Church name: The United Arabic Evangelical Church
Church address: 2247 University St, Des Plaines, IL, 60016
Date attended: January 25, 2015
Church category: Different ethnicity
Describe the worship service you attended. How was it similar to or different from your regular context?
I went to the 11’o clock Arabic-speaking service. Entering the sanctuary, the church struck me as similar to my church in Wheaton, First Baptist. Though smaller than First Baptist, UAEC was shaped similarly with rows of pews facing the front stage with a cross prominently set up. The projector screen showed the lyrics of the worship songs as the congregation was led in worship by a team of musicians playing piano, keyboard, and guitar. The structure of the service was familiar: a bunch of worship songs, a sermon from the senior pastor, more worship songs, a time of prayer, announcements, and welcoming of visitors. The congregation was made up of many families and I later found out that the young people (grade school and college students) were a part of the English service that was held next door in a church owned house. The way the congregation related to each other felt familiar, from the chatting with family and friends to the cake and Styrofoam cups of tea that accompanied this mingling after the service.
What did you find most interesting or appealing about the worship service?
As I sat through the service, one idea that I mused on for a while is how much this experience allowed me to understand the experience of non-English speakers who come into an English speaking church. It is much harder to understand all that is going on in the service when I can only pick up a few solitary words or phrases. I found it strangely exciting to be so impaired as it stretched me beyond the usual comfortable rhythm of worship services. I found myself completely unable to fall into the mindlessness of singing worship songs without thinking about the meaning because the whole time my mind was working to translate any familiar words I could pick out from the slides and decipher the spiritual meaning of the song. As I figured that out, I found that it was easy to enter into a spirit of worship as my mind was already engaged.
What did you find most disorienting or challenging about the worship service?
The most challenging aspect of participating in this service was knowing that I looked very out of place. When I first walked in at the back of the sanctuary, one of the men sitting in the sound booth looked over at me and asked, in English, if I needed help. After asking if I could go in and sitting down at the end of a pew, he came over and offered me a headset with English translation for the sermon. Through the actual service, I did not feel uncomfortable because I felt different, but because I knew that everyone else saw me as an outsider since I was the only Asian person in the building. During the service, they welcomed first-time visitors. I did not understand this announcement until everyone in the two rows in front and behind me began to eagerly point at me and one lady asked if I was a visitor. Standing up, I felt everyone’s eyes on me as I introduced myself with the very limited Arabic I have. One of the women I talked to after the service told me that I did not look like I would know Arabic. While I appreciate well-meaning comments like these, they highlight the visible ethnic difference I feel anytime I enter an Arab community.
What aspects of Scripture or theology did the worship service illuminate for you that you had not perceived as clearly in your regular context?
After attending this service, I have a better appreciation for the way God has entered into a very specific cultural setting in the incarnation and revealed Himself in specific cultural context, but the truths about Him are infinitely translatable. Being monolingual, I am limited in my ability to comprehend how much language shapes my understanding of everything, especially God. By spending this time worshipping with brothers and sisters in a different language, my ethnocentrism was challenged when I realized that I unconsciously held the assumption that the content of the sermon given in Arabic would be somehow inferior to the sermons I am used to hearing in English. As I sat through the service, I instead found myself being confronted by deep spiritual truths that were framed in very contextually specific ways while also containing principles that are translatable to the different cultural context that I live in.
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