A team from Peace Campaign gathers at one of their weekly events. Colton Vincent, pictured in the far back center, is in a dark green shirt. Marc Henkel, in the front, second from the right, is wearing the light blue T-shirt.
Marc Henkel and the group from the Peace Campaign were camped out at the corner armed with water, snacks and gospel literature just as they had been every Friday night this summer when a pop, pop, pop echoed a few blocks away.
"We didn't know if it was gunfire or fireworks," Henkel, the co-team leader for Cru® Inner City Chicago said.
He looked at the police officer, the faith-based liaison who often joined the weekly gathering, standing beside him as he monitored the frenzied radio traffic. It was gunfire — again.
A spike in gun violence in 2016 is what prompted the formation of the Peace Campaign, an initiative involving local churches, community leaders and police all living and working in the city's fifth district. The concept, part of a larger collaborative effort known as Pray Roseland, was the idea of a local pastor who initiated a similar movement in nearby Englewood and other suburbs.
"It made a huge difference and created a zero-crime pocket around this area where these two rival gangs were hanging out," Henkel said. "The pastor said that if you go into a dark room you don't curse the darkness, you turn on the light."
The Cru Inner City team, ministering in these neighborhoods since 1979, immediately jumped on board.
"The police are the peacekeepers, but Christians are called to be peacemakers, so we need to go and make peace happen," Henkel, one of the Peace Campaign leaders, said. "If there's a lack of peace in our neighborhoods it is the church's problem, and we need to be involved in it."
With the help of the police commander, they identified the most dangerous corner in Roseland — 111th and State streets — about four blocks from the Agape Center, the ministry headquarters for the Chicago team. They set up shop there, originally meeting from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. every Friday from Memorial Day to Labor Day.
"The police are the peacekeepers, but Christians are called to be peacemakers, so we need to go and make peace happen."
"We went at that worst time, at the worst corner and the worst night," he said. "And we started passing out water. We have worship music, people praying."
In the second week, a community organizer working with a group whose goal was to create a cease-fire between rival gangs arrived to monitor the event.
"He said, ‘Wow, there's nobody been shot this week. That's really cool,'" Henkel recalled. "The second week he was like, ‘Wow, this is amazing. Two weeks, and nobody's been shot in this area.' Then the third week he came and said the same thing again. Then he disappeared. He never came back, because he was reassigned (due to the drop off of violence). There was not one shooting within a mile radius of that corner the rest of the year after we started the peace campaign. The church made a difference."
A year after their very public stand in Roseland, the commander noticed that the gun violence shifted to nearby West Pullam. The Peace Campaign decided to also create a presence at 119th and Michigan in West Pullman, rotating between the two major intersections every other week. Since COVID, the time has been adjusted earlier, now running from 7 to 10 p.m. To ease into the campaign, the group begins meeting with limited hours beginning the first of May and phases out in September with similar limited hours after Labor Day, ending in October.
"Basically, the demons were running from one side of the community to the other, whichever area we weren't in," Henkel said.
"After nine years of doing the Peace Campaign, the violence has been the lowest because of the prayers of church leaders coming out. It's not one church. It's not one organization. It's multiple people from multiple churches coming out each week, praying and making a difference."
Among those making a difference are college students participating in a joint venture between Inner City and Cru's Campus Ministry. This year, Colton Vincent was one of eight from a pool of students on mission, who interned full time with Inner City partners throughout the summer.
A junior from Central Michigan University, studying secondary education with an emphasis on English, Vincent was raised in a Christian home. Evangelism became a passion for him last year after fully committing his life to Jesus.
"I love telling people about Jesus and how He changed my life, sharing my story with people and seeing the evidence for it, that there's evidence for faith in Christ," he said.
That led him to the campus ministry of Cru and its strong emphasis on evangelism.
"On my campus, there wasn't a whole lot of people that had time to do it, and so God put it on my heart," he said. "I started sharing with students on campus, and saw a lot of people very interested, from different backgrounds, in learning more about Jesus."
After signing up for the summer missions program, Vincent received an invitation from Henkel to become a summer intern working with the poor.
"I remember opening the email from Marc and smiling," he said. "I was like, this is absolutely something that is right up my alley, and also a step of faith but something I want to try."
As with the summer missionaries, the interns spend their days working alongside local churches and ministries, co-laboring in the name of Jesus.
"During the week they're going to some of our partner churches, serving in summer day camps or homeless missions. We're kind of coaching and mentoring them all summer. It's fun, but there's also the responsibility that I feel of watching over them," Henkel said of the Peace Campaign.
"I was like, 'Oh, this place is dangerous. This place is scary.' I had those stereotypes in my mind …"
Vincent was at every Peace Campaign event.
"My first thought was, ‘Bring it on,'" the education major said. "Then my second thought was ‘that's terrifying' because I'm from a very small town in Michigan. The university that I'm at is not in an urban area. It's still kind of rural, suburban. So being in Chicago in general was a huge step for me.
"I was like, ‘Oh, this place is dangerous. This place is scary.' I had those stereotypes in my mind but then actually going there and being there and standing on that corner, it was only the Holy Spirit that got me through."
Henkel said the Peace Campaign has been good soil for young adults to develop their faith and determine how it will mesh with their lifestyle.
"They're totally outside their comfort zone," Henkel said. "They've never seen or been a part of anything like that before, so that's a great learning opportunity for them."
Vincent was instantly at ease as the older prayer warriors went to work around him. The top of every hour is devoted to prayer and worship, and then the team spreads out across all four corners as they interact with pedestrians and drivers. Some honk. Others pull over. There are the occasional taunts and run-ins with residents who are under the influence. Early on, drug dealers often camped on the corners, peddling temporary fixes to long and deep-seated pain, but, when faced with the boldness of the prayer warriors, they fled.
All of the interactions focus on following the leading of the Holy Spirit.
"I was feeling very supported by men and women, who have been doing this for a long time, and ministers much older and wiser than me in life — but also in the faith," Vincent said. "It's just feeling very protected and taken care of. From that, I could take steps of faith to engage with people on the sidewalk, which is kind of what I do at school, anyway."
It didn't take long for Vincent's fears to erode.
"(It shifted from) this place is violent and there's crime and I'm going to get hurt, to seeing that (stereotype) kind of flipped on its head," he said. "These are people just like me from very diverse backgrounds in different life situations, but they are created in the image of God. They were loved by God, and I'm going to love them, too."
Even before the end of the summer, Vincent was grateful his prayers to serve were met through the internship.
"God answered that prayer with Inner City — not only with evangelism but also with observing Jesus' commands regarding clothing the naked and feeding the sick or feeding the hungry. Observing His commands in a very literal way, whether it was working at different shelters, different food pantries, working with children at day camps. It just was everything I had hoped for and so much more than I ever could have imagined."
The officer's radio squawked even more as dispatchers and first responders organized a synchronized response to more than a dozen shots that rang out. Although the shooting proved fatal for one man, the team — minus the college students who had already returned home — determined it was still safe to continue and so they did what they came for: pray.
"Even though it's awful and terrible and discouraging, at least I know we're at the right corner," Henkel said. "When I see a group of people selling drugs at a gas station, even though it's awful and I hate seeing it, at least I know this is the right corner for us to be at."
The recent shooting is an outlier for an outreach that has made a significant impact without any other episodes they consider dangerous.
"That was the only time," Henkel said. "All the other times, there might be somebody shot that night, but it's not close by. Most of the time, it's not even in our community."
Each summer, the team of 15 to 20 interacts prayerfully with 500 to 750 people, with as many as 25 accepting Christ. Each night concludes with communion.
"When I see a group of people selling drugs at a gas station, even though it's awful and I hate seeing it, at least I know this is the right corner for us to be at."
In many ways, the light infiltrated the darkness and it dispersed. Drug dealers no longer claim those corners. An empty liquor store stands at the site where, for two years, an 80-year-old prayer warrior staked her Friday night claim, asking God to shutter its operation. They now pray that God provides something new to benefit the community and eliminate the eyesore.
Over the years, there have been weeks of chaos and challenges, including signal outages and a car fire.
"But then the next Friday, seven people end up praying to receive Christ on that corner," Henkel said.
Another week, the team was ministering to neighbors as paramedics treated a bicyclist hit by a car right in front of the team.
"He didn't want to go to the hospital, so he gets out and sits down on our chairs," Henkel said. "We were giving him chips and water, and he ended up praying to receive Christ."
For Vincent, his most memorable Peace Campaign exchange came not from seeking out a stranger but from the boldness of a 16-year-old who came out of nowhere.
"I don't know what you guys are talking about but I feel like I need to hear this," the teen told Vincent.
By the end of their conversation, the teenager committed his life to Christ, a transformative moment allowing Vincent to witness the "power of the Holy Spirit literally draw people to us, not because we're cool people, not because we're the wisest people ever — especially not me being new at this and being new in my faith — but seeing God is moving and He is allowing us to see how He is working on this street corner."
Henkel agrees.
"There'll be tears streaming down one or two people's faces every Friday night just because the Holy Spirit is ministering to them in prayer."
Lori Arnold serves as the senior writer for Cru's inner-city ministry.
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