I am going to write a number of posts about an organization called Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ) over the next couple of weeks. HCZ is an important organization to interact with for at least two different reasons:
1.) They have a well articulated and powerful vision and philosophy for addressing impoverished neighborhoods in a comprehensive fashion. Decade after decade we collectively ask the question of how there can be so many ultra poor neighborhoods in a country as rich as ours, and decade after decade we fail to answer it. The approach at HCZ seems to be achieving outcomes that are not limited to just feel good stories. They have been analyzed by a variety of metrics from places like Harvard and journalists from the New York Times, and consistently people who may have initially been cynical walk away believing that this model and philosophy is genuinely facilitating community transformation.
2.) Another reason they are important to interact with is because President Obama has chosen them as the model by which he will emulate other anti-poverty approaches. He is personally convinced that their model works, and that it can be replicated in other under-served communities. Therefore he is going to launch 50 “Promise Neighborhoods” based on the model of HCZ in 20 cities across the country. The plan is to put substantial government funding behind these anti-poverty approaches. What HCZ stands for and the outcomes they are producing are going to have a national impact on all of us, so it would seem undebatable that it is important to interact with their model.
Future posts will get into their philosophy and strategy. For now I have attached an American Express commercial that aired during the Oscars profiling Geoffrey Canada, the founder and CEO of HCZ.
I am a lifelong Chicagoan, a pastor at River City Community Church, and an author who writes a lot about resisting and confronting white supremacy from a faith lens.
Our church was founded in January of 2003 in the west Humboldt Park neighborhood of Chicago, and is centered on the core values of worship, reconciliation, and neighborhood development. We long to see increased spiritual renewal as well as social and economic justice in the Humboldt Park neighborhood and entire city, demonstrating compassion and alleviating poverty as tangible expressions of the Kingdom of God. It is also through the gift of this faith community that I have learned to see the profound historical and spiritual impact of the stronghold of white supremacy, and where I have been challenged to broaden and deepen my understanding of discipleship in the hopes of becoming a serious enough Christ follower who is able to meaningfully participate with those who have risen up in defiance of this evil principality.
The lessons learned in this journey have been captured in a pair of books on race. The first, White Awake, explores the barriers that white people tend to face – white Christians specifically – when we attempt to awaken to and understand white supremacy through a faith lens. I spend a lot of time here addressing the internal defenses that are bound to go off when this journey is taken seriously, and I chart out a path for developing a resilient spirit that steadfastly moves towards truth, justice, and equity. The second, White Lies, further builds out the path for the white Christian who longs to actively participate in the resistance and confrontation of white supremacy. I spend a lot of time here exploring why it is so hard to tell the truth about race, as well as expose the lies that sustain it, within white, Christian, Bible-believing environments. I then propose nine practices that position us for engaging in this task.
On the personal front, my career started in the marketplace, as I was part of three dot.com startups in the 90’s. My vocational path shifted when I joined the staff of Willow Creek Community Church in 1998, and I spent five years working there. I started River City Community Church in January 2003 and have been happily serving here ever since. On the education front, my undergrad was in Business (Purdue University), my graduate degree in theology (Moody Bible Institute), and my doctoral degree in community development (Northern Seminary). On the family front, my wife is a Professor of Psychology, and we have two amazing children (Xander and Gabriella).
drdanielhill.com 
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