DEFINING REFORMATON CHURCH CHICAGO'S TOURISM JUSTICE MINISTRIES

1.  The overall name of our ministry is REFORMTION CHURCH-
CHICAGO'S TOURISM AND HOSPITALITY JUSTICE MINISTRIES (RCT&HJM).  Our order of services are divided into the following three sub-ministries:

A.  Replicating the up until now exclusive tour of Forgotten Chicago, the City's alternative historic and architectural landmark publication, headed: "Chicago & The Rise of Barack Obama 1985-2008 (in which our Church played a key racial and social justice role)" to benefit the ministry of our heretofore under-supported (inside and outside the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America/ELCA) historic house of worship especially but by no means exclusively. 

We envision organizing at least a monthly Sunday tour (if not weekly) where Reformation Church-Chicago, at the heart of the historic Roseland/Pullman community on the Far South Side, is a featured tourist destination.  We are therefore in the process of requesting and securing the ongoing moral, active, and financial support of both the ELCA's African Descent Ministries Program and CHOOSE CHICAGO, the City's and State of Illinois' umbrella tourist agency, serving in the public-private-partnership sector, with the immediate aim of building, maintaining and developing our unique Young Barack Obama South Side tour as important aspects of both ELCA African Descent Ministries Programming as well as of CHICAGO CHOOSE's in- and out-reach work. 

B) A second initiative of RCT&HJM is organizing into a permanent coalition a cross section of the South Side community forces participating in the November 10th, 2015 Palmer House meeting mentioned below.   We propose to organize this group under the banner of REFORMATION CHURCH-CHICAGO'S SOUTH SIDE COALITION FOR TOURISM AND HOSPITALITY JUSTICE (REFTICE).  

Our coalition will seek to collaborate with the African American Chamber of Commerce of San Francisco, Black Meetings & Tourism Magazine, and the NAACP in formulating a Black Tourism and Hospitality Justice Agenda for the City of Chicago.

C)  A third initiative of RCT&HJM is that of building a Black tourism and hospitality justice alliance of the National Black Evangelical Association (NBEA) headquartered here in Chicago.  The emerging NBEA alliance is being organized along lines similar to the South Side coalition envisioned above.

With this post we are hereby in the process of requesting and booking separate meetings with ELCA African Descent Ministries Program Director, Rev. Albert Starr and CHICAGO CHOOSE CEO, Mr. Don Welsh, ASAP, to discuss jointly implementing item 1A above especially but not exclusively.

Respectfully submitted:  Rev. Joel Washington (Khunanpu Sangoma) for Reformation Church-Chicago's ("Young Barack Obama's community organizing sanctuary") legacy tour headed: "Chicago & The Rise of Barack Obama 1985-2008," Plus, 11-30-15-Updated.

Text & phone contact: 773-499-3323.