Nathan Sack  00:13
Thanks for joining us for another Faith Horizons podcast. The purpose of a Faith Horizons podcast is to discover the kingdom of God in Kansas City, one conversation at a time. You’re in for a treat, you’ll get to hear from Annika Bergen, one of the authors of The Spiritual Roots of Kansas City: Discovering the Past to Shape Our Future. The book itself is loaded with incredible pictures and stories. It has a discussion guide and a timeline at the back. There is also a downloadable online sermon kit to help you guide your church to discover what God has done in Kansas City. In our conversation, one of the things that really stood out to me was a transformational experience Annika went through while writing this book. She spoke about how God changed her heart towards Kansas City, the learning of history, her view of the church and more. We also discussed some of the many stories that make up Kansas City’s spiritual roots. Here is my conversation with Annika Bergen. Welcome, Annika to Faith Horizons podcast, it’s so great to have you.

Annika Bergen  01:19
It’s great to be here.

Nathan Sack  01:20
So we’re interviewing today about The Spiritual Roots of Kansas City: Discovering the Past to Shape Our Future, which is a book that was authored by you and Bill High. Can you tell us a little bit of the story about how you got to writing this book?

Annika Bergen  01:35
Yes. So the book is a project from The Signatry. It’s a Christian foundation in Kansas City. And Bill High was the CEO at the time. And so he had wanted to just do a project to bless Kansas City by telling them their spiritual roots. So they started it in 2012, and then hired me in 2015, as a writer to help with the project.

Nathan Sack  01:55
That’s awesome. So tell us a little bit about yourself. What led you to enjoying Kansas City and liking Kansas City and just getting so interested in what God has done in Kansas City.

Annika Bergen  02:05
Yes, so I, my family moved to Lee’s Summit when I was in eighth grade, so kind of grew up here. And then after college, I’d studied writing in college at Southwest Baptist University, and then did mission work in India for a little bit and was planning on being a missionary to Nepal. So I was living in Kansas City, raising support for full time mission work. And as I visited people, I just kept hearing story after story of needs in Kansas City. And I remember praying and saying, Lord, I feel like you’re calling me to Kansas City. But I’m going to Nepal, and then that trip ended up falling through. And then I just posted on LinkedIn that I was a writer looking for an opportunity in Kansas City and Bill HIgh found me and asked if I wanted to help with this project, and then some other writing projects they were doing.

Nathan Sack  02:54
Wow, that’s great. And so you got pulled right into, like you said, you are already starting to have conversations with people about Kansas City. God was already beginning to start that thing inside of you. And then Bill High was already had the project. He already had the like you call it the earlier the brain- the brainchild of this of this project, which was the spiritual roots of Kansas City, and then God’s like He had already had already planted in you.

Annika Bergen  03:25
I love the verse Ephesians 2:10, it says where His workmanship and God’s created us to do good deeds, which He’s prepared in advance for us to do and it was just so clear that God had already prepared this project and was calling me to serve Kansas City.

Nathan Sack  03:37
That’s so cool. So what got you interested in just being a writer in general? What do you like about writing?

Annika Bergen  03:43
You know, I am a grammar nerd. I love grammar. So even as a kid, I loved the assignments where you have to like find the mistakes in the sentence and add the comma. And I was like, Mom, can I do this full time? She’s like, I guess you can be an editor. So does yeah, from an early age I love language and communicating.

Nathan Sack  04:01
My wife loves editing too. She always like looks at it. Like what how do you think this sounds honey? And she’s like, there’s a period missing here. I’m like, I didn’t ask you to find the period. But she finds the period. Yeah, you know so that’s so interesting.

Annika Bergen  04:15
And it’s funny that, um, I started on a history project. So I, I loved English, I never loved history. And I just thought it was really boring. And so when they first hired me to do this history of churches, it started as a job as like a writer, I needed a job. And then I started researching and God just spoke to my heart, so much of all the things He had done in our city and so, but I kind of viewed that as a blessing that I got bored by history. So I only put the things in the book that I was interested in. And so hopefully, it’ll be an interesting read for people.

Nathan Sack  04:48
So I read the book and I just was absolutely amazed by the amount of stuff. That was one of my questions I want to ask you is are you astounded by the amount of stuff that actually Kansas City has, that is brought Kansas City about the Christian movements?

Annika Bergen  05:01
Yes, I had no idea of the spiritual roots of our city like I had driven Shawnee Mission Parkway 1000 times and never thought, oh mission. So at Shawnee Mission was a mission to the Shawnee tribe by Reverend Johnson in the 1830s. And just things like that all through our history like Holmes Road like Robert, Mary Ann Holmes are church planters. And just so many things we pass by every day and don’t know the stories behind the Christians that got them there.

Nathan Sack  05:30
As Shawnee Mission they like you said, Reverend Johnson, Johnson County. In this book, you guys did a really good, you did a really good job of just laying everything out. And in the back of the book, there’s a timeline, just kind of going through some of the movements and the main, the main features. Also, I noticed in the back of the book, there’s chapter questions. So like, if you wanted to use this in a school kind of as a study guide of learning Kansas City’s Christian history, and then also there was an incredible part in the back of the book, which I’d like to talk about just a little bit, which is God’s plan for cities.

Annika Bergen  06:08
Yeah, a lot of that material was based off of some essays that Tim Keller wrote on God’s heart for cities. One of the things that stuck out to me, well, a couple things. One, I was interviewing Mike King with Youthfront, and he was talking about how there was St. Francis of Assisi and all these different saints were tied to geographical locations, and just how important the actual place where God plants us is part of who we are and how we minister. And then also biblically, Tim Keller brings us up, but there’s cities of refuge in the Bible that God designates, of, if you have killed someone unintentionally, you can flee to a city of refuge, and then that’ll keep you safe from the Avenger coming after you. And we don’t have that anymore in our culture, but it’s still just, it’s still just such a picture of how cities can be a place of safety for people, especially the vulnerable, like you see a lot of refugees coming to cities or the poor or in cities, and it’s just can be a place of safety for people.

Nathan Sack  07:05
And the back part of that God’s plan for cities. There’s cities are under God’s sovereignty. And you even brought up the, you know, God’s the fateful flood in 1844. We’re talking about, you know, the whole reason why Kansas City is the way it is right now. God wanted things to be a different way. So He changed the landscape in which changed the direction of economy, which then grew a city.

Annika Bergen  07:34
Yeah, yeah. The story behind that is so Independence was the main little stop. So there was just the river. The Missouri River connected then with the Kansas River, the Kaw River and then from that point was the pioneer trails for California, Santa Fe, and Oregon started from there. So Westport was just the farthest port to the west. But we were not the main economic base that was Independence. And then in 1844, a flood came and rerouted the Missouri River, and uncovered this rock landing. And then John Calvin McCoy, who’s called the father of  Kansas City. His father, Isaac McCoy was a Baptist missionary, and that’s why they were here. But John Calvin McCoy realized that with this new rock landing, it was a better place for boats to land and unload cargo. And so then that’s what switched Kansas City to be the main economic hub for the area.

Nathan Sack  08:25
So they’re so a lot of what Kansas City is today is because of the businessmen that actually came into Kansas City, the McCoys, you know, the Longs, the Chouteaus. It’s interesting that all these people, they’re the ones that usually started the first churches to like the Chouteaus.

Annika Bergen  08:48
Yeah, yes, the Chouteaus came here in 1821. And they didn’t have a church in the area. And so as for traders, the shows were a Catholic fur trading family. And as more and more fur traders came into the area, Berenice and Francois Chouteau wanted a church to be built here. So they talked with one of the traveling priests and donated a gift to build the first church here.

Nathan Sack  09:13
And then a lot of their a lot of their employees were actually the attending members like you’d reference that a lot of their employees were the were the attending members. So as she ended up be calling Chouteau’s Church.

Annika Bergen  09:25
Yeah, yeah. Just kind of funny, but the official name is St. Francis Regis, but then it was called Chouteau’s Church.

Nathan Sack  09:33
So the business people actually made a way for people to worship God as part of what they’re offering the people not just business they were also offering them a place of worship, which is you know, that’s what you see in cities is you see a you know, what are the first things we need an economy quickly after you need a mission? You need a like a church, you need something.

Annika Bergen  09:52
Or with the McCoys it was reverse. Isaac McCoy came here with the mission and then his son, built Westport and Kansas City is the economy. Yes, go along with it.

Nathan Sack  10:02
And then also the Long’s farm. So the Longs did something different. So Robert Long built, he brought a lumber company here, right. It was a lumber company. But one of the things that he did, which was different, was he actually had all the family members living with their family on his farm.

Annika Bergen  10:20
Yeah, a lot of times, lumber, I guess, lumberjacks, for lack of a better word, they would have to go out to the lumber camps, and they’d have to leave their families while they were working there. And Robert Long was a Christian. And so he was doing very well in the lumber business. And so had lots of lumberyard scattered throughout the US. And so he wanted his men to be able to live with their families. So both whenever he built his own lumber camps, he built family housing. And then he also started Longview Farms out in Lee’s Summit. And he did the same there, he provided housing for the workers to live with their families there so that they didn’t have to be away from their families.

Nathan Sack  10:56
Like one step up from what you had to do.

Annika Bergen  10:58
Yes, yeah, he’s always going further. And he built a Longview Chapel, so that they would have a place to worship together. And he’s also his idea was Liberty Memorial, so he headed up that whole project, too. So he just did a lot of good for the city.

Nathan Sack  11:13
Were there any experiences that come to mind when you think back about writing this book?

Annika Bergen  11:17
Yeah, I had some stories I wanted to, yeah, let’s do that. Um, one of the things you’d mentioned is the Prophetic roots of Kansas City. And it’s interesting, because whenever I, I had written the book, but it wasn’t published yet. And so I was just lying in bed one night, and I was praying, I was like, Lord, is there anything that I’ve missed that you want to be in the book, and there’s a few things that I immediately thought of, as soon as I prayed that, and one of them was that 100 years ago, there was written a book about the history of Kansas City. So 100 years ago, there was a book on the history of Kansas City is called The Early History of Greater Kansas City, The Prophetic City at the Mouth of the Kaw. And I had read that book early on in my research and just skipped over the subtitle, The Prophetic City at the Mouth of the Kaw. But after I prayed that, I was lying in bed. And I was like the prophetic city, why are we called the prophetic city? And so the next morning, I was going to the Kansas City, Missouri Valley Special Collections in the Kansas City Library to look up that book. And I was on my way, and I got rear ended and my car was totaled, and I wasn’t able to go. And it was just a big long process. But finally, like, I don’t know how long later it was, I finally got all that taken care of got the rental car and made my way to the library and looked up why we were the prophetic city. And it was based on something that Senator Benton had said in the 1840s and 50s, that just a few years after Kansas City had been found in it was 15 square miles, not very big, but he said, it’ll become a great commercial center. And so then in the next 75 years, as Kansas City grew, they looked back on that senator’s prophecy is like how they became a magnificent city. But then it was just really cool as I’m looking at the whole, like, 200-year history now with Kansas City, just to see the ways that God fulfilled that the prophetic city that yeah, that Senator had no idea.

Nathan Sack  13:07
Yeah. It’s almost like you are going to like, you know, you’re going in your car to uncover this. And then you get rear ended and all that stuff. It’s almost like the enemy’s like, I don’t want them to know. Right? Right.

Annika Bergen  13:20
Right? Right. Yeah. Spiritual warfare is real.

Nathan Sack  13:21
Do you feel like there was spiritual warfare writing this?

Annika Bergen  13:24
Yes. But also, just God’s abundant blessing.

Nathan Sack  13:29
There’s an encouragement behind it.

Annika Bergen  13:30
Yeah. And can I share a dream that I had around the book? Yeah. Well, so we got close to publishing. And I realized that there is an every, I think every creative person or writer feels this. But as I got closer to publishing, I realized, I was scared to publish, because what if the book didn’t sell? What if nobody bought it. I was just so nervous, and I had a dream one night, and the Lord spoke to me in that and He said, they don’t take the next step because they think it’s their identity. And God just through that phrase, that my heart for you