Leah Michelsen – Church Visit #2

Church name: Warehouse Church

Church address: 308 E. Galena Blvd., Aurora, IL 60505

Date attended: November 1, 2015

Church category: Lower socioeconomic demographic

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

When we walked in a little late, everyone was standing up singing familiar songs led by a couple who were simply singing and playing guitar. The man that was going to speak saw us standing without a place to sit and promptly found a spot for us. The Passing of the Peace lasted at least ten minutes and we met about 20% of the people at the church without even moving from our row because they just kept coming up and shaking our hands or giving us hugs and asking about us. We took communion all together, instead of separately, like at Rez. Although the ideology seemed to be similar to my church, many things were different. I think they should win an award for having the most church elders with long gray ponytails. The man who preached was wearing a skull cap with actual skulls on it. I don’t think anybody was dressed in a way that would have seemed normal or very acceptable at my church.

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

I really enjoyed the worship service because everyone seemed so genuine and real. Nobody was dressed up and the people who went and spoke on stage sharing encouraging stories or asking for prayer requests weren’t trying to hide anything or make themselves seem holy. I felt like I could be myself and actually worship without pretense because I knew I was accepted. The people there seemed like a big welcoming family. They knew each other and prayed for each other specifically, but they were also genuinely interested in knowing my family and me. So many people came by during the Peace to welcome us and ask us how we came to be there. Sometimes at my home church and Rez, it feels like you’re playing a role and need to be this well-dressed, respectable Christian with only “small” sins like selfishness and jealousy. Here, it didn’t feel like I could be ashamed of anything and I felt comfortable around these people I’d never met.

               

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

They had people get up on stage, before the Elder preached, to share praise stories or prayer requests. I really liked this part of it because it made it more family-like and focused on other people, but one man brought another up on stage and gave him a little statue of an angel and said it would be his mother’s guardian angel while she went through her sickness. The man was crying and it was touching, except that it wasn’t biblical. The elder then gently corrected it and tried to remind people that the angel could be a reminder of protection, but guardian angels aren’t actually biblical and there’s so much more to it than that. I realized though that having anybody get up on stage and speak about things like this could be distracting and confusing for some people who are new to the faith. Other than this, there wasn’t much that I wasn’t a fan of.

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 biggest part of theology that this worship service illuminated for me was that being physically poor doesn’t equate to being spiritually poor, and in fact, many times it’s the opposite. The people at Warehouse Church were very enthusiastic about their faith and were very eager to get up on stage and tell everybody what God was doing in their life. I had to ask myself how eager I felt to do that. One man said that in his search to learn about the Gospel, he found that it needed to be true for all people, rich and poor, any race and every gender, because God made all and Christ came for all. That was a thought that had occurred to me before, but really challenged me to think then. I wonder how the Gospel is true for each person. This service made me long for a more authentic Christian faith than I know now and seem to experience at my church.