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Pittsburgh: A Gathering Place for Greatness
John Stahl-Wert
The very first chapters of Pittsburgh's story show that this city was destined by God to be a gathering place for greatness. The confluence of its rivers pulled the new world's most adventurous souls together from their separate journeys down the curve of the Allegheny or up the Monongahela. All of them were high-aimers, poised on the bowstring of these rivers for their shot westward into the beckoning frontier.
The place where these rivers united, and the arrow-head of land they formed, was inescapably ordained to be a place of trade and conflict and innovation and accomplishment. If our forebearers needed to interrupt their travels to take on fresh provisions or to seek a place of fortification and safety, they had to deal with whomever else was intrepid enough to have ventured this far into the wilderness.
"Gateway to the West," she was called in those early years of European exploration and conquest, or "Key to the West." The British referred to her as "That Debatable Land about the Ohio," or they did so at least during their years of lament between Braddock's defeat at the Battle of the Monongahela in 1755 and Forbes' victory at Fort Duquesne in 1758. "Gateway" or "Key" or "Debatable Land," one fact is indisputably clear: Pittsburgh was where the dreamers and explorers, entrepreneurs and opportunity-seekers converged in their ambitious pursuit of glory and greatness.
It was always going to be this way. When God sculpted the geography of this world, planting treasures where he chose into the rocks below ground and shaping rivers, mountains and passageways above the ground, this city was already ordained to be. It would one day rise up on this very Point as people trafficked through it. And it would continue to grow as that traffic created both opportunities and challenges, all of which were fruitful for discovery and learning, for character formation, for innovation and breakthroughs, and for the advancement of human society.
"It Has Pleased God"
Pittsburgh is in a season of celebration. Two hundred fifty years have now passed since General John Forbes' 1758 letter in which he announced to William Pitt that he had named the newly conquered ground after him. "It has pleased God," Forbes wrote, that this ground was to pass from French hands into British ones.
All evidence suggests that God's pleasure in Pittsburgh neither started, nor ended, on the date that it was named for the British Prime Minister. The Bible teaches us that God created everything in the world, which means that God created every place in the world, including Pittsburgh. Human history, as shown in the Bible, is a story about how God loves the world, loves each and every one of us, and provides us with a way to escape our own destruction and to join up with him forever. Before Pittsburgh got its name-or any of us got our names, for that matter-God was already working out the plans that would one day include this city and each of us who live here.
The very same rivers that brought English and French frontiersmen together two hundred fifty years ago brought Native Americans together for as long as they lived in the Americas. Shawnee and Delaware and Seneca were well established in the Pittsburgh region for at least a thousand years before the French arrived. Chartiers to our south, for example, was Shawnee. Kittanning to our northeast was Delaware. And Aliquippa to our northwest was Seneca.
But there were also Mohawks, Onondagas, Oneidas and Cayugas-all of them, along with the Senecas, partners in the Iroquois Confederacy-as well as Wyandots, Mohicans and branches of the Anishinaabe.
The first Bible reader that history records as visiting the convergence of our three rivers was the former Jesuit missionary turned explorer, Rene'-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, in 1670. La Salle's journey was inspired by friends among the Iroquois who told him of these magnificent rivers and who then served as his guides.
Indeed, by the time the French formed a permanent settlement at Ft. Duquesne in 1754, many Indians from various tribal groups had already accepted Jesus Christ as Lord of their daily lives and Savior of their eternal souls. The same year that the "Chapel of the Assumption of the Most Blessed Virgin at the Beautiful River" was dedicated inside Fort Duquesne, fifteen followers of Jesus were baptized, including two French, eight English, two Irish and three Indian.
Ecumenically, the early European residents at Fort Duquesne were buried in a nearby Indian burial mound-approximately where Trinity Cathedral and First Presbyterian Church now sit-and Mass was regularly offered to French, Irish, English, German and Indian Catholics. "It has pleased God" are surely words that would have been even more rightly spoken about this fact: on this newly consecrated ground, a sacred unity was quickly forged between diverse peoples through their common bond in Jesus Christ.
After the departure of the French in 1758, Pittsburgh continued to pull people together. Pastor Charles Beatty, the Presbyterian minister who conducted the Thanksgiving service on the eve of Pittsburgh's founding, served as pastor to the believers who were stationed at the Fort. The first formally organized Protestant congregation in Pittsburgh, a congregation that is today the Smithfield United Church, served the whole of the rapidly expanding community.
The Four Corners of the World at the Three Rivers
Take a look at the crosses, steeples, onion domes and plain-roof architecture of our city's congregations, and the global draw of Pittsburgh is immediately apparent. Old St. Patrick's, established in 1808, was followed rapidly by Bethel African Methodist Episcopal (1822), John Wesley African Methodist Episcopal Zion (1836), First English Evangelical Lutheran Church (1837), First German Evangelical Lutheran Church (1837), St. Paul of the Cross Passionist (1852), Macedonia Baptist (1868), Ebenezer Baptist (1875), St. Nicholas Carpatho-Russian Greek Orthodox (1890) and St. John the Baptist Byzantine Rite Catholic (1890). The Russian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, Serbian Eastern Orthodox, Ukrainian Orthodox and Syrian Antiochian Orthodox quickly made Pittsburgh a world capital for the Eastern Church.
And we've only just begun to recite the list. Still to come are the African American Presbyterians, Baptists and Catholics, as well as the Nazarenes, Campbellites, Salvation Army, Quakers and Mennonites, and, oh my, the list is long! Today, Pittsburgh's followers of Jesus spill out every Sunday from meeting houses with names that include The Pittsburgh Chinese Church, The Pittsburgh Spanish Baptist Church, The Asian Indian Christian Church of Pittsburgh and the Korean Central Church of Pittsburgh. And this is just to name a few!
In the Bible, Jesus instructed his followers to "Go and invite people from every nation to follow me!" Jesus' followers did this. And in the last several hundred years, the nations have come to live in Pittsburgh, bringing unique gifts and stories and capabilities with them. Pittsburgh, city of greatness and destiny, is blessed to have them all!
In the Bible, we are promised that a day will come when men and women from every nation, language, tribe and tongue will kneel down to worship Jesus, the lamb of God who gave us his life so that we can be fully alive ourselves. In the Bible, we are also promised that God will create a new family, drawn together from those of every tribe who worship Jesus. The convergence point of Pittsburgh's three rivers is one of God's great places on earth where he is fulfilling this promise!
Pittsburgh Will be Famous For God
An Episcopal Priest named Sam Shoemaker stood on top of Mount Washington in 1955 and said these famous words: "I have a dream that one day Pittsburgh will be more famous for God than for steel!" Many men and women have been inspired by this vision, though others have called it "naive." Some Pittsburghers can't imagine how Pittsburgh could ever measure up to Sam's vision.
Jesus had the same problem. "What good could ever come from Nazareth?" some scoffed, not believing that a boy raised in such an un-famous town could end up being important.
The final part of Pittsburgh's story we must tell is this. God loves this city and each one of us who live here. And God not only provides a way for us to escape our destructiveness and negativity. But the news is even better than this! God created this city, and each one of us, to play an important role in his work of transforming this world and giving him glory. Sam wasn't crazy when he saw that Pittsburgh would become "famous for God!" Pittsburgh's purpose-the reason God forged this city-is to bring glory and honor to God.
Pittsburgh won't become famous for God because a man said so. Pittsburgh will become famous for God because God said so.
The same is true of each of us. The same is true of you. The Bible teaches us that every human being-every man, woman and child-is a creation of God. He thought of you before the world began. He thought you up! He planned you. He made you the way you are, because he has a purpose for YOU. It would not serve God for you to be like someone else any more than it would serve God for Pittsburgh to be like Chicago.
Fred Rogers finished every episode of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood by singing, "It's YOU, I like!" That's God's song, for Pittsburgh, and for each one of us. He brought us together here in Pittsburgh, just as he did the Iroquois and the Shawnee, the French and the English, the African, the Asian and the Greek.
Whatever tribe you're from and whatever struggle you've endured, God's purpose becomes complete in you when you allow him to gather you up into his greatness. We belong to him and we belong to each other. Just as the Allegheny and Monongahela join to form the mighty Ohio, we were designed to join together in God's work of transformation.
Do you have a hunger for greater purpose in your life? Is there a desire within your soul for a sense of life's adventure and bigness? Then you're a Pittsburgher, rooted in a city that God built for glory and for greatness.
Does it pain you to see division and conflict between people? Do you long to see love and unity flourish in the world? Then you're a Pittsburgher, forged in a city that God designed as a place of gathering.
This book that you hold in your hands right now has guided your fellow Pittsburghers for well over two hundred years in their search for the very same thing you seek: a living relationship with the God who made you, loves you, and has an eternally significant purpose for your life. You are being prayed for right now as you read this book and consider your next steps.
Welcome to the continuing story of Pittsburgh! Become an active participant in God's plan. Discover the part God designed you to play so that someday others will be encouraged when they read the chapter you will help to write!
John Stahl-Wert is president of the Pittsburgh Leadership Foundation (www.plf.org) and co-author of the international best-seller, The Serving Leader.
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