Chicago Fellowship had its inception several years ago when a small group of businessmen in downtown Chicago began meeting weekly for prayer, accountability, and to support one another as brothers in Christ. Over the years, what began as a meeting of three to five men has today become a weekly gathering of 80-100 men with a mailing list of active participants numbering over 1,300. In 2005, the group formalized into a 501 C (3) not-for-profit corporation under the name of Chicago Fellowship. In that same year, the Board of Directors employed Ray Carter to help lead the Fellowship in accomplishing its two core goals. First, to help men find relationship with other men for the purposes of accountability and support in pursuing and living Biblical truth. Second, to help men become informed, wise, and generous stewards of their lives through participation in strategic acts of justice and compassion in the broken places of this world.

In achieving the above stated purposes, Chicago Fellowship takes its lead from another group of Christians who lived on the outskirts of London in the early 19th century, and whom history remembers as “The Clapham Circle”. Their most famous member was William Wilberforce whose lifetime in Parliament was spent opposing the slave trade. In concert and cooperation with other men and women of sincere faith, unimpeachable character, moral clarity, and humble manner, they became “salt and light” to their generation and were used by God to change England and the world.