Church Visit #3

Church name: Grace and Peace Community Church

Church address: 2100 N Kildare Ave, Chicago, IL 60639

Date attended: Sunday, March 29, 2015

Church category: Different socioeconomic group

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

Mikey and I took the Metra, green line, and a bus to get to Grace and Peace Community Church. It is located in the northwest side of Chicago, and the majority of the houses are decent-looking but not great. The church building itself apparently houses people and had a set of showers in the men’s bathroom. We arrived almost an hour early, so we explored a little and then sat in the back left as they began their pre-service prayer. It was a dark basement area, but they had pretty good equipment for their praise team and everything. The pastor approached us and was very friendly and chatted casually before the prayer began. It lasted forty minutes and was essentially the same stanza over and over. The worship team played two contemporary worship songs very charismatically, and then a woman pastor-in-training preached for well over forty minutes about Mark 15. 

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

I really appreciated the friendly atmosphere and how everyone seemed to be comfortable and talkative with each other. It was very racially diverse, although it was primarily comprised of Hispanics and blacks. They were mostly dressed very casually, with just t-shirts and jeans or shorts. The sermon itself was practical, and it appealed a lot to emotions and common sense rather than deep theological insights. The people responded well and seemed engaged, as I was. She basically was preaching about Jesus’ death on the cross and how we as Christians need to reorient how we view our faith and its impact on our lives. The praise team’s bassist was incredibly good, and since I’m a bassist for my church’s praise team it was interesting to watch him play (even if it was a bit distracting to worship). The attitude of the people in general just seemed genuine and passionate about God in a meaningful way.

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

While the praise team was good musically, I really couldn’t relate to the amount of emotion put into their songs. To me, it felt a little excessive with the constant buildups and breakdowns, but the congregation was responding well. During the pre-service prayer session, they literally sang the same stanza for over half an hour and I had a hard time staying engaged. The opening worship that began right after that only had two songs but took another half hour. They sang the bridges and choruses to songs at least twenty times in every conceivable way and it really distracted me. I have a hard time singing the same few lines over and over and really wasn’t spiritually there for the majority of the praise music. I didn’t get a good feel for the head pastor either, although he was at the podium for the pre-service prayer. I guess I would have liked to know a little more about their church’s beliefs, or how they approach the needs of their congregation in northwest Chicago, but I understand that this was an abnormal Sunday.

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 can see how people might have interpreted the woman pastor’s preaching about the importance of suffering as a Christian, but I thought it was presented well. The gist of her message was that Christ never promised us easy lives full of health and wealth. In fact, it’s the opposite. Christians have to suffer and be rejected by the world to some extent, and we ought to be aware of that. She gave an example of the Egyptian Christians who are being persecuted and how their persecution doesn’t mean that they are somehow lacking faith. In a way, it was an anti-Joel Osteen kind of sermon. She mentioned the centurion, Joseph, and the women from Christ’s crucifixion as the type of believers we ought to strive to be. I was especially convicted by the idea of the centurion, someone involved in Christ’s death, and how he still was able to recognize God when he saw Jesus die. I want to be able to have that discernment in my interactions with the world, and recognize God’s work and stand in awe of it.