Philip Paek - Church Visit #2

Philip Paek - Church Visit #2

Church name: Willow Chicago

Church address: 50 E. Congress Parkway, Chicago, IL 60605

Date attended: March 23, 2014

Church category: Different racial demographic

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

           I attended service at Willow Creek (the Chicago campus), which is a nondenominational evangelical mega church. Demographically, it was more of a mixed church, which was completely different from my original context normally having grown up in a Korean church. In many ways it was both similar and different to my regular context. For example, worship started familiarly with contemporary worship led by a worship team while the congregation followed along on projector screens, but being a mixed, non-denominational church, there was a wide variety of different types of worship that the night basically evolved into, moving on to gospel music within the same worship set. The typical Korean worship context feels very passionate and emotional as well with dimmed lights and such, and this church was able to similarly match that feeling more than the non-denominational feel of Wheaton, but the familiarity shifted as the worship set (led by mostly an African-American contingent) shifted as well towards a gospel theme.

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

            One of the most interesting things was that the service at this mega church was being streamed from another campus. One of the facilitators of worship came up and gave an introduction to which our message followed with a live video stream from what I believe was the main campus. I was quite skeptical to this at first because in my mind because the church was not only speaking across cultural boundaries, but now stepped into another boundary that I thought challenged the personality of the church. However, against my opinion, at many times I did feel challenged by the pastor's message that was given through a screen to a mostly Caucasian or Black congregation (and more at the other campuses).

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

The only program given at this church was a small postcard sized cardstock paper with information for the month (not week) about who was speaking. Besides that, I felt a little disoriented regarding the flow of the service because I didn't know what was to come and didn't even see the streamed message coming my way. The streamed message as well was a bit disorienting as we were already situated in a theatre in Chicago being the only place fit to accommodate such a large congregation. At times I had to remind myself I wasn't at a theatre to stay focused on what was Church. In addition, I wasn't used to being in such a large church context. Wheaton was the closest thing to me that comes to the feeling of this church in many ways except for the extent of the diversity, but there definitely was a different feel between Chapel and an actual Church service with a similar congregation. The larger congregation just felt significantly less personal to me as a whole and being one of the few Koreans there just added to that.

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 congregation was generally aimed at upper middle class adults to young adults and the message was about sacrifice and how when we give to God it had to cost us. It was different than in a Korean church as I had never really had a message about the importance of giving been preached to me in such a way (whether monetarily or figuratively). But generally the service did illuminate the act of sacrifice to God for me. That simply giving something that didn't mean much to me was not much of sacrifice at all.