LUCY RIDER MEYER HUMANITARIAN AWARD BANQUET

            When Jim Jones called several weeks ago to tell me that ChildServ intended to give me this award, I said that it made me feel like an old building in the Loop that is being granted landmark status because it is still standing. It was my way of saying, “Thank you, thank you very much.”  It is an honor also to be united with Terry Mazany of the Chicago Community Trust and all of the crucial work they do in the city and Karen Atwood of Blue Cross/Blue Shield and the services they provide to the families of our community.

            The Lucy Rider Meyer Humanitarian Award – it suggests that I have offered leadership in some form that has made things better for some people. I am humbled by the suggestion. When I entered the ministry in the late 1960’s, 44 years ago, I wanted to change the world.  You may have noticed since that time just how resistant the world has been. However, I never have given up hope.

            But leadership takes many forms. There are those who lead from the front. They get out ahead of everyone else and blaze the trail. Lucy Rider Meyer was one of those people. She led women into the forefront of the professional ministry of the church. She placed children on the knee of Jesus and dared the church to tell them to go away. She humbled the powers-that-be to take to heart the needs of children, of families, of households, of schools, of hospitals, especially of children and families with the greatest need.  That is what makes this award so special… not what I have done, but what she did to lead the way.

            There are others who tend to lead, not from the front, but from the middle, constantly prodding, cajoling, chastening, encouraging, insisting, always keeping the heat on low boil without boiling over, so that together we as the church can do some good. I tend to lead from the middle more than the front. So, it is especially gratifying to me tonight that you have picked me out of the crowd to stand before you. After my first year at the Chicago Temple the chairperson of the Staff-Parish Relations Committee took me aside and said, “You know, Phil, when you first got here we thought that you were asleep at the wheel. But you actually know what you are doing.”  That is the glory of leading from the middle!

            At times I have made an attempt to lead from the front. I mean, you have to work hard on your own to make it into the Chicago Police Department’s Red Squad file of the early 1970’s as a subversive while serving a church of 200 in Apple River 150 miles west of Chicago. What a place to mount a revolution! I might have done it except that the local radicals had to take a break every morning and every evening to milk the cows.

            I got some notoriety in Rockford for fomenting a public debate over homosexuality and the church, though I did not think that I was doing or saying anything that was newsworthy. At the University of Chicago I got a reputation for being a kind of smart-aleck by suggesting that the university had given its humanitarian award to Robert McNamara because Idi Amin had gone into hiding. In Wilmette when I got elected to the library board I imagined myself championing the cause of the First Amendment right to read any book that you wanted, but censorship
was never an issue. Instead, I advocated behind the scenes to be sure that we conformed to the new ADA access laws. In Chicago, well, it is about time for me to get another call from some TV station asking me to comment on the state legislature’s vote, up or down, on a gambling bill. That is my unspectacular history of leading from the middle.

            But much more satisfying to me over the years has been what the congregations have done while I was with them. Taking my lead from the middle, people seemed to catch glimpse of a vision that inspired them to start meal programs and food pantries, expand the nursery school, host a counseling center, devise an after school program, and develop a tutoring program with children of a bilingual public school. I take satisfaction in these things, and so many more . . . hosting the magnificent Silk Road Rising, working with Protestants for the Common Good to lobby for education reform, greater public assistance, and more humane treatment of young offenders, and assisting the Greater Chicago Broadcast Ministries in producing religious programming directly communicated to young people via YouTube and other social media. Maybe, after all, it is these things that really change the world.

            Now for a confession: I sometimes have taken pride, as well as satisfaction. But I know that “pride goeth before the fall.” “The fall” came one night years ago when I was meeting with the trustees at the church in Wilmette. They were cataloguing all of the improvements they had made on the property over the previous ten years, which, I pointed out, was just the time when I arrived.  I said, “Notice in these ten years that not only have you restored the building, but also the church has increased in membership, attendance, pledge-giving, and service to the community.” And one of the members replied, “You’re right, Phil. You picked a good time to come here.”

            And so it goes in the middle of the pack. Thank you very much for this award; it means a great deal to me.  But from the middle of the pack I see ChildServ out ahead, leading from the front.  You are out there with the children who are at most risk, with those without families, with those who are in danger, with those who require love in every practical way that makes real the love of God.  I see ChildServ out front, and I will do everything I can to follow close behind and try to lead the congregation along the trail you are blazing.

Phil Blackwell