How does a black minister change the racist attitudes of an all white congregation in the urban midwest? Rev. Reginald Smith did it and then wrote the book Roosevelt Park Rising

This is The God Show, a conversation about the human spirit with your host, Pat

McMahon. So have you ever been to Chicago? And when you're sitting in a broadcast booth in Phoenix, Arizona, not just talking to the people in metropolitan Phoenix, which I think is made up primarily of Chicagoans, but Or so it seems. But when you're here in spring training town for the Cubs and all that Chicago means to so many people, when you read a book like Roosevelt Park Rising, subtitled A Memoir of the Renewal of a Pastor, a Church, and a Neighborhood, by Reginald Smith, Reverend Reginald Smith, well then maybe some of those things are gonna sound familiar, like a few neighborhoods, and maybe even a Sunday service on occasion. Reverend Reginald Smith, who has given me personal permission to call him Reggie throughout the broadcast. Am I correct, have I taken chances here?

You are correct,

Pat. The Roosevelt Park Rising professor now, and please correct me if this is wrong, diversity ministry consultant at an organization called Thrive in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Yep.

Part of the Christian Reformed Church in North America. Now let's do some geography first of all. Let me tell you that ours is an international audience, and so this conversation is being shared with people in Melbourne, in Singapore, around the entire nation, around the world, and some of them, Chicagoans and Michiganders, are gonna say, wait a minute, Is that that Reverend Smith that wrote that book, Roosevelt Park Rising? Well, let's do some geography for that international audience. You grew up in Chicago, right? What neighborhood? I grew

up in North Lawndale.

Give me some idea. South Chicago, West Chicago. West

Chicago. West.

All right.

Yes. West side.

And where is Grand Rapids located?

And Grand Rapids is the second largest city on the west side of Michigan. And Roosevelt Park is on the southwest side of Grand Rapids, Michigan.

So that means no matter where you are in Michigan or in the Chicago area, you may wind up with the new Bears Stadium.

Yes, unfortunately.

You really sound like a guy that's grown up in Chicago and still have an awful lot of Chicagoan in you. Is that true?

Absolutely. Absolutely. To my heart.

When I hear about the new Bears Stadium, particularly the Bears Stadium... Soldier Field. What do

you

think about that moving to Indiana?

I am not happy about it. I mean, I understand that Soldier Field is the smallest stadium in the NFL, but there's something about playing at Soldier Field on a December, whistling wind, nice tall snow, and... beating the crap out of the Packers. What could be more heavily than that?

Well, all I can tell you is I can relate it because I've spent a lot of time in Chicago myself. But how were you growing up, as you were, affected by the Chicago political leadership that leadership in government, and also law enforcement in government. Now, this is as you grew up as a kid and became a teenager.

Yeah, I grew up on the West Side, which used to be, Lawndale used to be predominantly Jewish. And it was around the 1960s that Jews moved from there to a place called Skokie. And African-Americans came after that to take their place. And Lawndale experienced the fastest