime rates, shootings, prostitution, drugs, and an unending cycle of generational poverty. That’s my neighborhood. Every Saturday morning at 7 a.m. we meet for a men’s Bible study. As crazy as it sounds, ten to twenty guys from the hood and surrounding areas meet to study God’s word before the sun comes up. On one particular morning the church was being used by another group, so we had to meet outside under the outside next to our ministry center. Everyone was arriving, the coffee was made, and the sun was just coming up over the trees. We were engaged in small talk when we all heard the sound. At first I blew it off, thinking I didn’t really hear it. Then it happened again. This time I looked at everybody and asked, “Is it just me or did you I hear a rooster?” Sure enough, the second those words came out of my mouth, the rooster crowed again! It was close. Not even a block away. Now this was unexpected. We all had a good laugh as almost every fifteen minutes the crowing began. By the end of the Bible study I was ready to find the fowl beast and end its earthly existence. That was a number of months ago and, believe it or not, that rooster is still crowing every day, all day, on cue. As I began thinking about our rooster in the hood, I thought about the story of Peter in the Bible. To me, a rooster represents fear in its most basic form. Every time I hear one I immediately think back to the day when I was chased by that foot-high feathered monster. For Peter, hearing the sound of a rooster must have brought back memories of one of the biggest failures in his life: that day when he denied even knowing Jesus. Not just once, but three times. The story of That Neighborhood Church (TNC) has been a combination of facing some very real fears and allowing God to heal and recreate some of my biggest failures. Rooster in the Hood isn’t just the story of how God called an Irish, ginger-haired white guy and his wife to one of the most impoverished areas of Ohio and Southeast Michigan. It represents a journey that Christ-followers are often compelled to take. It represents the fears we all face, the failures we struggle with, and the potential to experience God-realities in our lives. The truth is we all have those “roosters” in our lives that remind us of our fears and failures. The good news is that we have a Savior who is in the business of facing our “roosters” with courage, hope, victory and forgiveness. As you read this book, my prayer is that you would allow God to reveal the “roosters” in your hood as they poke their beady little eyes out from the corners of your life and threaten to hold you captive, and that you would become desperate for God’s provision, protection, and direction. As my family and our ministry team are continuing to discover, the more we become desperate for God, the more we learn how to stand up against the “roosters” and accomplish what God is calling us to do. Discovering my Hen House The truth is, before I met my fine, feathered opponent in the hen house, I wasn’t thinking about where I was going. To me it just looked like a little building that would be a great place to hide. It wasn’t until I heard the sounds of the other chickens, and eventually the rooster, that I came to the conclusion that something was very wrong. A small voice inside told me, “this was not a good place to hide.” It was not until 45 years later that I would discover and enter my own personal “hen house” in an unexpected way. It was still almost eighty-five degrees at ten o’clock that night. I was standing at the top of the tallest hotel in Bangkok, Thailand. The Baiyoke Sky Hotel stands at 88-stories and features a revolving observation roof deck. It also has one of the largest buffets I have ever seen! After dinner I went up to the revolving roof deck. I had come to the end of my fourteen day trip with a group of pastors. During our stay we visited various churches in Thailand along with some tourist attractions. I got to eat my first squid on a stick and fried tarantula, along with some of the best food I have ever eaten. Dragon fruit is amazing! Fortunately, I didn’t get sick during our trip. Others weren’t quite so fortunate. You would have thought during my time in Thailand that God would have given me a vision and heart for a country of sixty-five million people. According to the Christian and Missionary Alliance website 95% of the population are Buddhist, 3.8% are Muslim, 0.1% are Hindu, and only 0.5% are Christian. But, as I stood there on the roof looking at a city of more than fourteen million people, God had different plans. My mind drifted from one experience to another. I had been introduced to some of the poorest yet most joyful people I had ever met. I ate some of the hottest food on the planet (I think I still have the scars). I was able to ride an elephant and watch them not only play soccer, but paint pictures. We took a riverboat ride through areas where the children were playing alongside moms washing dishes, in the same river water used as sewer outlets. Houses were made of tin or cardboard, but many of them had satellite dishes. At one point we took a trip up north to visit a Hmong village church. Here chickens ran around some of the villager’s houses. I remember making some balloon animals for a couple of the families living there. Then there was the time we fed bananas to an elephant that had stopped in the front of our hotel. My mind was wondering from one memory to another when something else began to creep in.