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Tattooed Minister Aims To Breathe New Life Into People's Church

By Mina Bloom | April 16, 2015 9:27am
 Before Seth Fisher, 41, became an Uptown minister, he was an actor, an addict and an
Before Seth Fisher, 41, became an Uptown minister, he was an actor, an addict and an "angry" athiest.
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DNAinfo/Mina Bloom

UPTOWN — Back in the 1920s and '30s, some 3,000 people would pack into the People's Church for Sunday morning services.

"It would be standing room only," said Seth Fisher, 41, who joined the Uptown church as congregation development minister in October. "It was built around Preston Bradley. He was this incredibly charismatic preacher."

Over the years, the congregation has slowly dwindled. Today, a little over 30 community members belong to the church located inside an almost century-old building named after Bradley at 941 W. Lawrence Ave.

"Part of that is because the Sunday morning service doesn't resonate with people the way it used to," Fisher said. "All of the things that people used to go to church for years ago ... it's just not that way anymore. People are seeing less relevance."

By introducing a new recurring Sunday event called "The Coffee Hour," Fisher hopes to bring people back to church, which bills itself as a "joint Unitarian Universalist and united church of Christian faith community."

"There are a lot of people who are not into hymns and sermons, but who are into personal growth and volunteering and community," Fisher said.

Last Sunday marked the first event, or "DIY maker space," as Fisher calls it, which will be held every Sunday at 11 a.m. The idea is people can grab a cup of coffee, participate in or watch an acoustic jam session or admire art. Visitors can also talk to some artists from Uptown Art Center, which is located on the fourth floor of the building, or just strike up conversations with neighbors. 

"Most people would come in and say, 'How do I get people to come to Sunday morning service?' That's the wrong question," he said. "We're not trying to do that. We're trying to create stronger connections with the community." 

Originally from a fundamentalist Christian home in Oregon, Fisher has since lived in places from Vietnam to California. In 1997, he landed in Chicago, where he worked for WNEP, a small Chicago-based theater company, among other acting gigs. But he ditched acting once he realized "the money was in commercials" and other similar work. Along the way, he also struggled with an alcohol addiction, which led him to enroll in a 12-step program, he said. 

In 2001, his current career began to take shape when he got ordained online to officiate his friend's wedding.

"Part of the reason I got ordained was because I thought it was funny that someone like me would be ordained," said Fisher, who added that he was a "staunch, angry atheist" prior to joining the church.

But after officiating more weddings, he realized he wanted to become an actual minister. So he enrolled at Loyola University, where he ended up earning a master's degree in divinity, he said.

Somewhere along the way, Uptown became home for Fisher — a neighborhood he believes could use some community building.

"There's this divide everybody is keenly aware of: the have-nots and the haves that are moving in," he said. "There are lot of people in the neighborhood that are living marginally and there's a lot of work that needs to be done to help out those folks."

With "The Coffee Hour," Fisher is hoping to bring people of different backgrounds together to "create a really beautiful, thriving diversity in a way that doesn't exist in a lot of places."

"It can be done. I think the neighborhood is going in a cool direction," he said.

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