Mindy Cobb moved to Chicago with her husband, Lindsay, nearly 50 years ago to be a part of a church plant and hasn’t looked back. In Longevity, a collection of essays by Nathan Carter, Cobb shared she originally planned to give God one summer of her life, but he wanted the whole thing.
Out of college the Cobbs took their Missouri church’s youth group on summer mission trip to Omaha. The group stayed busy with VBS, backyard Bible camp, and physical labor. “It was truly an amazing experience,” she said. “We had never seen kids from all different ethnic backgrounds come together to learn about Jesus, and we had never seen so many people hungry for Jesus.”
The couple wanted more. They reached out to Home Mission Board (now NAMB) to find out about additional mission opportunities. A week later they received a letter asking if they would consider going to Chicago.
Lindsay was ready to go; Mindy was more hesitant. “I heard people get shot in Chicago,” she worried. “That didn’t sound too safe to me.”
They planned a trip to Chicago and met Pastor Jim Queen. He spent the time with them drawing his dreams on napkins. After attending church, which was in someone’s apartment, the Cobbs knew they were in the right place.
“We experienced the same thing we had experienced in Omaha: different ethnic groups all coming together to worship Jesus and nobody wanted to go home when the service was over,” she said. “People were hungry for Jesus, and they wanted to talk about him. After that first visit, I never again doubted our calling to Chicago.”
The Cobbs moved to Chicago on December 1, 1976. They were ready to help Queen start Uptown Baptist Church, which was now in a condemned storefront.
“Lindsay and I decided they definitely needed someone to work with the children, so that was our first task. Lindsay drove around picking up kids for Sunday School.”
Over the years, Lindsay served different ethnic groups in Chicago, learning their cultures and languages. He sponsored refugees and helped start language churches. Mindy had a heart for teaching women’s Sunday school and working with the women’s ministry at church.
The Uptown plant grew and eventually acquired a stately old church building at Sheridan and Wilson in the neighborhood for which it’s named. Twenty years later, the Cobbs’ work shifted to the Chicago Metro Baptist Association, and for Mindy it continues today.
Lindsay died in 2009, but Mindy stayed in the city. Going back to Missouri was hardly an option. “The transiency of the city is one of the things that has caused me much heartache. We pour our lives into people and they leave.”
While she understands the call of the mission field elsewhere, she says there’s a great need in Chicago that many overlook.
“Sometimes it is just hard to see them going back to places that already have witnesses and people of God living there,” she explained. “We need to pray to the Lord of the harvest to send more workers, especially young families that will grow their children up to love God and love the city.”
Carter’s work profiles nine people who planted their lives in the city, and decades later have stuck to it. One key to effective ministry is longevity. “You need to know whose you are and what he has called you to do,” Mindy Cobb said. “Do not be like me and offer him a summer of your life.”