Tim Walters- Church Visit 3

Church Name: Rock of Our Salvation Evangelical Free Church of Chicago
Church Address: 118 N. Central Ave, Chicago, IL, 60644
Date Attended: March 22, 2015
Church Category: Socioeconomic

Describe the worship service you attended. How was it similar to or different from your regular context?
The service was honestly quite similar to a service I would experience at my home church in Indiana.  We started off by singing several songs, and afterwards we turned to a time of introduction.  This was one of the minor differences between churches. While my church at home tells the people to recognize the visitors and say hello, the church here had all the visitors stand up and then people from the whole congregation came and gave us hugs.  This was a quite welcoming feeling and made me feel like an actual part of the congregation, if only for a day.  After this, the church went into a time of announcements (which was longer than I normally experience), and then the sermon.  All in all, the service itself felt quite like a Western, Protestant service.  It did not differ much in its structure than the services I grew up with.  It was quite a bit longer than my normal service, but that was to be slightly expected.

What did you find most interesting or appealing about the worship service?
The passion of the individuals in the church for the various aspects of the Gospel made me feel like I was loving the Lord more fully by being there with them.  With every individual being quite involved in the worship, people shouting Amen, and things of the like, I felt like I was becoming more charismatic in my own worship style.  This felt like a welcome change from some of the more liturgical services I had visited or even from my church in Wheaton.  However, part of that could have come from the fact that the worship style was quite similar to my church in Indiana.  Regardless, the worship that the congregants partook of was probably the most appealing aspect of the service.

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

The thing I found most disorienting was the length of the service.  I knew that it was going to be somewhat longer than the services I had come to know, but I did not realize just how much longer it was going to be.  I am used to a service which lasts anywhere from 1 hour 15 minutes to 1 hour and 30 minutes.  With this service, we had barely finished the announcements (which took 35 minutes) when I realized the service had lasted an hour and a half already.  Once I realized this, it took a lot of willpower to keep my attention on the rest of the service.  While there were moments throughout the sermon where I was distracted, I tried to keep focus.  However, the length, since I was not used to it, really seemed to be difficult for me.

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 thing that this service helped me to understand was just how differently the message of the gospel can be articulated in various circumstances.  Normally, I hear messages regarding how this can relate to one's relationships or one's finances, but I do not normally hear how this can help one deal with gang violence or having relatives suffer from things such as gang violence or drugs.  That was new experience for me.  I thoroughly enjoyed experiencing this differing articulation of the same gospel; it made me more fully understand just how universal the saving message of Christ can be.