Nicole McNevin - Church Visit #3

Church Name: Chinese Christian Union Church

Church Address: 2301 S. Wentworth Avenue, Chicago, IL, 60616

Date Attended: Sunday, November 06, 2016

Church Category: Different ethnic/racial

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

            

The congregation I regularly attend, Wellspring Alliance Church, has a large portion of Asians and Asian Americans. This portion of our church is ethnically diverse, consisting of foreign-born Koreans, Chinese, and Vietnamese congregants as well as U.S.-born Korean Americans, Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans, and Filipino-Americans. About 40-45% of the congregation is White. The Chinese Christian Union Church, however, consists almost entirely of Chinese and Chinese Americans.

            

Furthermore, while Wellspring is a racially mixed church in the middle of a majority-white suburb, CCUC is a grassroots Chinese/Chinese-American congregation in the middle of Chinatown, a Chinese enclave with its own economy. This, I’m sure, makes direct assimilation with the outside culture much less likely – this is evidenced by the lack of non-Chinese congregants in the room. Wellspring, on the other hand, is itself the result of a merge between two racially and ethnically different congregations.

            

Aside from these facts, however, I didn’t pick up on a lot of differences. The service I attended was in English, the music was “contemporary” Christian led by a worship team, and the bulk of the time was taken up by a sermon followed by a benediction.

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

            

I actually liked the racial/ethnic homogeneity. This may be because Wellspring is experiencing a certain level of disorientation and culture shock because of the merge – everything from white people mispronouncing my friends’ names to the omission of the loud and raw one-voice prayer sessions (which I found extremely spiritually freeing) during Wednesday night meetings for fear of making non-Asian congregants uncomfortable. It was nice to be in an environment again where a common culture was holding people together.

           

I imagine that there is a culture split between old and young congregants, however. This may be why, despite the relatively even distribution of people across the age spectrum in the space, they sat separately from each other, with older members gravitating toward the back and younger members gathering in the front. Besides among families, I saw very little mixing of ages in member interactions. I found this perplexing - it may speak to larger divides in Chicago’s Chinatown, and if one were to research this, CCUC would be an excellent place to start.

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

            

The biggest challenge for me was that I apparently came at the wrong week – the preacher was a white guest speaker, Pastor Marty Schoenleber, concluding his three-week series on repentance. Next week, the regular pastor, Reverend Dr. Andrew Lee, will continue preaching on the Seven Deadly Sins. I do not wish to speak negatively of Pastor Marty – he was fine – but I do think it would have been a more enlightening experience had I heard from a man whom this congregation hears from weekly.

            

That said, the fact that CCUC is willing to invite a white guest speaker to its English congregation says a lot about the group. Clearly, it is at some level open and receptive to white culture and theology – likely more so than CCUC’s Mandarin and Cantonese congregations. Language doubtless plays a huge part in this, but I’d imagine that there are a number of ethnic or racial churches that would never wish to hear from a white pastor. As with the age divide, this fact most likely speaks to larger sociological structures in Chicago’s Chinatown culture.

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

            

One thing that stood out to me was an aspect of the prayer for the upcoming presidential elections. The woman praying – a Chinese American – asked that we pray about the “open condemnation of people based on their race” and other aspects of personhood throughout the past two years. While I don’t think that Wellspring would be opposed to praying about this, I’ve never heard our pastor reference politics. Then again, I’ve never been with Wellspring through a presidential election, so I can’t be sure.

           

I do know, however, that the church I attend with my parents – Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, KY – would probably not pray about the condemnation of racial and ethnic minorities, considering that the congregation is mostly white, the pastors are both white, and that I’ve never heard them speak a word about race aside from highlighting the importance of surface-level racial reconciliation (and my father would probably stop attending if they did).

            

This is all to say that the fact that this is openly prayed for in some congregations and goes completely unacknowledged in others speaks to the divides between these churches and the level of like-mindedness within them. It made me sad – the body of Christ is supposed to be united, albeit taking on different shapes and functions. It also reminded me of the theological importance of bridging divides not just between Christians and non-Christians, but between and among Christians in general.