Graham Schultze: Visit 1, socioeconomic

Church name: New City Church

Church address: 309 Palmer St. NE, Grand Rapids MI

Date attended: Sunday, January 26, 2014

Church category: Lower socioeconomic status

Describe the worship service you attended. How was it similar to or different from your regular context?

New City Church is my older brother’s home church back in my hometown. It is a church plant from my parent’s nondenominational (mega)church. Located about three miles outside of downtown G.R., it meets in an elementary school’s gym that seats roughly 150 people. A light breakfast (oranges, poptarts, coffee, etc.) was provided free of charge. Members of the congregation seem to come as they are for the most part—jeans and sweatshirts, jumpsuits, and overall not a lot of khakis and dress shirts or skirts and blouses. The service lasted about 2 hours (twice as long as my regular-attended church). Every week they break bread and drink the cup together as brothers and sisters in Christ—and part of what I love about New City is that it includes a diverse group of brothers and sisters. It’s not a church that you might walk into and think everybody’s got it all together. African Americans, white folks, Asians, poor, overweight, underweight, well-off, and everywhere in between gathered together to praise Jesus.

While those are all differences to my usual church, the one similarity that the sermon was strongly driven by scripture, tying Old Testament stories into the New Testament.

What did you find most interesting or appealing about the worship service?

I suppose I alluded to this above, but I really love the diversity at New City. I attended a high school with a very diverse student population (my basketball team had as many black guys on it as it did white [a little different than Wheaton’s squad]) and I miss that here at Wheaton and at my church here. At New City there was such a grand smattering of races and socioeconomic groups represented that the service just seemed more well-rounded…I wasn’t surround by just a bunch of well-off white folks. The smaller size or the gathering place (an elementary school gym [a place I’m pretty familiar with] as opposed to a grand sanctuary) was very conducive to getting to know one’s fellow worshipers. After a few worship songs, we were given five or so minutes to mingle and get to know one another or catch up with friends—I loved that. Instead of simply shaking hands and sharing names, you got a chance to have peek at someone’s life and hear how God has been working in others’ lives (I met Michael, who got married this summer and was still so wonderfully excited about it [but his wife was working nursery today so I unfortunately didn’t meet her]).

What did you find most disorienting or challenging about the worship service?

There wasn’t a lot I found disorienting about the church—I had my brother and his wife, two friends, and my little sister down the row from me and I felt very comfortable. Also, the pastor at New City was an intern at my parents’ church back when I attended there in high school. What was challenging however was getting used to the informality of it all at first. Sitting on folding chairs, kids running here and there, young couple relaxing with the woman’s head resting on her man’s shoulder—it all started off as a little distracting to me. But eventually it hit me—church, the gathering of brothers and sisters, ought to be a place where kids can (to an extent) run free easy, where couples can express appropriate love to one another, and where the last thing that should matter is what kind of seat you find yourself sitting on. Maybe what initially challenged me was that everything was just very genuine and real…a little more down to earth than I’m unfortunately used to.

What aspects of Scripture or theology did the worship service illuminate for you that you had not perceived as clearly in your regular context?

The pastor of New City has been leading his congregation through a study on idolatry. At first I thought this was interesting…thinking, “Not many of these folks have enough money to make things idols.” Though I might have been correct in that statement to an extent, by making such a statement I was proving my uneducated state in regard to idolatry. I was reminded throughout the sermon that idols come in all shapes and sizes and are not necessarily directly connect to finances. The pastor went on to explain how Abram, in agreeing to Sarai’s plan of conception via Hagar, demonstrated idolatry through acting pragmatically as opposed to acting faithfully to God’s promise. That is something that is so easy to do, regardless of how much money is in your bank account. Time and time again, I have sought to act most efficiently, logically, or wisely by my own standards instead of patiently waiting on the Lord. This service illuminated the idolatrous mentality behind such actions.