Abigail Latip – Church Visit #2

Blog title: Abigail Latip – Church Visit #2

Church name: New Story Church

Church address: Swift Elementary School, 5900 N Winthrop Ave

Date attended: 30 Oc 2016

Church category: racially different

Describe the worship service you attended. How was it similar to or different from your regular context? (150 words)

The worship service was quite similar to what we occasionally see at Wheaton with its contemporary Christian music choices. However, the biggest difference I noticed between this church and other ‘home’ contexts was that New Story has a huge emphasis on relaxing and keeping up a chill vibe. After singing praise songs, we had a few minutes of icebreaker questions where both pastors individually came up to me and told me that the first rule for visitors was to “Relaxxxxxx” (exactly in that tone). There was no clear order of the worship service, but the pastors gave announcements together after worship, followed by the hospitality pastor giving a sermon that was comparable to other ones I’ve heard. Throughout the service, however, was an air of relaxedness that was very unfamiliar to me.

What did you find most interesting or appealing about the worship service? (150 words)

Apart from the fact that the service was overwhelmingly relaxed, I found a couple other things very interesting. During announcements it was clear that the church valued open leadership, as the creation of a ‘discernment team’ was explicitly because they do not have an elder board, and that this was a “Jesus-led church rather than a pastor- or staff-led church.” Another appealing thing was having women in leadership roles, namely Dori the co-pastor (leading with her husband) and Liz, the hospitality pastor who spoke. They were all quite young as well, the co-pastors presumably being in their 30s and Liz in her mid-20s. Yet another thing that appealed to me was their benevolence fund, which is a fund separate from offerings collected every 5^th Sunday for people in the church who need it. When they brought the fund up, they asked a congregation member to share his experience benefitting from the fund, which also gave a glimpse into the diversity in socioeconomic classes of the church. The church was also quite intentional with being multicultural, displaying Scripture in Spanish next to English and also showing the Bible verses in Somali.

What did you find most disorienting or challenging about the worship service? (150 words)

The degree to which the church was so relaxed was quite disorienting. I just could not get over how casual it was. In my home church in Jakarta, Jubilee Chapel, and Beloved church (my three benchmarks) all seem to have more of a formal posture of worship. This may be because of differences in culture—all three churches are predominantly culturally Asian, even with western influences here and there. This church, though branded as multicultural, was primarily composed of Caucasian Generation X-ers and Millenials, which is where I think the comfort of a casual vibe may have come from. Another disorienting thing was the sermon and the way it was communicated. Pastor Liz spoke on what is driving us in this life through King Solomon’s story in 1 Kings 10. I personally thrive on biblically grounded sermons with practical applications, and I felt like her sermon was quite vague as she also presented it almost totally in a narrative format, as though she was walking through the story. Perhaps this fit with the crowd, but it was a little disorienting to me as I do not typically hear sermons presented in such stories.

What aspects of Scripture or theology did the worship service illuminate for you that you had not perceived as clearly in your regular context? (150 words)

Two important aspects of theology illuminated during this service were the importance of having women in leadership as well as trusting and giving leadership opportunities to young people. I don’t believe my home church in Jakarta explicitly empowers women or 20 year olds for ministry (to the best of my knowledge). Although I do know of some female pastors in Jakarta, not many come to mind. I think there is still a cultural complex in Asia that wisdom comes with age and roles like pastors usually go to men instead of women. Beloved and Jubilee differ in that more equal gender roles are adopted. They both invest in youngsters, especially Beloved, but the clear lack of a woman as a pastor sets New Story apart.