A church will soon be leaving Oak Park. And at the same time, a local homeless-help organization might be in need of another spot to assist the less fortunate.
A couple of years ago, Vineyard Oak Park — located at 705 Jackson Blvd. — started along a “planning and refocusing process” that ended up with a name change to Greater Chicago Church. And last June, the church’s senior pastor, Ian Carroll, announced that the church was withdrawing from the Association of Vineyard Church USA.
The church had previously looked to expand about five years ago, but couldn’t get approval from the village’s Zoning Board of Appeals, in the face of opposition from neighbors. Now, the church is looking to leave Oak Park for Chicago, hoping to expand its base.
In an email Tuesday, Carroll said the church has developed a strategy to be present in “every community in the city.” They’ve put the three properties they own on the market — a house, a two-flat and their church building — and once sold, they hope to move forward with plans to vacate Oak Park.
No location has been found yet, Carroll said in the email. But they are “prayerfully searching” for a place in the city, and they hope to eventually have churches and ministry centers throughout Chicago.
Despite the move, Carroll said, they’ll still have hundreds of congregants living here.
“This congregation has had its roots in Oak Park for decades and will remain a part of the community here for decades to come,” he wrote.
In the meantime, Greater Chicago Church has informed the local homeless-help organization, West Suburban PADS, that it can no longer use their church as an emergency shelter on the first and second Saturdays of each month.
PADS already uses another church in Berwyn on those days, and the Greater Chicago location often isn’t at capacity, said Nancy Ford, director of development and communication. They’ve tried to make sure PADS’ clients are only using the shelters in emergencies and have directed them to other programs geared toward “rapid rehousing,” she said. Those efforts have worked, and overall numbers are down at their emergency shelters.
PADS is still trying to figure out whether they’ll need another site to replace Greater Chicago Church, but won’t know for sure until September, when their shelter season restarts.
“It doesn’t become a timely issue until the start of the regular season in September, so there’s a bit of time to make that determination,” Ford said.