It may have been The Secular City by Harvey Cox that stirred the pot. Five years after the book’s debut in 1965, a yellow school bus full of seminarians and professors headed from the serene environs of West Michigan to explore shadowy and foreboding downtown Chicago, in search of the nexus between faith and urban environments.

The experiential learning trip was called “Plunge,” if memory serves correctly. The concept was to find food and shelter for a day and a half on $1.50, connect in some way with those we met, and learn how and where the gospel of Jesus Christ serves the city and its people

We arrived in Chicago around supper time and would be picked up at designated locations late the following day. Some seminarians had grown scruffy beards and put on wrinkled clothes and shabby shoes to blend in with the unhoused that gathered around “rescue” missions. There was the Helping Hand Mission on Madison, sponsored by Chicago area Reformed churches, or the more famous Pacific Garden Mission, known for its “Unshackled” radio program. Shelter was guaranteed and a meal provided if guests sat through a worship service and an altar call. The morning after offered the chance to become a day-laborer, hustling advertising flyers through neighborhoods for more than $1.50 an hour. This was the option entrepreneurial seminarians chose.

As a native Chicagoan, I was familiar with the geography and neighborhoods. My choice of mission field was Chicago’s Old Town, the home of the Second City Theater, the noted Barbara’s Bookstore, and a collection of funky restaurants. At the time, it was the hot spot in the hot town, loaded with natives and tourists.

My “disguise” was that of an itinerant hippie, complete with blue jeans, army jacket, and a green canvas knapsack. My plan was to be a street corner evangelist, handing out copies of the New Testament I had obtained from The Bible League at no cost. They thought it was a noble effort, and I had their full support.

I hopped off the bus, got my bearings, took a deep breath, and headed north on Wells Street. I hadn’t walked a full block when someone approached me asking for help. He was taller than I was, thicker, wearing a leather jacket—and he was black. My racist antennae sprouted immediately. I was certain I was about to be mugged.

“Hey,” he said, “can you give me a hand? I’m looking for a bar and can’t seem to find one. Know the area?”

Unusual come-on for a mugger, I thought. I should be sprawled on the sidewalk by now. I explained that I had just came to town, wasn’t familiar with the neighborhood, but offered to walk with him to find what he was looking for. I am not sure what made me offer that, but there it was. Helping as mugging protection? Not showing weakness? Or was this precisely the kind of gospel-sharing encounter I should be alert to?

Whatever. We kept walking.

He told me that he was looking for a special kind of bar. Since I was denser than a sequoia, I didn’t get it at first. Special bar? Country Western? Folk? Biker? I assumed Old Town had a rich variety from which to choose.

Then he told me that he was looking for a gay bar in the hopes of a sexual encounter. My traveling companion disclosed that he had just left a frustrating and disappointing session with his “shrink,” and was looking for some action to ease the pain.

My homophobic thoughts raced ahead of my racist ones.

I could have stopped dead in my tracks and made a run for it. I guessed I could outrun him. But for some reason, I said, “Look, you should know I’m straight. Okay? But let’s keep walking and talking, if that’s okay with you.” We must have looked like a variation of Ratso and Joe Buck from Midnight Cowboy, walking the streets as steam from the sewer vents rose around us.

He nodded, and we walked, passing some bars that didn’t meet his expectations. After some silence, I asked, “So, what do you do in life?” By this point I was pretty sure mugging was not in my future.

“Well, I’m a Lutheran seminarian serving an internship here in Chicago,” he said. “A really messed up future pastor. I’m a black guy dating a white woman, and I’m pretty sure I’m gay. Go figure. My shrink upset me, frustrated me. So, I’m depressed, and when I’m depressed, I want some action.”

Whoa, what now? “I mentioned I’m straight, right? Why don’t we just keep walking and maybe you won’t need to find someone tonight. Sound good?”

“Worth a try, I guess,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “Maybe I don’t really want sex tonight. Maybe I do. Just don’t know.”

He stopped walking and looked straight at me. “So, what is it you do? Some kind of professional hippie protester?”

On the way to Chicago, we were told that one of the rules of the learning experience was to never disclose our identity as seminarians. To do so would be to compromise any “authentic” encounter. We were to spend our time role-playing.

So, naturally, I said “I’m a seminarian, too.”

My new-found friend stopped in his tracks. “C’mon. Now that’s just plain messed up.”

“I know. Unbelievable, right? Name’s Dave.”

‘I’m Harrison,” he said. “Good to meet you.” We shook hands.

And with my clandestine identity blown, I told the rest of the story: the day and a half on $1.50, finding food and lodging. Looking for connections. Learning about the gospel and the city.

“Sounds like something white folks would dream up.” He laughed, and I was glad to see it. “So, you’re looking for somewhere to stay the night? Have a place yet?”

“No, not yet. Need to find one.”

“Well, why not stay with me? I’m by myself in a big old parsonage on the southeast side. Tell you what, we’ll keep this conversation going, and I’ll stop looking for that bar. Deal? There must be some reason for us to meet like this. You don’t know, and I don’t know, so let’s keep the conversation going.”

From Old Town we found our way by transit bus to the Dan Ryan red-line subway, and then another bus to the southeast side of Chicago. An unlikely pair learning each other’s stories. We sat around the kitchen table until 9 p.m. rolled around when Harrison said he needed to leave for a Bible study meeting at 9:30 on the University of Chicago campus. One he never wanted to miss, and that night he was leading it.

Once he left, I called my wife to tell her where I was and that I was safe. At first, she thought I was making it up. A native Chicagoan herself, she was confident I would find my way around, find shelter, and survive. But my account of the first hours in Chicago sounded to her like a fabrication, something to get a rise out of her, an urban myth under construction at best. On reflection, she wasn’t surprised and said to say “hi” to Harrison.

I fell asleep in the guest bedroom after the phone call. I don’t remember if I locked the bedroom door. Harrison told me he wouldn’t be back before midnight. Before he left, we talked about seminary education, Harrison’s struggles with his sexual identity, interracial dating, the difficulties of serving an internship with an aging mixed-race congregation, and generally trying to picture a future for himself. I was astonished at his openness and thankful for this glimpse into this troubled yet hopeful soul.

I woke up to the smell of pancakes, eggs, sausage, and grits. I was grateful for Harrison’s hospitality and our conversation. After breakfast, he gave me a ride to public transportation, and I returned to Old Town.

Before our seminary entourage entered Chicago, one of our professors had the bus pull over so that he could offer a reflection on Psalm 23 and then pray for us. The focus was on our safety as we walked through this valley of the shadow of death. There was no consideration of green pastures or still waters, or a rod and staff giving comfort at the hands of a gracious, loving God. The city we were about to experience was a threat. As it turned out, our eyes were opened to see both threat and promise.

Some classmates discovered menace first-hand—they were arrested and jailed overnight because they were near the scene of a robbery on an El train platform, and were rounded up as suspects because of their scruffy appearance. While awaiting arraignment in jail, they witnessed Chicago cops rolling jailed drunks, searching their pockets and wallets for cash or loose change. When my classmates told the judge at the arraignment that they were seminarians (more blown covers) and about what they saw while locked up, the judge promised to investigate it.

As I mentioned, a handful of classmates did stay overnight at a rescue mission, ate and slept relatively well, and spent the next day as day laborers going door-to-do in Chicago neighborhoods planting advertising circulars on front porches. They made money.

One seminary prof was solicited by a sex worker.

Me? I wasn’t hungry at first thanks to Harrison’s hospitality, but back in Old Town in the early afternoon Burger King started to sound good, and I realized my $1.50 wouldn’t go very far. I approached a bookstore clerk who agreed to buy some of my Bibles. I rationalized that the Word would still go forth, and I enjoyed a Whopper with an almost clean conscience. It turned out that handing out the remaining Bibles on a street corner came easily, as did several conversations while doing so.

On reflection, the “Plunge” was an oddly conceived educational experience, immersing wet-behind-the-ears seminarians in a strange, intimidating setting. To this day, many still see the city as a shadowy place of death, a place of fear, of danger, of menace.

Harrison didn’t see it this way. Amid his struggles and confusion over identity and his future, he was able to trust in God’s care and find his place in the service of Jesus Christ and a gospel of hope. We kept in touch for several years. He broke the relationship with the woman he was dating. He became a chaplain in a major hospital in downtown Chicago, still struggling as a single person with his sexual identity.

Harvey Cox, reflecting on his book in 1990 for the Christian Century, said: “The thesis of The Secular City was that God is first the Lord of history and only then the Head of the Church. This means that God can be just as present in the secular as in the religious realms of life, and we unduly cramp the divine presence by confining it to some specially delineated spiritual or ecclesial sector. . . . Several years ago a friend told me he thought the implicit concept underlying The Secular City is the good old Calvinist doctrine of providence. At first I balked, but I have come to believe he is right. We live today without the maps or timetables in which our ancestors invested such confidence. To live well instead of badly we need a certain strange confidence that, despite our fragmented and discontinuous experience, somehow it all eventually makes sense. But we don’t need to know the how. There is Someone Else, even in The Secular City, who sees to that.”

Getting off the bus and experiencing the city was, for most of us, an invigorating and revealing journey. To be sure, not the agrarian setting of Psalm 23, where shepherds faced their own dangers. Outside the confines of a church building, mixing it up with total strangers, witnessing the need for the gospel and God’s justice, our worlds were expanded. We leaned into God’s providential care in new ways. If we were awake at all, we were forced to ask if what we believed in and lived for made any difference in the lives of those we met. Or more broadly, if what we believed in and lived for addressed the structures and systems and powers of the city.

I’ve seen too many signs of hope and promise in Chicago to let crime statistics, the dilemmas of the unhoused, and the plight of refugees bring me to despair. Green pastures and still waters can be found in any number of places among individual Christians and churches and nonprofits, schools, colleges, and universities. Considered together, the city would be in desperate shape without their influence.

It took the Plunge and many years of Holy Spirit repair work to address my racist and homophobic inclinations. By God’s grace, I’m still a work in progress, loving the city as part of my sanctification. As Andy Crouch reminds us, transforming the world—something often heard among Reformed folk—is a monumental undertaking. His suggestion is that we look at where God is at work in the world and run to it. Or take a plunge.