Church finds new life, focusing on ‘congregation’ outside its walls
REDEEMER LUTHERAN BECOMES ‘BEACON OF HOPE’ IN NORTH MINNEAPOLIS
[Article from Faith & Leadership]
The first time the Rev. Kelly Chatman stepped into the pulpit at Redeemer Lutheran Church 17 years ago, he looked out at his new congregation — 30, maybe 35 people at the most — and got a sinking feeling in his stomach.
“I wondered if I had made a mistake,” he said recently.
After 25 years spent mostly in education and church administration, Chatman had decided to try his hand at being a local church pastor. He had walked away from a prestigious and comfortable position as the director of youth ministries in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s Chicago headquarters to take over a struggling church in a distressed neighborhood in Minneapolis.
Many years earlier, he had served briefly as an associate pastor in Oregon, but this time he was heading his own church. And it was not an auspicious beginning. On his way into the building that mor\ning, he couldn’t pretend that he hadn’t seen the drug dealers doing business on the corner across the street.
“I said to myself…”