Carrie Jones came to St. Louis from Orlando in the fall of 1995 to attend Washington University and get degrees in architecture and engineering, because she likes to build things. Soon after she arrived, she volunteered to work with InterVarsity’s CityLights ministry and learned how to build a community, as part of a group of committed people focused on revitalizing a neighborhood. She has spent the last ten years working with the urban poor in St. Louis’ West End and is currently administrator for the Harambee Youth Training Partnership, a ministry of Restore St. Louis and New City Fellowship.
“I love being a part of this neighborhood and being able to partner with so many people,” she says. “I feel like this is exactly where I need to be.”
Since 1994, CityLights has been hosting hundreds of college students like Carrie, from campuses across the country, to help them learn how to be followers of Jesus. Gerry Chappeau, CityLights’ founder and co-director, defines followers of Jesus as believers who are ready to do more than just agree to a religious creed.
“The majority of Jesus’ teaching and discipling focused on the word following, an active word, which means more than believing or assenting,” he says. The people who responded did not leave their fishing boats and businesses to attend classes. They began by going with Jesus into the marketplace and out among the people. “Jesus spends a huge part of his 1,000 days of public ministry in what we now call fishing trips and backpacking.”
In the West End neighborhood of St. Louis, Gerry and his co-director wife, Sharie, teach college students to follow Jesus and give them the opportunity to “link hearts and hands together” by rehabbing abandoned houses, teaching disadvantaged children in summer school and living with local families. The experience they take back with them to college activates their leadership skills in their campus chapter as well as prepare them for leadership after they graduate. Close to 2,000 students have participated in the CityLights program, either during spring break or summer vacation. Thirty five of those students have decided to move to St. Louis and continue the work on a full-time basis.
Before beginning CityLights, Gerry worked in campus ministry with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. He remains on staff with InterVarsity. CityLights is also affiliated with a local congregation, New City Fellowship. “I’ve never been involved in something so effective,” Gerry says. “I see students choosing to serve and sacrifice in ways that astonish me.”
Carrie is just one example. “I don’t understand today why I love this neighborhood – to look at it from any outsider’s perspective, to see the broken buildings, the vacant lots, and the despair and hopelessness, and all of the years of destruction – and yet I love it,” she says. “I went into a widow’s home and found out that an elderly black woman had an awfully lot to teach me about life, and about God and relationships. God has put this place on my heart, and I don’t want to be anywhere else. I can’t leave.”
After 25 years of ministry with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, Gerry and Sharie Chappeau are stepping back to take a sabbatical this summer. Students who would’ve been working in the CityLights program have found places in other programs that partner with CityLights. Some of these programs are operated by CityLights alumni from years past who are still at work in the West End neighborhood and nearby in Hamilton Heights.
Gerry says he’s far from burnout. At 58 years of age he is still excited to be getting up for work each day. But physical fatigue does take a toll. More importantly, he’s looking ahead, laying a foundation for his final decade of ministry, and making plans for this December’s Urbana Student Missions Convention in St. Louis. (Some of the anticipated 25,000 Urbana attendees will spend one afternoon doing the kind of outreach that CityLights does in some of the poorer neighborhoods of St. Louis.)
“I think this is a wonderful generation of collegians,” Gerry says. “They want to see their lives make a difference.” As an example, he cites the overwhelming response among college students who volunteered for trips to the Gulf Coast area to help victims of hurricane Katrina. “Why?” he asks. “Because we are made in the image of God and that’s the kind of God He is.”
The interview with Gerry Chappeau is this week’s InterVarsity podcast.
