Church Address: 3827 W Ogden, Chicago, IL 60623
Date Attended: 9/18/16
Church Type: Lower Socioeconomic
Describe the worship service you attended. How was it similar to or different from your usual church context?
When I walk into my church in Wheaton, I often can’t sense that church is happening until I get to the doors of the sanctuary. As this point I recognize my friends chit chatting about the week, followed by the worship leader’s acoustic guitar. I take my place sitting, facing forward toward the worship band and the backs of most people’s heads. But I knew I was attending church in Lawndale when I got within 20 feet of the building’s entrance. Laughter and greetings spilled from the double doors; walking into the gym allowed a vision of ¾ of the congregation faces, with worship leaders facing all angles. I was aware, even as I sat in the back, that I was a visible, participating member of worship, and was reminded of that every time I made eye contact with someone across the room. I watched a large ball be tossed around in the air (it was friendship week, so I imagine this was in celebration of that and not a normal part of the service), and released a balloon into the air outside with the rest of the congregation.
The sensory experience was absolutely the most noticeable difference from my regular church context: I saw more faces during worship (though, interestingly, the way worship was embodied--raising hands, swaying, etc.--was very similar to my church), the things I heard were louder and there was more voices communicating them, and I touched different materials (balloons, large blow up balls) than I ever do in my regular church context.
Coach Gordon preached an introduction to his new series, “Your Life Matters.” I noticed a similarity in the structure of the sermon, though the difference in content was stark: there were multiple points made, Scriptural evidence for each one, and a conclusion that included the review of each point. While the kinds of examples Coach used to exemplify his points differed (perhaps at my church, a hardship would be not finding an apartment or not having enough money for a car, Coach’s examples of hardship included not having a job or hearing someone tell you you’re worthless), the structure of his delivery was similar.
I saw six “Black Lives Matter” shirts, which definitely would not be a thing at my very white church in Wheaton.
There are more, but the one dear to my heart and most encouraging was the number of women I saw and heard onstage. They re-invigorated my own responsibility to the church, simply by being onstage; these feelings are often smothered, or simply allowed to die, in the context of my own church.
What did you find most interesting of appealing?
I’ll expound upon my last point for this question. Since the nature of this church visit was to engage a church at a lower socioeconomic level than my regular context, I’m not necessarily sure how to situate this inside that framework. Allowing women to speak in church, perhaps some would argue, is a matter of “theology”, and thus Lawndale must simply have a different theology than my church setting. Yet, can theology be divorced from the socioeconomic level at which it operates? How does SES affect theology, particularly when it comes to promoting women’s voices on the public stage of a church service? I’m sure lots of people far more knowledgeable than I have said smart things about this: all I know is that I loved seeing women on a church platform.
What did you find most disorienting or challenging about the worship service?
Embarrassingly enough, the hardest part of the Lawndale experience for me was the moments spent waiting to release those balloons. As I mentioned above, the week that we went to Lawndale was “friendship week”, meaning there were lots of first time guests there. We did an activity at the end where we released hundreds of balloons into the air with cards attached to them, inviting other people in the community to come to church next Sunday. On paper, I could really get behind it. But as my efficiency-obsessed self waited outside hearing “Everybody outside! Everybody outside!” for over 15 minutes...the panic that comes with “wasting time” (as I often incorrectly interpret moments like these) accelerates in intensity. So the most challenging part of this experience was, for me, the most challenging part of many experiences. Cultivating patience is on my to-do list.
What aspects of Scripture or theology did the worship service illuminate for you that you had not perceived as clearly in your regular context?
Coach gave various reasons throughout his sermon concerning why each individual life matters. His second point was “I look like God,” using the story of creation and the imago dei to make his point. This struck me as extremely profound. I am unaccustomed to that degree of simplicity when talking about how humans are made in the image of God, and I found it extremely moving. I don’t have a ton of poetry to wax about this, but I have found myself coming back to the wonderful idea that God decided to make me like God’s self. Coach’s simplicity in his word choice and speech allowed the profundity of this truth sink deep.
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