Aafke Loney - Church Visit #1

Church Name: Lawndale Community Church

Church Address: 3860 W. Ogden Ave. Chicago, IL

Date Attended: September 11, 2016 – 11am

Church Category: Lower Socioeconomic

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

The general outline of this worship service was similar to my home church and the church I attend at Wheaton.  Starting with worship music then moving into a time of announcements, prayer, scripture reading, and the sermon is a format that I am used to. The biggest difference was the size of the congregation.  My regular context includes a church body of hundreds of people and many people do not know each other.  This makes church less personal, whereas at Lawndale it was clear that many of the church members knew each other and cared for each other, because they all live in the same community. Coach Wayne Gordon addressed a few people by name during the sermon to encourage them or call attention to something happening in their life. I also did not know most of the songs because they were gospel music, which is a different genre then my regular context.

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

I was very encouraged by the family dynamic that could be felt at LCC. The most moving part of the worship service was the time of prayer.  Anyone in the service was free to share a prayer request or a praise.  The people who spoke were very vulnerable and willing to ask for help or to praise God. The congregation very happily rejoiced or were quick to sympathize with the speaker. The woman who prayed for the requests called every speaker by name and continued to pray over them with a familiarity and a sincerity that I have not experienced in a service before. This perpetuated the idea that the LCC family is a congregation who is focused on relationships instead of numbers and production. The time of worship was also appealing because everyone was very unashamed and vocal, which is something that I am not entirely used to. The chairs were arranged in a circle around the stage, so it very much felt like everyone was included. 

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

The service that I went to was the first time that Coach Wayne Gordon had been back since the summer, so the service was used as a way for him to explain to his congregation what he was doing and learning throughout the summer.  Therefore it seemed like I did not experience what a normal service would be like.  I also felt somewhat like an outsider, not due to the way I was treated or welcomed, but because of the obvious fact that most of these congregants are from the same community and I simply am not. It was a little challenging to listen to what felt like an in-house family gathering when I am not a part of the family. It seems like LCC is going through a time of transition which is interesting to hear about and see but also a strange thing to experience as a visitor.

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

I think the process of lament was something that was illuminated for me in this context. Although Coach’s sermon itself was more housekeeping information and him talking about what he learned this summer, most of it was following a similar theme. Many of his books were focused on violence or race relations and how we approach those topics as Christians.  He emphasized some of the hardships that LCC had recently experienced and how desperately they needed truth from the Scripture during that time. In my regular church context we often talk about injustices but we do not lament them, because we have no true experiences with them.  What I experienced through the time of prayer and Coach’s goals for this upcoming year highlighted the fact that these experiences are happening in this context. This church is living in the tension of these injustices, and the violence in the city and before anything can be done, one must take time to lament these situations.