Austin Sahly - Church Visit 3

Church Name: Iglesia del Pueblo

Church Address: 27W500 North Avenue, West Chicago, Illinois 60185 

Date Attended: 3/30/14

Church Category: Different Racial/Ethnic Group

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

This worship service was entirely in Spanish. The congregation was nearly 100% Latino. Outside of these two principal differences, though, the actual service was very similar to what I am used to. I am close to fluent in Spanish, which equipped me to engage well with the service and understand all that was going on. Similarities between the service and my own experience included the worship band (contemporary) opening the service with several songs, announcements given by an associate pastor, overhead projectors, a longer and biblically expositional sermon, and corporate prayer. The congregation, in general, seemed very reverent in the way they approached the service. Members were serious and engaged, taking notes during the sermon and giving their approval to gospel claims through “amens” and applause. I was surprised by how easy it was for me to engage and track with the service despite it being in an entirely new culture and language.

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

I really appreciated the way in which the congregation was engaged and seriously tracked the pastor during the sermon. Despite the fact that the church was on the larger side, it seemed like many members of the congregation knew the pastor intimately and were able to understand his personal anecdotes, all of which contributed to a reverence with which they approached the time of teaching. It was not a “make-you-feel-good-about-yourself” sermon in any way, and yet the congregation engaged all the same, eagerly desiring to take what the pastor taught and apply it to their lives. I had not experienced this type of serious reverence for the teaching of God’s word in a while, and it was refreshing to see the way the congregation took seriously this part of the sermon. This reminded me that biblical teaching is meant to be applied outside of the church building, which requires the congregation to actively engage during the sermon.

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

I think the most difficult part about the service for me was the length. I was used to the typical 3-4 worship songs in the beginning, followed by the announcements and then the sermon, but the sermon was especially long. The entire service was around 2 hours long, which the sermon took an hour and 10 minutes of. Coming from a denomination where the service is just over an hour long and the sermon is never over 40 minutes, it was challenging for me to stay engaged the entire time. Especially because the entire service was in Spanish, I found myself losing attention at the end of the sermon. Still, I think that if I were adjusted to a longer service, this would not have been a problem, as it seemed the rest of the congregation was able to stay engaged. I realize now that they were there to apply the sermon to their lives, so the length might have been a beneficial thing as they were soaking up as much knowledge as they could.

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

It was a very unique service for me to be able to worship in another language and see the power of God at work among a people group that I rarely interact with. I have been on missions’ trips and study abroad programs before where I have seen the body of Christ at work around the world, but it was a cool experience for me to see God at work in a neighborhood close to mine, but entirely in another language. At the same time, I am currently at the highest level of Spanish I have ever been, so it was cool for me to be able to understand and engage with the entire service in another language. I definitely got a better grasp of the ability of the Holy Spirit to work in other languages. It is crazy to think that God speaks all the languages of the world.

Philip Paek - Church Visit #3

Church name: Lawndale Christian Community Church

Church address: 3860 W Ogden Ave, Chicago, IL 60623

Date attended: March 30, 2014

Church category: lower socioeconomic demographic

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

Arriving at the church, I could already tell the neighborhood offered something that was completely different from the context of churches I was used to. Service was held inside the gymnasium of a health center, which was quite new to me in terms of venue. We entered down a ramp after being greeted with handouts of candy and programs from smiling faces. And the program commenced with worship consisting of gospel worship. Worship was probably the biggest different thing from my regular context. I was used to being led by a worship team in a front facing congregation, but the vocal leaders stood in the center of the room with an inward facing congregation while the band was almost hidden in the back of the room. I loved this as the entire service really had a joint communion feel to it as the congregation regularly engaged in the service. Ethnically, most of the congregation was African-American, and the soulful shouts of "preach" and "mmhmm" coming from around me was both a new experience and joyfully encouraging to listen to.

What did you find the most interesting:

Worship was the most interesting experience for me. I only recall really singing a handful of songs, but remember specifically noticing that each song went on multiple times even if it was just one chorus of a song being repeated over and over again. It really made me note the importance of the lyrics I was singing, and though I was not used to the gospel style and found it hard to follow along at times, felt extra engaged in worship than normal. In addition, I loved the fact that the band didn't take center stage. Serving on a worship team myself and having my own bad experiences with worship concerts, I loved how the focus was taken away from the music aspect of worship and was almost glad that for the first half of worship I couldn't figure out where the instrumental was coming from.

What was challenging:

Very different to my regular context of an hour-long service or so, the service held was about two hours long. This was probably the most challenging to me not because of the content of the message, but because in such a fast paced way of life today, I started to be unable to focus the longer the service went despite my best efforts. It specifically caught me off guard when I expected the message to be about done and the pastor mentioned that he was just done with his intro and going into his main points. 

What aspects of scripture or theology did the service illuminate for you?

The service really made me think about the importance of Church community. The congregation at the Church really was one of the driving factors of the worship experience in my opinion as they were engaged within the service through their positive outbursts and calls for the choir to keep singing. It was inspiring the way that it was a community of encouragement and laughter. From the choir, to the pastor, to the special service, everyone seemed to be working together in unison and really celebrating God together. It's an aspect of the Church that I feel is lost in larger congregation and the mega churches of today and even within congregations of similar size that I am used to being a part of I don't feel that sort of church unity.