Joseph Tam Church Visit 1

Joseph Tam - Church Visit 1
Lawndale Christian Community Church
3827 W Ogden, Chicago, IL 60623
9/18/2016
Lower Socioeconomic demographic

Describe the worship service you attended. How was it similar to or different from your regular context?
The worship space itself is what first struck me as different from my home church. LCCC meets on the floor of their gymnasium. The seating is set up around a central elevated platform and at least four worship leaders sang leading each section of the congregants facing them. Though I have heard livelier music from other African American churches, the style of singing was still more spirited than my church which depends heavily on one pianist and a mix of early and recent CCM and hymns. The worship was interspersed with guest performances, though that may be simply because the service was on their "Friendship Sunday" and focused on outreach.  By meeting in a gym and arranging the seating circularly, LCCC and their service, seemed to foster a real sense of community and a real sense of connection to the Lawndale community. There are other ways of fostering those things, of course, but the arrangement contrasts with my home church which meets in a sanctuary far smaller and allows the congregants to gravitate to the seats they normally sit even if no one is sitting nearby.

What did you find most interesting or appealing about the worship service?
The most interesting thing I found about the worship service was the seating arrangement. Though I already mentioned it, it bears repeating that this use of space was pretty unconventional for me. I had been to a few services at a Lutheran church around Wheaton that had a similar layout, but they still used pews and not many people sit around the far side of the circle. Some people will inevitable be closer to the core/stage than others, but perhaps sitting in a circle still provides more of a sense of equality among worshipers that I appreciate. I have been in churches where the people, for whatever reason, shun sitting in the front. At LCCC every chair was filled and where someone sat didn't seem all that important. 

What did you find most disorienting or challenging about the worship service?
I appreciated the reading of scripture during the service and did eventually see how it tied in to the sermon topic. However, the insertion of readings between singing and performances seemed haphazard. There was a moment when one young man read one verse from Psalm that abruptly cuts off unless you read the next verse. There was a kind of awkwardness to this splicing that the congregation seemed aware of and I too went to my Bible to try and read the verse in its context. I am used to a structure of singing, then reading, then preaching. It's okay to not have service structured that way, but it's challenging to me when the scripture is not as contextualized when its read. 

What aspects of Scripture or theology did the worship service illuminate for you that you had not perceived as clearly in your regular context?
Even when I wasn't tracking the use of scripture, Pastor Gordon brought them back into his sermon to point to his central message that "your life matters." I noted when I first walked in both him and other congregants wearing "Black Lives Matter" shirts. It's a message that applies to anyone regardless of race, but it takes on naturally a charged meaning in a lower economic neighborhood and a larger society that devalues black lives. In my regular context, "your life matters" would be kind of a "well... yeah, of course it does." But in LCCC, the theology of God being a personal God who knows each and loves each is illuminated when affluence and comfort is not one of the challenges. It is all the more relevant when race, economic status, and safety all mix to create circumstances that run contrary to God's covenant promises. The topic itself of the sermon is what stands out to me and what is naturally cast in a different light based on its context.