Meagan Jackson - Church Visit #1

Church name: The Faith Community of St. Sabina

Church address: 1210 W 78^th Place, Chicago IL 60620

Date attended: 9/13/2015

Church category: African-American Catholic church

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

St. Sabina is an African-American Catholic church on the South Side of Chicago. The worship service started with worship and praise, followed by readings and responsive prayers from a book of Catholic liturgical readings. The sermon was interspersed with songs, and the service ended with tithing, prayers, and communion.

The praise was different from my regular context in that there were a lot of repetitive songs, and a full band accompanied a small choir. Most people sang standing up with hands raised, although some people were also sitting down.

I really enjoyed the readings and responsive prayers because the outline was the same as the other Catholic masses that I have attended, however, they were read with a lot of enthusiasm. By reading the texts of Scripture slowly and with emphases, it was a lot easier to pay attention and take in all that the texts were saying.

The sermon was very different than what I have experienced up till now. It was based on 2 Cor. 10:3-6, and emphasized how we are victors in a spiritual war.

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

The most interesting part of the service was the type of songs that we sang and the mode in which we sang them. At first I was very surprised by the fact that there were no lyrics posted anywhere, so I did not know the words of the songs. However, after a few minutes, I realized that I could enjoy the praise and truly use it to bring glory to God, because I had to let the words sink in before I could sing them. This took the emphasis away from singing, placing it rather on a response to God’s goodness.

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

The most challenging part was the content of the sermon. Father Michael L. Pfleger centered his sermon on the idea that we are victors, and that we need to live with that as our identity and not let Satan win in our everyday lives. I agree with this statement, but for the first three fourths of the sermon, he did not emphasize where our victory comes from — that it is in Jesus that we are more than conquerors. This challenged me to think of my role in God’s kingdom as a more active participant.

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

This worship service taught me that there is not a right way to worship. It was so freeing to see the people around me respond to the Spirit’s presence in whichever way they were comfortable with — by standing, sitting, raising their hands, calling out in agreement, or just sitting and contemplating. By encouraging this diversity among the worshipers, the worship felt more sincere and more corporate. Each member of the Body was expressing themselves in their own way, and this brought a fullness to the worship of the Body as a whole. I had not before applied the idea of each part of the Body having a role in the Church to praise and worship during a service.