Vince Guider
Episode 127
5 JULY 2021
The North Lawndale Kinship Initiative Director for Old St. Patrick’s Church in downtown Chicago, directing a ministry of community development. In that role he has set up a neighborhood sports collaborative called the North Lawndale Athletic & Recreation Association. Many people know him as coordinator for youth and young adult parish ministry, which he started doing 35 years ago and to some degree still goes on now. As a student he was the football manager for the team at his Catholic high school where he was able to learn the skills and the science of coaching, which he used when his parish started and needed a coach for a CYO football team, and that led to a whole career of coaching youth athletics across a variety of sports.
Notable guest quotes:
“I’m a cradle Catholic; baptized as an infant, lived in a Catholic household, pretty much in the pews on Sunday and in the pews of the world every other day of the week.”
“I grew up on Chicago’s south side. Two great parents, two great Catholic parents… we always lived a short few blocks from our parish and our life pretty much centered around Catholic life.”
“That experience taught me the ministry of athletics, the ministry of coaching.”
“Somewhere a seed was being planted in me saying, you know what, I’m going to be around sports the rest of my life and I’m going to do this too. I’m going to be a coach.”
“It was about more than sports, it was about relationships. I was molding young lives… it turned into a whole career.”
“People don’t come to Old St. Patrick’s to go to Mass. People come to Old St. Patrick’s to be disciples and to be church outside of church.”
“We knew that we weren’t going in there to drop in and be the knights on white horses saving that neighborhood. We knew that that neighborhood could help save us as a congregation too.”
“That’s been absolutely central to my life and that is direct contact with the young people of God and those adults who work with them.”
Related links:
North Lawndale Kinship Initiative
North Lawndale Athletic and Recreation Association
