Nicole McNevin - Church Visit #1

Church name: Lawndale Christian Community Church

Church address: 3827 W. Ogden Avenue

Date attended: September 11, 2016

Church Category: Lower socioeconomic

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

My home church is Wellspring Alliance Church in Wheaton, IL. It is a member of the C&MA with a majority pan-Asian congregation and a Korean pastor. LCC, on the other hand, is a nondenominational, majority African-American church with a white pastor, and the service I attended was in the gym of the Lawndale Community Health Center.

In spite of these contextual and demographic differences, our overlying worship structures were largely the same; there was musical praise, prayer, Scripture reading, a special performance, a message, and a final worship song before dismissal. Our worship styles, however, were quite different. WAC’s services are typically oriented around one person speaking and the rest of the congregation listening; for example, the worship leader leads praise, the pastor prays and gives a sermon, and so on. LCC, on the other hand, spreads out the available singing/speaking time among its congregants, with a gospel choir leading worship and individuals expressing their prayer requests one-by-one in an allotted time period. Furthermore, while WAC holds its services in a church sanctuary with chairs facing a front stage, LCC’s service was held in a gym, and the chairs were arranged in a circular fashion around a center stage. All of this made for a more communal worship experience at LCC than at my home church.

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

One aspect that I loved about LCC was the time allotment for congregants to speak their own prayer requests. At most churches I’ve attended, people would be too shy to speak their requests aloud in front of an audience. Wellspring Alliance overcomes this hurdle by channeling all prayer requests to the pastor, who prays for individuals by name in front of the congregation. However, at LCC, individuals willingly came to the microphone and spoke of struggles, family problems, and death, and also uttered praises to God for gifts of strength, endurance, and life. One woman got choked up while speaking, and was encouraged by another congregant who called out “Take your time, girl!”

It must take immense courage for one to speak his or her struggles to the entire community, especially when such a thing potentially opens that person up to judgment. However, LCC has somehow constructed an environment where it’s possible to do just that, without or in spite of criticism. Seeing that was very life-giving to me.

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

Honestly, the demographics saddened me. This may be somewhat ethnocentric of me, but in my eyes, the lack of diversity and the patterned way in which people sat spoke of injustice.

As a person who intentionally chooses to attend culturally diverse churches, LCC’s majority African American congregation stood out to me. In areas like Lawndale, such homogeneity is typically not due to individual choice, but historical policies such as redlining, which encouraged white flight and excluded the area from transcultural flows. Furthermore, I observed that there were significantly more women than men at the service, and they were sitting in gendered groups. There were very few male-female couples sitting together. Also, most people appeared to be over the age of 30. The lack of young men in the congregation brought to mind The New Jim Crow and similar literature I’ve read about poor black communities such as Lawndale.

Again, I am looking in on this congregation as an outsider, and these are simply the thoughts I was having during the service. The only insight I have on this particular community is from my sociology and anthropology classes. There may be alternative reasons as to why people are sitting in these patterns.

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

Though “community” seemed to be the theme for the day (the sermon was entitled “Being The Family Of God”), the Scripture readings from Psalm 133 and 1 Peter 3:8-9 stuck out to me in light of the community-centered worship practices I discussed in response to the previous questions. The two readings spoke to the importance of close community in God’s eyes, and offered instruction on how to create one that would be honoring to God.

At Wellspring Alliance Church, I am aware that one of the main struggles of our church leaders is fostering a genuine and authentic community because many members source their support from other groups. At LCC, however, “community” seems to be the heartbeat of the church, integrated into its every aspect - even its name. Perhaps this is because it not only expresses a vision of the church leaders, but the needs of the people. It was certainly inspiring to see something that my home church has strived so long for done so well.