An Army of Normal Folks - Corey Brooks: The Rooftop Pastor (Pt 1)
Episode Date: March 26, 2024When a naked and bloody victim of gang violence ran into his Sunday service, Pastor Corey Brooks committed to staying on the rooftop of the motel that was the headquarters of this nonsense until he ha...d enough money to buy it. 94 days later he succeeded and today his $38 million community center is being built there. The Pastor, along with his nonprofit Project Hood, has improved their neighborhood of Woodlawn from Chicago's 3rd most violent one to the 15th. And they're just getting started.Support the show: https://www.normalfolks.us/premiumSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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So yeah, one Sunday, the gang, somebody beat this guy up so bad and he ran into our congregate,
our church was jam packed.
He ran in the lobby, butt naked, bleeding.
He had gotten on Sunday morning during services.
They had stripped him.
We were like, okay, we got gotta do something.
Welcome to an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney.
I'm a normal guy.
I'm a husband, I'm a father, I'm an entrepreneur,
and I've been a football coach in inner city Memphis.
In the last part, it unintentionally led to an Oscar
for the film about our team.
It's called Undefeated.
Y'all, I believe our country's
problems will never be solved by a bunch of fancy people in nice suits talking
big words that nobody understands on CNN and Fox, but rather an army of normal
folks, us. Just you and me deciding, hey, I can help. That's what Pastor Cory
Brooks, the voice we just heard, has done.
Cory started a church in the third most violent
neighborhood of Chicago.
And the work of his church and nonprofit,
Project Hood, has helped improve the neighborhood
so that it's now the 15th most violent one.
And they're just getting started.
I can't wait for you to meet Cory right after these brief messages from our generous sponsors.
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or wherever you get your podcasts. So coming to Memphis is a blessing. So I'm glad to be here. It's almost a homecoming of sorts.
Almost. I'm about 60 miles from Memphis.
I was born in a little town called Union City, Tennessee,
but we actually lived in Kenton, Tennessee, population then of about 1,500.
That's up around Obion and McKenzie.
Yeah, Obion County, that's right. I'm an Obion County kid.
Yeah, so home of the white squirrel.
It's one of the only places in America that I know of that has white squirrels
I tell everybody all the time that I didn't even know squirrels were different colors and I can remember when we moved to Indiana
My first little fight on the playground was about a squirrel
I was arguing with this kid. Hey this squirrel. That's not a squirrel. He's a brown little thing
I know what it was. I thought it was a rat or something
Yeah up there. They've got this albino gene in the squirrels This squirrel, that's not a squirrel. He uses a brown little thing. I didn't know what it was. I thought it was a rat or something.
Yeah, up there they've got this albino gene in the squirrel.
Yes.
How long, you grew up there, right?
So yeah, I was born in Union City, Tennessee.
And we moved to Muncie, Indiana when I was about 10 or 11.
And so I grew up in Muncie, Indiana.
And that's where I went to high school.
That's where I went to college.
Ball State? Ball State University. Am I right about that that Cardinals. Yes, sir. Believe it or not
I have a friend that played football for Ball State. So yeah, so years ago. I don't think he was any good
So no count talk about but that's how I know Ball State's up there and David Letterman David Letterman
Yeah, he's the most famous graduate of Ball State University David and he grew up somewhere around there. I think Indianapolis.
Oh, that's right.
I think you're right.
That's right.
All right, so mom, dad, tell me about it.
My dad, I didn't really know my dad too well.
I tell people I probably saw my dad about five times.
He was from Union City.
And even though I lived 16 miles in Kenton,
I didn't have a relationship with him
and didn't know him very well.
My mom just recently died about a year and a half ago
of cancer, but she was a great woman
and worked really hard, made sure I went to church
every Sunday, and you know, even when I didn't wanna go,
she made me go, and that was part of the deal.
If you stay in her house, you gotta get up
and go to church on Sunday morning, and I'm glad she did. Even though I didn't
like it, I'm glad she did.
How many of you were there?
Three of us.
And all three of you were going to be in the pew on Sunday?
All three of us. Yeah, all three of us are going to be in the pew. There's about a 12-year
gap between me and my younger brothers. So I was kind of like the babysitter as well.
So did your mom remarry?
My mom remarried to my stepfather who got addicted to drugs, really wasn't doing very
good when I was a teenager growing up.
He wasn't a good man, but thankfully he got saved and got a relationship with the Lord,
changed his life, and he's been drug-free now probably for about 30 years.
But your experience growing up with him was he was a drug addict.
Yeah, experience growing up with him was horrible.
He was a drug addict, always a bunch of drama in our house.
So I remember very well.
And dysfunction and all that goes along with it.
Dysfunction, drama, heartache, hardship, all that goes along with all of that stuff.
So you know that on a personal basis.
I know it on a personal basis. I know it on a personal basis.
I think that's, I don't think I know,
that's one of the reasons why my heart is so sensitive
toward individuals, especially in Chicago,
who are in those kinds of situations.
If you come to our church, you'll find me always
around the kids or people who come from similar backgrounds.
So I guess my heart is just kind of turned that way.
I understand.
My dad left when I'm home when I was four.
Mom was married and divorced five times.
And, you know, the vast majority of the things I've done
and work in the community has been with kids
who primarily come from that situation.
I think we're, it's odd,
but I think we're drawn to our own trauma.
Absolutely.
I think there's a passage of scripture in Romans 8.28,
it's my favorite.
It talks about how we know that all things work together
for good to the Lord,
who are called according to his purpose.
And even, I believe now,
even all the trauma, heartache, hardship,
even though it hurt,
and even though it was a tough experience,
God used it to my advantage.
I think my calling is very sensitive toward the people that I deal with because of my
upbringing.
I think that only makes sense.
But your upbringing, you may have been in church every Sunday, but you weren't a choir
boy through Saturday.
No, sir.
So tell me about kind of who you were as a teen
and kind of coming.
So, you know, as a teenager,
I knew I was called to preach at like 14.
Now, I read that.
Now, how the heck do you know at 14 years old
you're quote called to preach,
when you ain't calling yourself nothing but a street kid.
Well, when you go to church all the time,
you have some idea of, at least I believe,
you have some idea of a sense of purpose
and calling that's nudging you, that's pushing you.
Some people would call it conscious.
I was very aware of my spiritual conscious. And so at 14, I kind of felt like, I think I'm supposed
to be a preacher. But the problem, I despise preachers. I did not want to be a preacher. I hate it.
You know, why'd you just ask? Cat-Lac driving, chicken eating. That was by concept, my mindset.
These preachers had these big cat-lacs. Oh, they just said, who's Brian? That was by concept, by mindset.
These preachers had these big Cadillacs.
Oh, just a second.
Who's Brian?
Oh, Brian is my assistant, our chief of staff.
He grew up in our church since he was about 13, 14.
All right.
Well, if you all hear a background laugh, Brian's over here.
Oh, yeah, that's Brian.
So, hey, Brian.
What's up?
Welcome to the show, Brian.
Yeah.
Usually I got to put up with Alex doing the background. So I got two of you now
So like I said, I got Alex you got Brian. Right, right, right. So if you'll hear a background lab, right?
So now you can talk to a lot of
Yeah, both underpaid and both irritating when we're trying to have a good interview so hush. All right, so
You didn't like preachers because of chicken eating. That's
all I got out of what you just said.
Well, you know, that was my mindset. I thought, you know, all these preachers, they just wanna
have these events with food and drive Cadillacs. It was a bad perception of what I thought
a preacher was.
Well, but let's be... Look...
They weren't doing much in the community, and so I thought, you know...
And we are very candid.
Yeah.
I mean, I gotta be careful because I'm a white dude, and if I don't say this properly, people
are gonna color me the wrong way.
But it's not just a perception. In urban areas, there are some situations where pastoring a church is more of a profession
than a calling.
And that's what you're talking about.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
And I just did not want to be a preacher.
And so I did everything I could to rebel against that whole mindset, that whole concept.
So 14 to 19, I was partying, drinking, sexing, anything I could do to like not be in tune
with church.
Still in Muncie.
Yeah, still in Muncie, Indiana.
Smoking weed?
Smoking weed.
Although I tell my son, I didn't do that much weed smoking
I did a lot of beer drinking now got it especially when I found out my junior year
I think it's my junior or sophomore year
I was a real skinny kid and they told me I needed to gain some weight and I remember seeing
Manu bowl in the jet magazine on a beer diet and they was using it to gain weight. That's all the excuse I need
But the chicken would have helped too.
The chicken eating would have helped tremendously,
chicken and beer.
So in Memphis, the man who I would say
was maybe the most influential pastor in my life
is a man named Tim Russell.
He's from the Northeast, he's passed now.
He died in COVID and I loved
him. Still love him. I still have his text messages on my phone that I refuse to erase.
And sometimes when I'm in a bad spot, I will pull up his texts and just read them as encouragement.
I love that man. Anyway, he was president of Geneva College at one time.
RL And he came to Memphis. He became an associate pastor at our church, but he came to Memphis
specifically originally to be the chair of the Memphis Center for Urban Theological Seminary called MCUTS.
And what it was was a bunch of folks got together and said, you know what, there's a lot of
really well-intentioned churches and pastors in their cities, but a lot of those guys had
in those churches hadn't been afforded a true seminary education.
And so there's a lot of preaching from the Old Testament. There's a lot
of fire and brimstone, but there's a little bit of theology missing in some of it. And we don't want
to down them. We want to help them. So they started this Memphis Center for Urban Theological
Seminary where they offered opportunity for urban preachers to come in and get true
opportunity for urban preachers to come in and get true theological seminary training to then go back with their churches to hopefully grow a Christian narrative beyond what their
limitations had been.
And in large part, it was pretty successful.
But when I hear you talk about what you were put off by, it sounds something like some of that.
Yeah, yeah. It was something like that. That whole idea and concept that here you had these
guys who were in the community, but they weren't really, at least the ones I saw at that time,
they weren't really helping the community until I came across a pastor that I love to this
day very dearly. He has dementia now, but he's still my pastor and he treated me like
a son. His name is Willie J. Jackson, who also drove a Cadillac. But he was, man, reverent
and loved the Lord and loved people. And when I saw that, I was like, okay.
That's who I wanted to be when I was thinking 14 years old.
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We now return to Pastor Brooks graduating from Ball State with a degree in political
science.
He thought that he also wanted to be a lawyer, but in his first year of law school, he realized
that he really needed to be in seminary.
And after graduating from Dallas Theological, Pastor Brooks was off to the races with his
new calling.
So I started pastoring in a little-b small church in Richmond, Indiana.
I was there for an internship and over the summer and the pastor died.
So while I was there, the pastor died and I had every intention on going back to Dallas
and they came to me and was like, hey, would you be our pastor?
You know, and I was like, oh wow.
So I thought about it and I made the commitment.
So I was like, I might as well.
So at 22 years old, 23, getting ready to turn 23,
I started pastoring the Mount Moriah Baptist Church
in Richmond, Indiana.
Not enough experience, not enough wisdom,
but tip the rest.
It's funny, at 23 years old-
They let me practice on them.
At 23 years old, I got my first head football coaching job.
Oh, well, you understand.
I showed up as a football coach
and two weeks before the first game,
the head coach said, I'm out, deuces,
I got a better job.
Wow.
And they look at me and said, you're it.
So when I say not enough experience or wisdom to run a church, I didn't have the experience
of wisdom to run a football team either.
So you fake it.
You fake it till you make it.
And that's exactly what I was doing.
But you grow up quick.
Grow up quick.
And whenever I get a chance to go back there, I always tell them how much I appreciate them
letting me grow up in front of them and let me make all kinds of mistakes
and let me be arrogant and teaching me and loving me through all of that was a great
experience.
And then when I got married, it was even a greater experience because they loved me and
my wife dearly.
Was it an all-black church?
It was an all-black church.
We had a few white members, but it was predominantly black church.
I asked that because I said to you before we got on, I think it's reprehensible that we call
ourselves Christians and are called to be Christ-like, and we allow Sunday to be the
most segregated day in our country. I don't mean that as a cut to you being in an all black church no more than I grew up
in an all white church.
It's so infrequent that we actually talk about really diverse churches and it's unfortunate.
It's very unfortunate.
Even though I passed on the South Side of Chicago, I agree with you wholeheartedly. One of the things that
it pains me dearly is that we don't have more experiences where we come together as people
of different races. I would love to pastor multiracial church. Even to this point now,
we're considering trying to have... We got all these Venezuelan migrants who are right in our neighborhood and they come to us every day for help. And so we're helping as many as we can. So
we are, we're contemplating, Hey, maybe we should have a Spanish speaking worship service because
they're now starting to come to our church and now they're listening to me, but they don't even
speak English for the most part. So, you know, it pains me that there's so
much segregation in church and that I wish there were more experiences where all of us come
together because I think that's the height of what Christianity is really supposed to be about.
Pete So, you leave there and you go to?
D-Winey I leave Richmond, Indiana, and I go to the most traditional Baptist church in all of the world.
West Point Baptist. West Point Baptist Church, the Bastard of the National Baptist Church.
I'm about 26, Daniel. So you're 26, you show up in Chicago and you go to this real traditional
Baptist church called West Point Baptist. Tell me about it. So, you know, West Point Baptist Church,
it was made up of a lot of teachers, lawyers,
more of a, in the words of my grandfather from Tennessee,
he would call it a high cotton church.
One of them high cotton churches.
He's shaking his head.
See, that's some Southern stuff, brother.
He doesn't know what it is, he doesn't know.
Where are you from?
I'm from Chicago, but my family's from Memphis and Mississippi.
Oh, for good.
Well, he knows all about high cotton.
Yeah, okay, go ahead.
So, you know, I'm at this high cotton church in Chicago.
It is so funny to hear you say that.
And I'm not fitting in too good.
I'm not fitting in too good.
You know, they loved me at first, but I really had a heart
toward reaching people who were unchurched.
The church, ironically, was on the edge of the projects.
A lot of, I found out later that a lot of people
who probably had grown up in the projects
went off to college, become professional,
but they still came to this church.
And so it was made up of an older congregation.
I really started going after the young people
in the neighborhood and the church was growing
by leaps and bounds.
But even though it was growing,
it was such an internal fight going on
that I tried to shield people who were new to church.
I tried to shield them away from new to church. I tried to shield them
away from it, but it was obvious. Now, they felt like we were taking over their church.
Darrell Bock They didn't want you tearing up the neighborhood.
Lennon Johnson Yeah, they didn't want me tearing up the neighborhood.
Darrell Bock They didn't want me tearing up the neighborhood
and they didn't want JoJo and Ray Ray up in their church.
Lennon Johnson Well, ironically, I mean, in all candor, that's prejudice.
Yeah, without a doubt.
But it's economic prejudice.
It's economic prejudice,
because we're not talking about a racial thing here.
Educational and economic prejudice.
Exactly.
Which I'm so glad you used that phrase,
because that exists,
and that ain't got nothing to do with white and black folks.
Yeah, you know, I tell people all the time that I really
think the biggest prejudices that we face today
is not color, but economics and education.
Yeah, culture, we're so divided because of those things
more so than color and I think we find, you know, you'll find poor blacks
and poor whites saying and poor people period saying the same things. So we know after hearing
this that you leave and we'll go to where you leave, but we're going to take a detour real quick
since you're a political science. Okay. All right. One of my big beliefs is that Fox, CNN, CNBC, Newsmax, all of those folks are
incented by an enormous amount of wealth and power to craft narratives that divide us.
And I think DC is full of a lot of lobbies, politicians. I mean, New York and DC is the cradle of finance and power, throw in Chicago and LA, but New
York and DC are the leaders of the pack.
That's where we get our media, that's where we get our news from.
That's where we get our media, that's where we get our news from, that's where we get our policy from.
And it's also piled with an enormous amount of influence, power, and wealth.
But narratives that come out of there are also crafted to divide us, scare us, to convince
us that if you don't side with me on Fox or CNN and you don't side with me
on Republican or Democrats, this is what the big bag ugly people on the other side are
going to do to ruin your world.
Right.
That happens in the church too.
Oh, without a doubt.
It happens all the time.
I think people are afraid of differences and we magnify
those differences so that people become even more afraid so that they can stay the way
they are and people don't have to grow and they don't have to build relationships. But
I think the more meaningful way is to have dialogue, to have discussion. And I think
when we, even when we're on the left or the right whether Republican or Democrat if we have meaningful dialogue meaningful
discussion regardless of whether we're Baptist or Presbyterian if we sit down
and talk we're gonna find out we have way more things in common than we then
we do not in common and I think sometimes we need to just let's focus on
the things that we have in common.
We don't have to fight about every single thing. And just because we disagree on a couple
of things, that doesn't mean we can't come together and unify and solve some of the issues
of the world that we all want to solve. And I think somehow, some way, we got to continue
to try to fight to bring people together, regardless of...
What's your time at West Point Baptist Church was a microcosm of that narrative that was
rejected.
Yes, it was rejected totally.
The fact that you could be on the South Side of Chicago and not be welcome to reach out
to people who are disenfranchised and disadvantaged and impoverished by black people
making you feel that way,
I had never witnessed that or experienced that.
And to see it, I was dumbfounded.
I was amazed that you could be in a black community
and have elites not want to deal with certain individuals,
but that's exactly what it was.
And I think that experience has helped to craft some of the way
I think about certain elites, black elites.
That is really, really profound.
We'll be right back.
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which means he's also back in our ears on The Daily Show Ears Edition podcast. We'll be right back. and the team of correspondents and contributors. The podcast also has content you can't get anywhere else,
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Listen to The Daily Show,
Ears Edition on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
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Hi, I'm Martha Stewart,
and we're back with a new season of my podcast.
This season will be even more revealing and more personal, with more entrepreneurs, more
trailblazers, more live events, more Martha, and more questions from you.
I'm talking to my cosmetic dermatologist, Dr. Dan Belkin, about the secrets behind my
skincare.
Walter Isaacson about the geniuses who changed the world.
Encore Jane about creating a billion dollar startup.
Dr. Elisa Pressman about the five basic strategies to help parents raise good humans.
Florence Fabricant about the authenticity in the world of food writing.
Be sure to tune in to season two of the Martha Stewart podcast.
Listen and subscribe to the Martha Stewart podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
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First, drown it with a bucket of water, then stir it with a shovel.
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I gotta tell a story.
Yes, go ahead.
I'm going to do the Reader's Digest.
Lisa likes shrimp.
I was on the coast on a business trip.
She told me to go get some shrimp, put it on ice and bring it home because we're gonna have a
shrimp boil. Coast of Memphis, five hours. So I went to Target, got a thing and I went got some
ice, put it on there and I went down to the docks to wait on the shrimp boats. You ever been on the
docks in a wharf? Yes. You ever been there, Brian? You ever been on docks and a wharf?
Yes.
It stinks.
Yes, absolutely.
Fish guts.
Yeah.
Stagnant water.
It's putrid.
It makes you want to vomit.
It smells so bad.
Well, I found something that stinks worse than the wharf.
The fishermen.
The boats show up and I'm waiting on my shrimp
and here they are.
They've been out since sun up, sundown coming up.
They've been hit with sulfur, sweat, toothpaste
and toothbrushes are more of a suggestion than requirement.
Done smoked two packs of Marlboro Reds
and they're repulsive.
And so I'm at this repulsive place
where all these repulsive people,
but my wife told me to get shrimp.
I do it, I say something, I get shrimp.
So I'm headed home, I'm about Jackson, Mississippi, which is about
halfway between the docks in Memphis, and it dawns on me. That's exactly who Christ
surrounded Himself.
Wow.
Yeah.
Now, what are we doing sitting in high cotton when there's people around us starving?
Yeah. And that's kind of how I felt in that church.
All of these people are around, they're hurting, they're living in the projects.
There was so much violence and so much chaos, but here we were in this church and everybody
was happy just staying like they were and not reaching out to individuals.
I couldn't stand it.
And your heart was there because that was your reality of your upbringing.
Absolutely.
So you move.
Yeah, so I move. And you don't see it at first, but as you get older, like I am now, you look back
over the trauma as your childhood and you look back to
where your heart is bent toward,
you're like, man, thank you, Lord.
And I'm glad that God placed me in Chicago
because I tell people all the time,
I could have easily gone,
when you come around to Dallas and Grace Theological,
you could go anywhere in the country.
You can go to the suburb church and have a nice picket fence
and grow your family and have a nice place.
But I thank God every day that he placed me
on the South side of Chicago.
And people, they think I grew up there.
They think it's such a perfect fit.
And I thank God because those are the individuals
that I love to minister to.
Those are the individuals that I love to be around. Those are the individuals that I love to be around.
I can remember my wife used to get so angry.
She's like, why are you around all these guys and gangs
all the time, it's just a bunch of gangsters around.
But that's who I felt led the minister to.
And that's who God put me in front of.
And I'm thankful for it.
So West Point Baptist, you went to?
So I left West, I said, you know what?
I'm not gonna fight them any longer.
Let me let them have their church.
I'm gonna plant a church.
At Dallas, one of the first things I remembered,
they had a missions week.
I didn't even know what missions was.
And they had a missions week,
and during missions week, I went by this table and it was about
church planning. And I never heard of church planning. I heard of church splits, church
fights, not church planning. And so, so I would read about church planning, study about
church planning. I was like, this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to plan a church.
But when I got called to Mount Moriah and I got called to West Point, I was like, this is what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna plant a church. But when I got called to Mount Moriah
and I got called to West Point, I thought, you know,
that's what I'm supposed to do because at that time,
I never, I didn't know any black pastors
who were planting churches.
But then when I had that experience at West Point,
I was like, you know what, I'm gonna do
what I learned at Dallas.
I'm gonna plant a church and I'm gonna try it.
So I followed the little steps.
I got me a little group together,
called some of my buddies who were in Chicago,
said, hey, I'm gonna start a church.
I talked about five people who were at the church with me
and secretly told them what I was gonna do.
We started meeting as a little small group.
And before you knew it, the little
small group, we turned it into a church called New Beginnings Church of Chicago. We started
meeting in a school and I was able to go after those same people that they didn't want in
their church and it instantly started growing like crazy.
I've always wondered, how does a pastor feed his family when he's planting a church? Because there's not a whole lot of people
giving offerings and tithes and everything else.
Do you starve when you're doing it?
Well, no, you starve a little bit.
You don't have as much money.
So I did work, you know, I worked at Athlete's Foot
for like a year.
My wife was a teacher.
That was my question.
So you're actually working a job while you're also building a church. I was a teacher, I was a teacher, I was a teacher, I was a teacher, I was a teacher, I was a teacher, I was a teacher, I was a teacher,
I was a teacher, I was a teacher,
I was a teacher, I was a teacher,
I was a teacher, I was a teacher,
I was a teacher, I was a teacher,
I was a teacher, I was a teacher,
I was a teacher, I was a teacher,
I was a teacher, I was a teacher,
I was a teacher, I was a teacher,
I was a teacher, I was a teacher,
I was a teacher, I was a teacher,
I was a teacher, I was a teacher,
I was a teacher, I was a teacher,
I was a teacher, I was a teacher,
I was a teacher, I was a teacher,
I was a teacher, I was a teacher,
I was a teacher, I was a teacher,
I was a teacher, I was a teacher,
I was a teacher, I was a teacher, I was a teacher, I was a teacher, I was a teacher, I was a teacher, I was a teacher, I was a teacher, I was money. And I've been good financially.
God blessed me to.
So you were able to.
Yeah, the weather and I budgeted.
Let me just say that.
I know how to budget.
And we knew how to sustain ourselves
and survive off a little.
We didn't have a lot and we thank God for what we had,
but we didn't need a lot at that time.
Got it.
And so New Beginnings Church, November 2000, in the heart of one of the most dangerous
neighborhoods called Woodlawn.
Tell me about Woodlawn.
So Chicago is made up early history of the mobs, the mafia.
You got all the mafia people, but not only mafia in Chicago, that's where a
lot of gangs originated.
So the Woodlawn area on the south side of Chicago is where all the gangs in Chicago
started.
Specifically-
You mean back in the 60s?
Like in the Italian guy days?
Yeah, the 60s.
In the 60s, the Woodlawn area is where black gangs started.
Oh, OK.
So I was thinking Wise Guys.
You're saying the black gangs.
Yeah.
But before that, Al Capone's home was in the Woodlawn area.
Wow.
So as those Italian brothers moved out and blacks moved in,
in the 60s, blacks, in the late 60s,
that's where gangs, a lot of gangs started
right in Woodlawn.
The Black Peacestones, they started there.
The Gangster Disciples, the Black Disciples,
all of those top gangs on the South Side of Chicago
started in Woodlawn.
And you plop a church down.
Yeah, we said, okay, where's the roughest area in Chicago
on the South side?
And everybody was like, Woodlawn, Woodlawn, Woodlawn.
And at that time I hadn't,
I wasn't real familiar with Woodlawn,
even though, cause I was in the Bronze Bay area.
I knew a little bit about it.
And we started going, visiting it.
And I started telling people I wanted to plant a church.
I went and talked to the alderman in that area
who's now a member of our present church.
And I told her I wanted to put a church
in her neighborhood and she was really receptive
and she showed me some buildings
and none of them really appealed.
And then I met this gentleman,
his name was Herman Roberts.
He was one of the first black hotel owners in Chicago and he had this place called
the Roberts Show Club and Lounge and he had this old skating rink and the skating rink
was horrible. I mean by this time, by this time this skating rink was a dump.
Where had it been emptied?
It had been empty for like five years and they were having, I don't know if you're familiar
with it, but they were having what they call rave parties.
Oh yeah.
And so the white kids from the suburbs would come with the black kids in Woodlawn and they
would have these rave parties at this abandoned building.
That's what this skating room was.
How did that work out, I wonder?
It was, from what I hear, it was a very crazy scene.
I bet it was.
So Mr. Roberts owned that building.
So would they just break in these buildings without people knowing and just have like yeah, they just have a weekend parties
They do them now they have you know warehouses in Chicago where they have big parties and things like that raves
Rave pop-up raves or pop-up parties. I don't know what they call them now, but that's what was going on
That's what was in this place. Yes, and you bought we bought it. So
Everybody was like did it even have wire left in it? Was it stripped of copper and everything?
It was no plumbing. It was no wires. It was horrible. I mean, horrible.
But cheap?
But cheap. Well, it really wasn't real cheap. Mr. Roberts was a... He was different. So
he made us pay $500,000 for the building and the property.
But our church, we had saved up that amount of money, so we were able to acquire it and
purchase it.
But if it was a skating rink and bowling alley type thing, it was probably a rather large
footprint.
Oh yeah, it was large.
For Chicago, it was a very large footprint.
It had parking.
It had space. It's 50,000 square feet, and Chicago is a very large footprint. It had parking, it had space, 50,000 square feet in Chicago is a lot.
And then to have some parking, that's even remarkable.
So we were able to get that building and it was a mess and we gutted the whole building.
We volunteered, our church volunteered, everybody volunteered. It took
us months and many, many dumpsters to empty that whole building out. Then we started, you know,
trying to raise money to fix it up. And we finally were able to convince, even how we convinced the
bank to give us a loan was amazing. But we finally convinced the bank to give us a loan and we fixed
it up. And now we thankfully we paid that loan off
and we're debt free.
What was, do you remember the date
of the first real live church service?
So the first live worship service would have been 2007.
Wow.
So yeah, 2000.
So we started-
That's not that long ago.
No, no.
So we started our church in 2000, 2007.
We were in the skating rink.
The skating rink.
Yeah, we were having a church in the former skating rink.
Having a Jesus rave.
Having a Jesus rave.
It was called Route 66,
the skating rink was called Route 66.
And so everybody was familiar with the skating rink
and everybody was amazed
that we were able to turn it into a church. Did people from the neighborhood start
showing up? That's what happened. People, because everybody knew the building,
people really started coming just to see, you know, what did they do with the
skating rink, you know, out of curiosity. And then once they came out of curiosity
or invitation, they really liked what we were doing and we were really focusing
on trying to reach
unchurched people, people who had normally either been rejected by church or turned off by church
or just totally left church. That's the group that we were like. You as a kid didn't like pastors.
Absolutely.
And that concludes part one of my conversation with Pastor Cory Brooks and you do not want to miss part two
that's now available to listen to as Cory's
Transformative work and woodlawn is just getting started
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