Stories of Faith,
Hope & Community
Where faith breathes on streets of Chicago
✦ STORIES WORTH SHARING ✦
“ A collaborative project of five Chicago urban ministries, Rich in Faith seeks to collect and share stories of intrepid and enduring Christian faith from the hard places.”
✦The Origin Story
✦Who We Are
Rich in Faith is:
an urban storytelling curriculum grounded in Jesus’ parables
an artistic collective turning stories into neighborhood murals and mini-documentaries
a living digital archive
We bring together elders, youth, families, ministers, and frontline workers to bear witness to how Christian faith endures and flourishes—especially amid suffering.
“Listen, my beloved brothers: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him?”
-James 2:5
✦ Psalm 66:16: “Come and listen, all you who fear God; let me tell you what he has done for me.”
✦Why We Exist
Too often, public narratives about Chicago’s urban neighborhoods are framed exclusively through deficits: gun violence, poverty, and lack. This one-dimensional framing overlooks the most profound reality of all: the intrepid, enduring Christian faith quietly transforming lives in every corner of the city.
The Storytelling Project exists to bear sacred witness. We believe that when people who have lived through the city’s deepest pain speak of God’s faithfulness, their testimonies carry the authority to renew faith for listeners across the world.
What We Do
The Rich in Faith Journey
Four parts. Many voices. One shared story.
Story Seminars
Through a curriculum based on Christ’s own parables, small groups of participants from partner ministries craft their stories of faith. Storytellers write narratives, create picture books, craft collages, and record audio stories.
Story Celebrations
Local neighbors, friends, and family gather to hear and celebrate the storytellers’ testimonies, honoring the faith and power among them.
Mural Storytelling
Arts organizations use the crafted stories to design murals that communicate their themes, engaging local youth and families to create the artwork.
Video Storytelling
Videographers film select stories to share far beyond Chicago’s borders, showcasing vibrant faith stories to a wider audience—including you.
Six Ministries. Countless Stories.
While collaborating with many partners, Rich in Faith was created to share the stories of participants of:
“The Rich in Faith project is grateful to be a part of the Lily Endowment’s National Storytelling Initiative on Christian Faith and Life.”
As part of this nationwide initiative, Rich in Faith joins Christian leaders, artists, and storytellers across America documenting how ordinary believers live out their faith in real life.
Rich in Faith Leadership
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A Chicago mother with a household of many, Galik is proud to call West Humboldt Park home. A Minnesotan by birth, Galik came to the city in 2004, teaching in a Lutheran school for two years before its closure. In 2006, Galik opened the school building to the community, using a computer lab and children’s programs to build what is now the Humboldt Park site of New Life Centers. With New Life Centers from 2008-2014, Galik served as the organization’s second Executive Director, creating policies while growing programs at multiple sites.
After transitioning to nearby River City Community Church, Galik was contracted in 2015 to found their associated nonprofit, River City Community Development Center (“R CITY”). During her tenure as R CITY’s Executive Director, the organization merged with partner Harambee Chicago Foundation, continuing to provide tuckpointing apprenticeships. In 2024, after an inheritance of children that doubled the size of the Galik family, Galik stepped down from R CITY leadership, handing off to Charnesha Collier, a Harambee program graduate and leader.
In 2025, Galik collaborated with local partners to create the Rich in Faith project, submitting it to the Lilly Endowment for funding via New Life Centers. She founded Legendary Communities in December 2025 to bring life to that vision of calling out storytellers of faith all across Chicago’s west side and beyond.
Since 2010, the Galik home has hosted over 30 children in short-term and legal guardianship, creating a unique “extended family” with the four Galik hijos and some of the most resilient and power-filled youth and moms in Chicago.
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The project is guided well by experienced nonprofit leaders from each organization:
Vivian Frutos Bahena - New Life Centers Chief Program Officer
Alex Cesario - Breakthrough Urban Ministries Chief Development Officer
Sister Emily Persicketti - Franciscan of the Eucharist
Alicia Anderson - New Moms Spiritual Formation Coach
Pamela Bozeman-Evans - New Moms Chief Operating Officer
Charnesha Collier - R CITY Executive Director
Kamelia Hristeva - Green Star Movement founder & Executive Director
The project is brought to life by creatives working in their fields of expertise:
Alex Crux - New Life Centers HEART Project Director, founder, & muralist
Diamond Galindo - muralist
Green Star Movement & The HEART Project mural teams
Fulberto Altamirano - New Life Centers Marketing Coordinator
Tommy Lee & Create Possible team (Rich in Faith social media, story sharing events & contests)
Tectonic Video team
Audio/Video Producers: Julia Garcia, Jonatan Palma Pineda, Angelica Liliana Bernal Munoz
Web designers: Nataliia Volosovska, Anastasija Korchaka
Story Seminar Facilitators: Alba Maar, Phillip Sierra, Gissela Gualoto
Story Authors: Angela Portugues
Story Poets: Gissela Gualoto
Frequently Asked Questions
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Rich in Faith is a multimedia storytelling initiative based in Chicago. We document lived experiences of faith, resilience, community renewal, and divine presence in everyday city life through audio, video, art, spoken word, and written narratives.
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The project is based on two Biblical passages:
James 2:5 - “Has God not chosen those who are poor in this world to be rich in faith and inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him?”
Psalm 66:16 - “Come and listen, all you who fear God, and let me tell you what he has done for me.”
Psalm 66:16 encourages everyone who knows God to share their stories. While extending that wide welcome, this project also has a specific priority. Embracing the belief of Christ himself that those without this world’s resources are blessed by God (Luke 6:20), Rich in Faith centers on those living in Chicago’s hardest places.
Our storytellers have faced disinvestment, prejudice, violence, and hardship. Their stories of faith show us the incredible God who sustains us in life’s deepest struggles. This is something that all of us need deeply.
In the words of Father Greg Boyle, founder of Homeboy Industries,
“I can't explain how the poor in Bolivia evangelized me…but they turned me inside out, and from that moment forward I only wanted to walk with them. This was a wholly selfish decision on my part. I knew that the poor had some privileged delivery system for giving me access to the gospel. Naturally, I wanted to be around this.”
(Tattoos on the Heart) -
Rich in Faith operates local Storytelling Seminars in Spanish and English to gather stories from a specific group of storytellers, each participants at a partner urban ministry.
These stories are shared in a local context through Story Celebrations with friends and family.
Mural Projects then display the stories artistically on the walls of partner organizations.
Video production, as well as printed books and audio stories, share the narratives with a wider audience.
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No, Rich in Faith is a collaborative project created by partner nonprofits, not a legal organization itself. The lead agency overseeing the Lily Endowment’s investment in the project is New Life Centers of Chicagoland. Rich in Faith is coordinated by Legendary Communities, a 501c3 nonprofit created specifically for this project.
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Yes! Since Rich in Faith is a collaboration rather than an organization, you would donate through a partner nonprofit. To donate to support the work of story gathering and distribution, donate to Legendary Communities (legendarycommunities.org), the project coordinating organization. To support participants at a specific partner ministry, please visit the Partners page and follow the links to the organization.
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In the Endowment’s own words:
“Lilly Endowment’s National Storytelling Initiative on Christian Faith and Life (‘Storytelling Initiative’) aims to unlock and tell compelling stories that portray the vibrancy and hope of Christian faith and life and to inspire and help people from a wide variety of backgrounds to come to know and love God.
Launched in 2024, the Storytelling Initiative funds projects that advance the following three objectives:
Identifying stories about Christian individuals, groups, churches and communities that are compelling examples of authentic and vibrant Christian faith and life.
Producing compelling stories about these examples of Christian faith and life in various media formats.
Sharing these stories through different media with a wide variety of people in a broad spectrum of contexts and from many different backgrounds.”
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Please use the Join In page to let us know you’re interested! We often have opportunity to work with new partners in Chicago and would love to hear from you. There is limited availability, but we always like to keep people in mind that we know are interested in collaborating.
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Yes! If there’s a current storytelling competition hosted by Rich in Faith, you can find it at the Contest page.
If not, you can always reach out to us through the Join In page. Send us a little bit about yourself and your story. We’d love to hear from you!
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While Rich in Faith has its own curriculum that we’ve developed and continually customize for each partner organization, there are some storytelling resources we often draw from. We highly recommend listening to The Moth Radio Hour or attending a local Moth StorySLAM for examples of live storytelling. Matthew Dicks’ Storyworthy book and resources have been very helpful to us as a clear how-to to create a compelling story for a variety of contexts. On the deeper, philosophical level, we love Donald Miller’s A Million Miles in a Thousand Years to drive home the message of why stories matter.
If you’re a ministry or organization and would like to know more about our curriculum, please reach out.
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All stories in the collection are told as lived and remembered by the storyteller. That means each story is inherently human—limited and vulnerable. If it’s a good story, it includes all the confusion and chaos that we face, trying to discern the best path home to God through this challenging world. Because these stories reflect real life, they aren’t meant to represent perfection—they simply show followers following the best that they can in that moment.
While stories reflect only the beliefs of the storyteller themselves, the story collection does provide the opportunity for reflection. By hearing the stories of others’ encounters with God, it allows us to ask, “What else might I learn?” Stories provide a way for us to gain understanding from others’ experiences, to see divine grace and provision through their eyes. -
At Rich in Faith, we see God lifting up many people as examples and sharers of faith that others would not consider worthy of that honor.
Join us in reading these stories, among many others:
Matthew 19 - children as examples of Kingdom leaders
Luke 1 - young Mary and elderly Elizabeth
Matthew 15 - mother from a different country & culture
Luke 8 - woman with chronic medical condition
John 4 - woman with five past husbands
Luke 7 - woman with a reputation anointing Jesus
Luke 21 - widow giving her mite
Luke 16 - a man without housing & food
Luke 18 - praying tax collector
Matthew 21 - tax collectors and sex workers entering the Kingdom