Ian Smith - Church Visit #3

Church name: Lakeside Church of Chicago

Church address: 3939 W. Howard Street, Skokie, IL

Date attended: March 22, 2015

Church category: Different ethnicity (Japanese)

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

In most respects, the service I attended (which was a standard Sunday morning worship service) was very similar to services I have visited at dozens of majority European churches, with the exception of those belonging to Catholic or Anglican traditions. The structure of the service was virtually identical to the nondenominational church in which I was raised, opening with introductions, followed by prayer, music, a 30-minute sermon, more music, and a brief benediction.

The service itself was mostly conducted in English, which I hadn't anticipated. I think the music was all in English as well, although I can read Japanese lyrics and may have forgotten if one or two were in Japanese. I learned that Lakeside stopped considering themselves to be a distinctly "Japanese" church some years ago, and while the majority of the congregation and staff are Japanese, they have come to see themselves first and foremost as a community church for the broader Skokie area. Since many of the congregants do have strong ties to Japan, though, there was a period of prayer at the very beginning of the service devoted to families and friends still there.

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

That time of extended prayer on behalf of Japan - which is generally considered to be the least-reached country on earth - was compelling and moving for me. It was a privilege to be invited into something so personal for many of the families present who had come to the United States within memory and who continued to feel deeply connected to people and places there. I have spent time living and working in Japan, but it's been a while since I have been among so many people who also have firsthand experience of both the church and the culture of Japan, and I appreciated how I was immediately welcomed into a community of people with spiritual ties to this other country.  

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

I found myself conflicted about some of the racial dynamics of the church. It's majority Japanese, by a long shot - some of those who spoke and prayed actually used translation. Many of the signs around the building were in Japanese. The church hosts some of its events and services exclusively in Japanese. At the same time, the church has decided not to define or think of themselves as a Japanese church. 

Is there benefit in a church deciding that it will organize itself as an ex-pat communion? Lakeside Church in many ways is de facto exactly that, except with a fairly small non-Japanese group among its congregation and staff. There's something distinctly Japanese about this, as well, as national identity and fidelity is quite important to Japanese culture. If there can be something good in maintaining explicit ties to a homeland, is there something better in sacrificing these good things for the sake of being more open to the community the church actually exists within? Has this church made that transition well? I don't have any clear answers here.

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

Any church formed mostly by people who have come from another country and culture will have a strong sense that the Church is universal, broader than borders and traditions. Since I've been able to do a bit of global travel during my time at Wheaton, there's something refreshing about worshiping with a church for whom the idea that the entire Kingdom is not like the greater Chicago area is not a strange one, but something obviously and wonderfully true.

I also noticed a mood of cultural displacement, of spiritual homelessness. For many, the fact that loved ones are across the Pacific in an almost completely unreached country is deeply sad; Skokie doesn't look, sound or taste anything like Tokyo or Osaka, and the church has the hard job of straddling the gap, of providing a place of home, for many of its members. This misalignment with our immediate cultural context is something we all share by nature of our citizenship in the Kingdom, but situations like these make it pronounced.