Theodora Beschel- Church Visit #2

Church name: Lawndale Community Church
Church address: 3827 W. Ogden Chicago, IL 60623
Date attended:10/25/2015
Church Category: Different socio-economic status

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

From the beginning I noticed that Lawndale Community Church was a much stronger and tighter community than my home church here in Wheaton. Before the service started, people were very active in greeting each other, conversing, and inquiring into each others lives. The time of prayer requests reflected this interweaving of lives as well. Everyone in the church appeared to know the family and friends that were lifted up in the prayer requests. Most of the prayer requests were not for people independent of the church, but rather for those who the church community had strong ties with. Although this sense of community is lacking from my home church in Wheaton, it is very similar to a small baptist church I grew up in in northern Virginia. It is fascinating to me that an almost exclusively white, southern, conservative church in Virginia, has a similar feel to a predominantly black, inner city church in Chicago. Humans have more in common with each other than we realize.

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

As I spoke of in the previous paragraph, the strong sense of community and interweaving of lives was very appealing to me. Aside from the community feel, I really appreciated the worship style. I feel God strongly in beautiful music and some of the voices of the singers displayed God's beauty so clearly to me. I also liked the choral structure of worship. It was good for my soul to sit back and appreciate the beautiful combination of voices being lifted up to the Lord. The repetitive nature of the lyrics also added strength and sincerity to the worship. As the chorus repeated each line, I felt a gradual build in strength and meaning until an emotional climax was reached. Overall, listening to the beauty and power of the choral music helped me connect with the Lord.

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

The part of the worship service that was most difficult for me was the sermon. On the week that I went, Coach preached on emotions and how we need to contain our emotions. It was difficult for me to follow the whole sermon and connect with his teaching. I am not sure whether it was the specific sermon I heard or the preaching style in general which I had difficulty with, however I did not take much away from the sermon. For me personally, the worship and the time of prayer leading up to the sermon was much more enriching and spiritually fruitful than the sermon itself. Another part of the service which seriously bothered me was the presence of about 30 Purdue students. I may be completely unreasonable and unjustified in my frustration, but I felt as if it was a bunch of white people coming in and watching how the under privileged operated as if they were going to a museum. But, I can't really talk because that was exactly what I was doing.


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 difference in emphasis from my normal church was the transformation power of the Holy Spirit. So much of the service at Lawndale repeated how we are fundamentally different from who we used to be because we now know Jesus. One line in a song which was sung remarked "I won't go back, can't go back, to the way it used to be, before your presence came and saved me" (sorry if I got a few words mixed up there). Usually I felt that in my regular church, the emphasis is placed upon spiritual development and perfection once we know Christ rather than our time before we knew Christ. I assume this is because most people in my regular church accepted Christ at a young age, while (and this is a big assumption) most people at Lawndale Community Church accepted Christ later in life. I really appreciated Lawndale's emphasis on our changed identity in Christ because it reminded me of how powerless I am to rid myself of sin and how gracious our Lord is to bear my sin for me.