Erin McCord -- Church Visit #1

Church name: Lawndale Christian Community Church

Church address: 3827 W. Ogden, Chicago, IL 60623

Date attended: 9.18.16 -- 11AM

Church category: lower socioeconomic

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

Lawndale Christian Community church was an informal setting very grounded in the community of Lawndale. The congregation at Lawndale was largely African American with several white and Latino/a participants and very little representation from other minority groups. The service was conducted in a very participatory style with call and response incorporated into the music and speaking portions of the service. Although I was raised in a fairly wide variety of church settings, in many aspects Lawndale’s service was very similar to the two churches I’ve attended in the past three years, which have both been predominantly African-American congregations with a similar style of call and response. One difference was that the size of Lawndale is bigger than the churches I am coming from, which creates a different atmosphere. Another difference was the variety of music forms, including congregational singing, special music from solo singers, and choir songs, incorporated into the service.

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

I was interested in the physical layout of the worship space, as the main platform from which the service was conducted was in the center of the congregation and not in the front. At first I found this a little distracting, as the speakers and singers had to rotate and turn their backs on portions of the congregation at different points, but as the service continued I found that this arrangement appealing. It emphasized the gathering together of the worshippers because as you participate you are facing others who are also participating. I also appreciated the variety of speakers and musicians incorporated into the service. Between the choir, congregational singing leaders, solo singers, Scripture readers, Pastor Gordon, and those giving announcements, there was a strong sense of wide participation in leadership and putting together the gathering.

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

The thing that I found most disorienting about Lawndale was the relative lack of the characteristic of worship associated with words like “reverence”, “awe”, or “sacred space”. While I am from a background of fairly informal churches (for the most part) in the context of informal relationships between church members, I have less experience with a worship context informal towards God to the extent of the Lawndale service I attended. For instance, one prayer was opened with “Hey, God”. Similarly, I found the treatment of baptism challenging; to be baptized at four o’clock today, I would have only had to go to one baptism class at one o’clock. This makes me wonder what is Lawndale’s view of the sacraments. Another disorienting aspect of Lawndale was the verbal teaching’s emphasis of the individual in developing identity in Christ. I would be interested in participating in another service at Lawndale to see how the communal qualities of Christian identity are developed.

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

There was a strong emphasis at Lawndale on their location within and identity as a part of their local community. This shows a theological understanding of the relationship between Christians and the wider community that embraces meaningful engagement rather than withdrawal. While the churches I have been a part of in the past agree with this idea of engaging the non-Christian community, Lawndale seems to carry out that involvement more palpably. For instance, the sermon included videos of various people from Lawndale speaking about whether they think their lives matter. In this way, voices from outside the church were heard within the church in a very direct way. This practice of the church locating itself strongly within its community is a practice seen in the epistles, in which the gatherings of believers bear the name of their communities (Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians, etc.) and function as a network within the network of the wider community, rather than as a separate network unto themselves.