22 by 2 (repeat by demand)

Shorewood spent 22 years in the western section of Chicago and a very few of its members go back to Sheridan. Jordan says, “Some of us don’t have what we call institutional memory as others of us do. I want you to appreciate the fact Shorewood has a history a legacy and a heritage.

The assembly was founded in year 1900 and the minutes book from that year reveal the first regular services were held the first Sunday in 1900 in a vacant store on Evanston Avenue. The church building was erected in 1906. The service of dedications of the North Shore Congregational church building was March 31-April 21, 1907.

“Here’s a program from a Sunday School children’s day on June 11, 1911,” says Jordan. “That’s old stuff folks. They paid 95,000 for the corner and the old stone building they put on it that’s still there.”

In April of 1900 North Shore called a pastor, James Stewart Anslie from Fort Wayne. They had their first organizational meeting on May 6 of 1900 with 86 members. By the end of 1902, they had grown to a congregation of about 400 people. They first erected the side building and then the auditorium.

“They paid $95,000 for the that corner and the building they put on it—that old stone building that’s still there,” says Jordan. “By 1910 they had the building completely paid for! Now, you imagine that.

“Here’s a list of the pastors and it’s fascinating there would be a book like this. We don’t do this kind of stuff very well anymore. They’ve got all the members, people added and how they came, profession of faith, movement of church membership, people who were dismissed, the ones who died. All these records, all hand-done, beautiful handwriting. That’s just history but it’s fascinating that somebody kept it.”

In the list of pastors was Stewart, then Paul Riley Allen in 1923. J.C. O’Hair was installed Sept. 1, 1923 and remained the pastor until his death in January of 1958. After him was Cornelius R. Stam (1958-60), Kennedy Sloane (1960-63), Clarence Kramer (1964-71),  Ernest Green (1972-79) and Jordan since then.

“O’Hair and I are the only two who’ve pastored over three decades in the assembly,” says Jordan. “It was under O’Hair’s ministry that they built . . .  in fact, there’s a note here about the doing of that, but in October of 1923 is when they moved out of the congregational denomination. In July 1924, O’Hair started radio broadcasting on WDBY (We Delight in Bothering You). The call letters were changed to WPCC (We Preach Christ Crucified) in Dec. 1, 1925.

“If you know something about the history of the grace movement, you know something about who Charles Baker was, he’s with the Lord now, but Mr. Baker came to work with Mr. O’Hair. He was a  graduate from Dallas Seminary and O’Hair hired him as an engineer to build a radio transmitter that was in the bell tower on corner of Wilson and Sheridan. This was a major North Shore intersection at the time. There were tens of thousands of people who would go by the church, and if you go down there today there’s still the sign on top of the old bell tower, ‘Christ Died for Our Sins.’

Life Magazine in the ’50s took a picture off of the Wilson El station in Uptown looking toward the lake and there’s that sign. That was a gospel witness to tens of thousands of people every day. But they started with the radio ministry and O’Hair wrote over 200 books and booklets. There was a saying back then, ‘Don’t make J.C. O’Hair mad at you; he’ll write a book about you.’ ”

“My favorite of all titles was a booklet, ‘An Open Letter to M.R. DeHahn, Harry Ironsides and other misinformed Baptist preachers. It was day when you could have, not a mean and cantankerous, but a happy discussion of Bible doctrine and O’Hair was a gospel witness who preached the gospel on the radio all across America.

“On his 25^th anniversary in 1948, we have a picture of it in the heritage room, Louis Talbott, the president of Biola in California came and spoke at his 25^th anniversary and talked about how, if you’ve ever heard the tape of that, about going across the nation listening on the radio and hearing O’Hair’s voice while he was traveling on the train across the country preaching the gospel of grace and the privilege and the heritage all that was.

“The first missionaries to go to the foreign fields from preaching the word of God rightly divided went out of North Shore church. In fact, in the early days, almost all of the missionaries who were on the field came out of North Shore church. It was a church of 800 in attendance at the time and they had a great focus on sending people to the mission field.