When I first wrote about Trevor McMaken back in the fall of 2015, I described this new Aurora pastor as one of the city’s “biggest cheerleaders,” even though he and his young family had only been living here a short time.
Eighteen months later, McMaken’s City of Light Anglican Church, housed at Hill Elementary School on the West Side of Aurora, is going strong, he told me, with Sunday attendance growing and a vibrant mentoring program making a difference with at-risk students there.
And McMaken continues to be among the city’s staunchest supporters, most recently in a far-reaching way.
On Tuesday, a story he co-authored about the prayer vigils held at murder sites during Aurora’s darkest days was featured online in CT Pastors, a department of the global Christianity Today that is geared toward church leaders around the world.
“Uniting a violence-plagued city in prayer” was the headline, followed by this subhead: “Neither death threats nor tepid response discouraged two pastors from praying over every murder site in their city for years.”
It’s a story that deserves to be told far and wide, for it is as unique as it is powerful. http://www.christianitytoday.com/pastors/2017/april-web-exclusives/uniting-violence-plagued-city-in-prayer.html
McMaken said he was “blown away” when he began hearing about those Prayer Coalition for Reconciliation vigils and the role they had in helping police and the community dramatically reduce Aurora’s murder rate. It became quickly obvious, he added, this was a story that should be shared in Christian communities far beyond the city itself.
One of the first meetings he and wife Bonnie had when contemplating starting a church here – at the time, they were with Church of the Resurrection in Wheaton – was with Dan Haas, co-founder of the Prayer Coalition; Randy Schoof, pastor of Warehouse Church; and First Presbyterian Pastor Jeff Moore.
What these clergymen all had to say was similar, recalled McMaken: That this is an amazing city with real need, but that God has already done some incredible things here.
“I’d never head a story like it before,” he said of the way churches and government came together as gang violence rocked the city.
“As Christians, we believe prayer makes a difference; that the church in the neighborhood should make it better,” McMaken told me on Thursday. “But here was a tangible and, in some ways, quantifiable example of that.”
McMaken said he was so moved by the story “I probably told it 100 times.” And every time he did, his listeners “would walk away in awe.”
It was Bonnie’s father, Matt Woodley — mission pastor with the Wheaton church — who encouraged his son-in-law and helped him write the story, which includes interviews with Haas; coalition co-founder Rev. David Engbarth, who now lives in Florida after serving St. Nicholas and Our Lady of Good Counsel Catholic churches; and former Aurora Police Chief Greg Thomas.
I’ve read McMaken’s story a couple of times now and have nothing but praise for how well it is researched and written. As the authors points out in their article, those vigils were not necessarily welcomed by city officials and local business leaders, especially at first. And even The Beacon-News took a volley of criticism for our commitment to covering every single one of them – 27 in one year alone — no matter how fast and furious they seemed to be coming at us.
Certainly the culture of praying together as a community continues here in other ways, including Pray Aurora, hosted by Schoof at Warehouse Church from noon to 1 p.m. the first Thursday of every month; and Pray Fox Valley, a quarterly prayer night.
Also, the National Day of Prayer Walk (across Aurora) will be held May 4, beginning at 9:30 a.m. at the southwest corner of Orchard Road and Galena Boulevard, continuing through noon at downtown’s Water Street Mall and City Hall, and concluding around 6:15 p.m. at McCoy Drive and Route 59. Residents are also encouraged to do neighborhood walks throughout the day.
And, of course, Haas is still holding these prayer vigils, though they are thankfully much fewer and further between. He’s even taking the Prayer Coalition playbook outside our city limits. Since January, he’s been working closely with Pray Chicago in an attempt to get more churches involved in fighting the violence now plaguing parts of that city. At a workshop last weekend, he passed around copies of McMaken’s story to a group of about 70, which got “some of the folks there excited” about the possibilities.
But it’s more than bowing your head in prayer, Haas insisted. It’s about forming relationships with residents, with neighborhood groups, with officials and police. It’s building trust and sharing information and learning to feel comfortable with each other. That’s especially true in a place as big as Chicago, he added, where the focus has to be on individual neighborhoods because “it’s just too big” for a single person’s efforts.
Who knows at this point how one city’s response to so much bloodshed will affect hot spots in other crime-riddled areas. But there’s no reason why “a story of healing” can’t be repeated elsewhere, said McMaken, continuing his role as passionate cheerleader.
“Part of sharing this story,” he concluded, “is also to celebrate the beautiful community Aurora is becoming.”
