Church name: Lawndale Community Church
Church address: 3827 W Ogden,
Chicago
Date attended: 9/20/2015
Church category: Lower
socio-economic demographic
Describe the worship service you attended. How was it similar to
or different from your regular context?
The
service we attended was held in the gym of a health center rather than an
auditorium. The set-up of the service felt fairly familiar to me—having musical
worship, scripture readings, and a sermon are all part of my tradition. But the
style, the way these familiar things were actually enacted by the congregation,
was just different enough to throw me off and keep me guessing. Both the
singing and service were very interactive and responsive, with the congregation
expected not just to listen or repeat what we were hearing but to contribute to
it. That’s the way it felt to me. I believe this may be part of the larger
African-American tradition, which makes sense given that the most obvious way
the service was different was that the congregation was mostly black. It was
also much less wealthy than other churches I’ve attended, both at home and in
Wheaton.
What did you find most interesting or appealing about the
worship service?
One
small, specific thing I found interesting was the pastor’s code-switching. This
applied more to the sermon than the rest of the worship service, but I’ve heard
the pastor in other settings—the overwhelmingly white atmosphere of Wheaton’s chapel,
for instance. His linguistic patterns were different in his own church than
they were at Wheaton. This pastor was himself white, but he wasn’t using African-American
vernacular in the cheap, appropriative way I hear other white people use it; he
was using it in an environment to which he belonged to communicate on the same
level as everyone else. And that level wasn’t “lower” than the intellectualism
that pervades Wheaton. I think some of us tend to equate “sounding smart” or “sounding
theological” with good preaching, but I loved that he didn’t have to sound like
a white pastor talking to a white congregation to give a sermon that mattered.
What did you find most disorienting or challenging about the
worship service?
I’ve
mentioned before that the church was mostly black and lower class than myself,
but honestly I loved that. I come from Detroit, and while I don’t go to a
particularly diverse church there, I’m used to a more diverse general setting than Wheaton. The difference from
Wheaton just as we drove into the neighborhood was stark. In effect, this made
me think about how closed-off our community is, as well as something we’ve
talked about in my my literature class called the double consciousness—the idea
that (black) people see themselves through two sets of perspectives, both their
own and the way white people see them. Going to Lawndale put me in a place
where I saw myself through two sets of eyes, and I saw the church itself that
way. If I could be at least that disoriented every moment of my life, it would
probably be good for my soul.
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
word that springs to mind first is “community,” not as a buzzword, but in that
the congregation really felt like a huge extended family. Everything about the
service emphasized the importance of being active with the people around you. It
wasn’t about being social, but about support. The announcements centered on
community building and on healing as a body of people who are all bound
together, and therefore need to support each other in ways that I might not
have thought of in another context. While no one implied this kind of building
was easy, no one seemed to think of it as a burden, either. It seemed like this
was the natural progression of Jesus changing someone’s life (and I think it
should be); once Jesus overhauls you, you’re meant to live better because of
what he’s done. And “better” doesn’t mean wealthier; it means serving.
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