Victory Cathedral Church
369 N Weber Road, Bolingbrook IL 60440
11/1/2015
Lower Socioeconomic
The
service at Victory Cathedral was different from service at my usual church in a
multitude of ways. The church itself was in a former store, I think it used to
be a Hobby Lobby. I have been to churches that are not physically in a building
specified as a church, Mission Church meets at Lake Forest High School, but
this definitely felt different being in a building that was commercially,
rather than community, oriented. The demographic was primarily African American
as well. The format of the service also differed in how dominant the sermon was
to the service as a whole. I’m used to worship songs being a prominent part of
service, comprising about half of a service. We entered the service a little
late but the worship songs were concluding about 15 minutes into the service. This
was not so different compared to services I’ve seen before but that was the
whole of any worship singing. The pastor’s sermon lasted the remaining time,
which was over an hour.
What I
found most interesting about the service was the interaction of the pastor to
the audience and the audience to one another. Throughout the sermon the pastor
related his message to the practical circumstances of the audience. He constantly
related his ideas to cooking or other everyday circumstances. I’ve become accustomed
to one story is used by a pastor as a metaphor for his overall passage but the
pastor at Victory kept giving insight to his own life, making him feel even
more like part of the community. The interaction of the audience amongst
themselves was active and friendly as well. Multiple times throughout the
service the pastor asked the audience to “Tell your neighbor…” and the audience
took it literally and in the moment turned to their neighbor to repeat the
message. A bit unrelated but the audience gave hugs rather than shaking hands
or just greeting someone formally to open the service. It felt like an
incredibly tightly-knit community.
What I
found most challenging came in the pastor’s sermon. A main idea of the pastor’s
message was overcoming ourselves and the obstacles we create in our lives.
Later though he advised that to find out what our passions truly are we need to
self-assess. I felt that if we are in our own way and need to overcome
ourselves then how can we accurately self-assess what we are passionate about
if we are held down by ourselves. I also had troubles with how the pastor
delivered his message at times by playing the guilt card. I felt at times he
tried the make the audience feel guilty if they were not consistently coming to
services. The pastor also seemed to talk down to his audience by saying things
like “what you are doing wrong…” This is something I’ve noticed before and it
keeps coming up as I feel it takes away from the pastor being part of the
community as it portrays him as better than his audience.
The
service had an incredibly strong basis in Scripture. Every message or topic the
pastor covered was rooted in Scripture or cited Scripture directly. The mere scriptural
emphasis was new as normally the scriptural citation or basis is rather light,
with an emphasis more on the application. This service was heavy in both though
as each time the pastor discussed scripture he related it to everyday life. One
reference that stood out to me was the story of Gideon and the midianites and
its relation to achieving our purpose as God intended for us and how each
purpose is intentional. The pastor said no one is an accident, explicitly referring
to the broken family situations many of his community are faced with. Some of
the troubles those in this community face were certainly referenced in the
sermon.
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