Dear Fellow Fourth Church Members and Friends,

If you have looked at the Fourth Church calendar lately, you know that the campus and our Zoom gatherings are a buzz of activity this summer!

The Gratz Center is alive with children and teachers of Chicago Lights Summer Day engaging in six weeks of creative academic, arts, and enrichment programming.

The Center for Life and Learning just kicked off the summer session for adults 60 and over, with a full range of fitness opportunities and special topic presentations.

Our annual Music by the Fountain outdoor concert series is filling the Michigan Avenue courtyard with the wonderful sounds of jazz and cabaret.

There has been a Day School preschool camp and a Vacation Bible School “journey” to ancient Egypt with Moses — both with plenty of crafts, songs, and stories. And our Junior High and Senior High youth traveled to St. Louis and Paris respectively to work with communities there.

A Fourth Church contingent marched in the Pride Parade. Bible studies continue to meet. Knitting and Crocheting keeps creating. Widen Our Welcome (WOW) LGBTQIA+ and TwentiesThirties gather for fellowship.

And, of course, we come together for worship each Sunday morning. 

Behind the scenes, the Member Census team is hard at work supporting our census efforts.

To all who have responded to our Member Census so far, thank you! Knowing who Fourth Church is today as a community is central to our mission going forward. It will shape our long-range plan, and it will inform the Mission Study that is a necessary first step in calling a new Senior Pastor.

In the weeks ahead we will be reaching out by phone to any member household that has not yet responded to the census. These calls will come from our longtime calling partners J. Milito & Associates, and their calls will show as originating from a 616 area code.

The calls will be brief, and if you receive a call, we ask that you please take it to help us ensure we have up-to-date information for you.

The Interim Pastor Nominating Committee (IPNC) continues to meet weekly as they search for an Interim Pastor to help us discern our call for the future and make room for change where it might be needed prior to calling a new Pastor.

That committee has gathered names from four sources: the congregation; the Presbyterian Church (USA) matching service; the Executive Presbyter of the Chicago Presbytery, Craig Howard; and the committee’s networking with PCUSA leaders.

The result is an extensive list of individuals, which the committee is working through to identify possible Interim Pastor candidates. Already the IPNC has begun initial discussions with some of them.

As they do so, the committee is committed to making the most appropriate and thoughtful decision for this congregation while doing so with a sense of urgency.

Also part of preparing for our future is our long-range planning work. Last month the Long-Range Planning Task Force met with current congregational leaders, the Senior Leadership Team, and pastoral staff to explore strategic opportunities and gather information before engaging the congregation, administrative staff, guests, and partners to co-create a three– to five–year plan for Fourth Church ministries.

Since then, the consultants working with the task force have begun conducting individual conversations with clergy and other members of the staff as well as community partners. That gathering of information will be followed by engagement with the broader congregation.

Watch for details later this summer about how the task force will invite and receive congregational input to inform both our long-range plan and the Ministry Information Form needed to call our next Pastor. 

If you have questions about the long-range planning work, please email longrange@fourthchurch.org.

While Session does not meet in July or August, the board took action on several items earlier in the summer.

In June Session voted to annually fly the Pride flag on our flagpole in the Michigan Avenue courtyard during Pride Month.

They also approved annually flying on the flagpole a Martin Luther King Jr. flag on the weekend of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday and on the anniversary of his death; a Juneteenth flag on Juneteenth; and a flag celebrating Black History Month throughout February. In all instances the flags will be flown below the American flag in keeping with the Flag Code.

Also in June a team from the Chicago Lights Board, working in collaboration with Fourth Church World Mission and Social Justice, presented to Session a “Proposal for Affordable Housing as a Mission Imperative for Chicago Lights and Fourth Presbyterian Church.”

Session enthusiastically endorsed the principles and strategic aims of the Chicago Lights Permanent Supportive Housing Development initiative. They also affirmed Fourth Church working collaboratively with Chicago Lights and proposed partner organizations to determine the project’s feasibility as a shared ministry for Chicago Lights and the church.

Watch for more about this exciting and important initiative as conversations and assessments take place!

Above we noted some of the things that have been and are going on at Fourth Church this summer. We also have two upcoming opportunities we want to make sure you have on your calendar — opportunities to connect with one another and Fourth Church in these weeks.

We’re having a picnic in the Michigan Avenue courtyard following worship on Sunday, August 13. Watch for details and plan to join us!

We will also be having a Deep Listening Dinner at the church on Friday, July 28 at 6:00 p.m. The dinner is free, but RSVPS are required to ensure we have an appropriate amount of food and enough seats at the tables. If you are interested in joining in this time of getting to know one another better, RSVP to Simon Crow.

Whether it is through the picnic or dinner, through worship in person or online, or any of many other ways we connect with one another and the mission and ministry of Fourth Church, we are grateful you are here!

Wishing you the blessings of this summer season,

Arlene Faulk, Patsy Habicht, Jared Light, Jim Kulich, and Allison Youngblood

Congregational Leadership Resource Team

transition@fourthchurch.org