Christine Navin - Church Visit #1

Church name: Uptown Baptist Church

Church address: 1011 W Wilson Ave Chicago, IL 60640

Date attended: September 7th 2014

Church category: Different Racial Demographic

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

I actually visited this church during Urban Passage back in 2011, but remembering very little it, I decided to visit it again. The structure of the service was similar to my church back home. Obviously, the population was different. This church is majority black, but with a good number of whites and asians. This church is larger than my home church and the building is more elaborate. The worship team was larger. I’d say people were more physically into the music than my regular context, however I was surprised by the number of people who were just standing. Race and movement during worship were not at all connected. The sermon was definitely more of a ‘conversation’ than my church’s ‘monologue’. This church is also much more focused on embracing the diversity of the global church found, which is fairly well represented in Uptown.

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

The one thing I remembered from the service I attended three years ago was the benediction. I suppose the churches I’ve attended do usually have them, but they were never called ‘benedictions’. But why UBC's stood out to me is that the head pastor sings the benediction. It's foreign to me, but still beautiful.

I loved the visual picture of the global church and the emphasis on the power of the name of Jesus. On the walls of the sanctuary are covered with banners, each with ‘Jesus’ written in a different language. They had four pillars in the front with words on them, representing pillars for the faith and this church, including prayer and discipleship. They look tacky, but as a visual person I still appreciated them.

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

While felt very comfortable during the worship, perhaps more at home than I normally feel, when we sat down for the sermon, I felt a bit disoriented. This was primarily because of the ‘dialogue’ of the sermon. I sort of expected it, but I still felt out of place when it began. I found it especially interesting considering they had a guest speaker, a white southerner with a speech impediment. But this speaker expected a response from the congregation and the congregation gave it naturally.

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 appreciate diversity in churches, I find it to be a refreshing glimpse of heaven. There just isn’t that much my home church can do about that in a rural area of a county that is 90% white. This isn’t new to me, but this church portrayed that better than most churches I’ve attended.

Uptown Baptist has a very clear neighborhood, my church does not. People travel to ‘Hope’, my home church, from all directions. The church was a 30 minute drive for me and I know people who had a similar drive from the opposite direction. We didn’t have common neighbors except for each other. So our understanding of loving our neighbors is very different than it is for UBC. We all come together and then go out into our various communities. While we should care for our neighbors in our individual communities, there’s something special caring of your common neighbors communally.