David Batdorf - Church Visit #2

Holy Trinity Church
1940 W. 18th St.
Chicago, IL
10/18/2015
Lower Socioeconomic

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

Holy Trinity Church is church which is several church plants down the line from College Church, the church I regularly attend. Because of this similar background, there were many elements which were familiar to me. Some of these being the recitation of the Apostles Creed, a time of quiet confession, and scripture reading. Although there were similarities, the differences from my regular worship experience were more vividly noted. Most of these related to the more informal context of the service. The service was held in an elementary school gym. The week I attended was the church's sixth meeting so the number of people present was small giving the  service an intimate and familial feeling of worship. The preaching was also very conversational and practical; While this came from the speaker's personal style, I think it was also felt this way because he was on ground level with the congregation - it felt like he was one of us rather than "the preacher."

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

I didn't feel out of place. Although I was the visitor and even entered late, I did not feel "other". When I entered the service, worship was in progress. Some were standing, some still sitting on the metal folding chairs. Some had their hands raised, but many were not. It was as if the church was too young to have developed a protocol so nothing was out of the ordinary. There was also great diversity in the congregation in age, race, gender and dress. One aspect of the service that was meaningful to me was the second offering taken at the end of the service for people in special need. It was very evident that the congregation was not affluent and because I was sitting in the back when the offering bag came to me I could see there was little inside. However, the reality that the church was giving out their scarcity for those in greater need was very powerful to me.

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

Honestly there was little in the service that I found disorienting or challenging. I was familiar from past experiences with the aspects of this service which differed from my current worship experience. Perhaps what felt the a little incongruent was the fact that I did not feel out of place in the service, yet I did not know very few people present. This created a strange dynamic of feeling comfortable, yet not a part of the congregation because it was very small. Upon walking in I did not see the programs and felt rather uneasy as the service unfolded because I did not know what was next in the order of service. Both of these aspects rather trivial however.

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

In the message there were intentional connections drawn between the Old Testament story of the ark of the covenant being captured by the Philistines and Jesus. Often in my church background, accounts such as these seem to be approached as providers of moral lesson, reminders, or evidence of God's sovereignty (which they are), but in this service, all aspects of the story were intended to remind us of the redemption of Jesus. To me, it made the story really meaningful as it's often easy for me to dismiss more obscure OT stories as trite or irrelevant. Another aspect of theology that was present throughout the service was the church's sense of connection to the community they were in. This was displayed through several words spoken in the service as well as the outward focus of the announcements. There was a deep sense that what they had the community needed and visa versa. They were not autonomous - they were a community of believers, they were part of their community and they wanted to impact it. This is something that I don't often sense in wealthier suburban congregations.