Leya Hartman - Church Visit #2, 3

Blog title: Leya Hartman Church Visit #2

Church name: Church of the Beloved

Church address: Northwestern University, 375 E Chicago Ave

Date attended: November 6, 2016

Church category: racially/ethnically different from me

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

Church of the Beloved draws primarily Chinese American and Korean American college students. The church is led by David Choi who is also Asian American and has a lot of energy. The service is held in Northwestern’s campus right near the lake by Water Tower Place. The location and perhaps the social connections draws primarily middle to upper class students. There is a lot of energy because of the student population and David Choi feeds that young adult energy with sermons that are relevant and that use young adult code. The worship was contemporary and led by all young adults and lots of spiritual catchphrases are thrown into the prayers. The sermon was all based around a metaphor on the World Series championship which was very Chicago based and drew on students’ shared experiences. David Choi is very charismatic leader who is very humble and entertaining and connects with students easily. The church is home to many Wheaton students so it feels like another Wheaton in Chicago.

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

The sermon was so relevant and relatable to my currents stage in life and thought processes. The sermon used words and phrases that my generation uses all the time like, “…am I right?” or “I’m just saying…” and lots of sarcastic jokes about dating relationships and other stage-of-life specific themes. This made me feel very familiar in a relatively new context (I have been to Beloved other times). David Choi is so passionate about the people that he is serving and so every sermon that I have heard from him has been just that way, relevant and funny. Today’s sermon was especially hard hitting though which was a side I had not seen from Choi before. He talked about how apathetic we seem compared to our zeal and the things we are willing to do when our team wins big, such as changing flights, waking up early, standing in line, breaking the law, knocking down fences just to see a glimpse of the players ride by on the bus. He called us to sacrifice more as he tried to quantify the magnitude of the significance of the Kingdom of God and the day Jesus will return.

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

Being white, I am definitely the minority at Church of the Beloved. However, different from Lawndale Community Church, I do not find myself feeling particularly awkward. I assume that this feeling probably comes from the learned stereotype that Asian Americans are not really minorities and that they are the best minority at assimilating to American culture. Most of the students dress the same as I do and speak with the same jargon that I do. The worship today was the same that I could hear at a service filled with primarily white students and there were no cultural references today that I did not understand. However, the population was also between the ages of 18 to 30 generally and often times the younger generation of immigrants will grow up trying to assimilate to their friend’s and school’s culture instead of their parents, in fact it is common that the younger generation will reject their parents’ culture due to embarrassment. It is perhaps due to this phenomenon that I felt like I was surrounded by white students, which is strange, because I know different ethnicities have traditions and ways of being that are unique and beautiful to their culture and yet at this service it all felt very “normal” to me.

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

We spoke about Galatians 1 today where the church is turning away from Jesus’ Gospel and to idols that Paul calls “other gospels” which are really no gospel at all. David Choi called us to be more zealous and hugely sacrificial, ready to give anything away at any point, for Christ. He challenged us to think about what our real threshold is to say “yes” to God and at what point would we say “no, that is just too much to give up.” Perhaps this is a sermon I would not have heard at a multi-generational church because young people are often seen as passionate and zealous. Yet David Choi felt that we were truly apathetic when it comes to celebrating and doing anything for the Kingdom of God. To have a church that can speak to a certain generation’s problems specifically and in a nuanced way is a very cool facet that the Church of the Beloved has found. 

Blog title: Leya Hartman Church Visit #3

Church name: St. Chrysostom’s Episcopal Church

Church address: 1424 North Dearborn Chicago

Date attended: October 30, 2016

Church category: liturgical

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

St. Chrysostom’s worship service is held in a beautiful, old cathedral in downtown Chicago. The service is liturgical and much more formal than my normal context of non-denominational church. The pastor and other staff members walked down the aisle as the service began wearing robes and holding their religious symbols. A choir filed in and sang from the back of the cathedral which was new to me, I had to think that perhaps this allows people to focus more on the message that the choir sings than on the performance. Or perhaps it is just for acoustical purposes. An organ was played during the hymns which added to the grandeur of the setting. The population of the church was nearly all white older folks which is apparently common for their second service as a church member told Nicole and I later. Many women wore hats and all were dressed in relatively high fashion which reminded me of England. It felt like they were trying to relate to the English roots of the tradition. 

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

The liturgy mixed with a relatively liberal crowd (to be discussed below) was very appealing to me. To connect old, traditional hymns and prayers with modern day social problems was totally new to me and exciting. I had not realized that older, white people could be interested in this kind of dialogue in their worship services. Nicole and I spoke with a church member, Bob Lane, who happened to be a Wheaton graduate from over 40 years ago and his wife (fun fact: Mr. Lane is the past CEO of John Deere). He told us that he and his wife had been drawn to the church because of how open and accepting it was to people on all different paths of life. It was nice to meet an older Wheaton graduate that did not embody the stereotype of Wheaton donors that restrain the campus from reacting more quickly and relevantly to student-led movements and crisis on campus.

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

As we sang worship and I looked around and saw the racial makeup of the congregation, I began to assume certain beliefs and ideas that the group probably represented: conservative, stiff, individual-focused, rich. Yet as the sermon began, I heard quotes from the Washington post and a story about a woman serving the poor and leaving her community to be uncomfortable. Women led as well, which was relatively new for me, and one of the female pastors (?) got up and led us through a prayer where we slowly recounted the names of 16 victims of gun violence in Chicago and their ages, many of the names indicated a racial or ethnic minority background. And what had originally dawn me to the church was that Nicole had told me that it was a church that affirmed gay priests. I was completely shocked that this group of white people had chosen to attend this, in my opinion, liberal, generally socially aware, gay-affirming church.

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

The sermon was on “loving the other” and seeing the other as “paradise” and being generous to others because of that. While some phraseology could be tweaked, it was very interesting to hear a white priest call his white congregation to go out and live with and love people who are different from them. I was most drawn by the children of God that I encountered at the service that seemed to embody Christ’s compassion and far-reaching love. To be a part of such a liturgically rich church stationed in a beautiful cathedral with robed priests and fancy religious articles, and hear the name “Rashad Xavier Collins” read off and prayed for as they left this world due to gun violence was truly beautiful to me and exemplified the love that Christ seems to call for. While I only heard from the pastoral staff and spoke to two congregants, it seemed that many had purposely chosen the church to speak about such spiritual topics in a context that admits to the social issues at present. This was something I had never seen before and made me realize that Christianity can be acted out in different ways based on the same Scriptures.