Nathan Richard - Church Visit #1, Church of the Resurrection

Nathan Richard - Church Visit #1

Church name: Church of the Resurrection

Church address: 935 West Union Ave, Wheaton, IL 60187

Date attended: 2/1/15

Church category: Significantly more liturgical

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

This Anglican worship service was dramatically different from my normally low-liturgical traditional of my regular Christadelphian context. In my regular church, we have almost no liturgical elements, and certainly no call or response. The music was almost more involved with a worship band and a full choir, as opposed to just a single piano playing hymns at my church. That being said, we did share some similarities. Communion was taken today as part of a weekly ritual, mirroring our own church traditional. Within that communion, there were differences regarding how it was administered, and there was music and laying-on-of-hands during communion, as opposed to the meditative silence that I am used to. Furthermore, a significant difference was in the organization of the church, which had an established hierarchy of positions and different well-defined roles for each staff member. My regular church is a lay ministry, and contains no church personnel structure.

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

The most interesting feature about this worship service was the call and response as part of the liturgy. I see many advantages to this format, as it truly did inspire audience interaction, and made me feel like I was a part of the service as opposed to simply an observer. I enjoyed how there was no solely one person as the cantor, but instead the call and response took different formats such as multiple cantors, or group calls and responses. I have heard much about how the traditional liturgical text creates a connection to hundreds of centuries of church traditions. I agree that there was a special ambience in knowing that the words we repeated have been repeated by hundreds of millions of Christians for millennia. However, I felt like the monotony of repeated text could seemingly become disengaging quickly.

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

I think the most challenging aspect from the worship service was the background activity during communion. At my church, we partake in communion in solemn reflection, thinking both of the sacrifice of Christ and in self-examination. At Church of the Resurrection, I felt like the mood created during communion was not conducive to either. There was rather loud music throughout the service, will mic’ed worship leaders singing particular phrases over and over. This took me out of my reflection and forced me to focus on words that I thought were rather shallow and did not connect to my life. The music additionally continued for many minutes beyond the communion service, and I think there was a lack of continuity from the worship service and the breaking of bread to our daily lives. The remembrance of Jesus’ sacrifice is the most special time of the week for me each week, but I felt like the goal of this church was simply to create almost superficial emotions during this moment.

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

I really enjoyed the confession of sins and prayer with one another that was emphasized. Also during the communion service, the church had dozens of “trained prayer ministers” available along the sides of the sanctuary, and I did not expect as many people to participate and interact with these people as there were. I think this is a great thing to encourage, as we really do need the support of others in our walk to serve Christ. To think that we can do so alone, operating with masks on Sunday mornings, is very foolish. God created church to foster a community of believers to help encourage one another, and this encouragement can only come through prayer and transparency with one another.