Leah Blobaum - Church visit #1

Church name: All Souls Anglican Church
Church address: 25W741 Jewell Rd. Wheaton, IL 60187
Date attended: 13 September 2015
Church category: Significantly more or less liturgical

Describe the worship service you attended. How was it similar to or different from your regular context?
I grew up in a non-denominational mega church, making this service at All Souls a completely opposite experience for me. I thoroughly enjoyed the change! I walked into a small but ornately decorated sanctuary that filled the upper level of the church, and was struck by the hushed reverence everyone in the congregation had. The service began with the procession of the cross and the Bible, carried by the church leaders to begin the Call to Worship. Prayers and readings from the Scripture were structured as a Call and Response. Hymns were interspersed in the service. About halfway through the service, the sermon was given by Dr. Gordon, who spoke on the importance and power of our words. Following the main sermon, were Call and Response prayers of intercession, and the Eucharist. The receiving of the Eucharist was the most powerful part of the service for me, personally. 
What did you find most interesting or appealing about the worship service?
My favorite parts of the service were the Eucharist and prayers. Everything was approached with reverence and care, and not in any way as only a callus rite. Instead of passing around trays of tiny little cups and wafers, we were dismissed row by row to kneel at the altar and receive the elements from one cup and piece of wafer. The way Eucharist was approached gave me a great sense of unity with the other members of the congregation. We were all reverently approaching God together, in community. Even though the prayers were something I was following along with from a sheet of paper, I could hear the sincerity of those speaking around me, and was, myself, speaking sincerely. Overall, I was thoroughly interested in the different approach to an equally, if not more strongly, sincere worship service. 
What did you find disorienting or challenging about the worship service?
Some of the very things I liked most about this experience I also found challenging. The liturgical layout of the service was something I have participated in before, but not on a regular basis. I was not familiar with this particular layout, and it was easy to get distracted by trying to follow along and say the correct words. Some of the worship service traditions, such as the procession at the beginning, were things I had never experienced before in a worship service. While I had personally never been in a service quite like that before, the sincerity with which the worship was approached was something I found myself easily drawn to. Another more minor thing that caught me off guard was the very small size of the congregation at the service. Again, this was purely out of my comfort zone and not something I found offensive. I felt like much more of a spectacle as a newcomer in such a small congregation. 
What aspects of Scripture or theology did the worship service illuminate for you that you had not perceived?
The sermon by Dr. Gordon on the importance of Words was something that clearly ministered to me from the service. I found myself both encouraged and challenged, walking away feeling refreshed. Additionally, the importance of tradition in Christian worship was made more clear to me through this overall experience than it ever had at my home church. I enjoyed the new perspective All Souls' service gave me in its worship. I have begun better appreciating church tradition and the incorporation of it into worship services. The early centuries of church history had their struggles, just like our churches do now, but they were ever closer to the beginning of Christianity. This is another reason it is important to take seriously what has been passed down to us.