Chicago, Illinois / Together Chicago
An African Missionary Walks Into a Chicago Neighborhood
Rev Tom Otieno was sent by the Anglican Church through Together Chicago, a Christ Awakening reciprocal mission into one of the most fractured neighborhoods in North America. He was not a community organizer. He was not a violence-reduction expert. He was an African pastor on mission in the West.
What happened when African clergy walked into the room was something decades of Western-led programs had not produced. Leaders who would not speak to each other began to listen. Rival African-American gangs entered peace talks facilitated by men from across the world, carrying no political agenda and no institutional interest, only the reconciling power of the gospel.
That is reciprocal mission in practice. It began because leaders in Africa trusted leaders in Christ Awakening, and leaders in Christ Awakening trusted leaders in Chicago.
The Work in Action
What Happens When the Body Works Together
Christ Awakening does not manage programs. It catalyzes relationships that produce outcomes no single organization could have designed.
The Together Chicago story is one example. The Tafakari Music Studio in Kibera is another. The Diocesan Office Park in Karen, Nairobi is a third. In each case, the mechanism is the same: trusted leadership, genuine friendship, and a model of mission that refuses to run in only one direction.
The same dynamic is at work in the formation of new Anglican partnerships, in the connection of campus ministry leaders to the global church, and in every gathering where a leader from one tradition discovers that a leader from a completely different world is working on exactly the same thing.
