Church
Name: Chicago Tabernacle
Church
Address: 4201 N Troy St, Chicago, IL 60618
Date
Attended: 9/14/14
Church
Category: Charismatic
and bi-racial. Predominantly white and black.
Describe
the worship service you attended. How was it similar to or different from your
regular context?
The worship service was set up very differently than my home church. In terms of length it was about thirty to
forty-five minutes longer, and it was far less structured than my home church. The worship was simpler and more repetitive
than at my home church and it was not allocated to a fifteen-minute block prior
to the sermon. In fact, the sermon was
occasionally interrupted by worship and was intentionally shortened in order to
provide more time for worship. The
pastor mentioned he was shortening the service in order to accommodate more
time for prayer, which was surprising because the sermon was already pretty
long compared to most other churches I have been to. Another amazing difference was when I first
walked in the door a large black woman gave me a great big bear hug to welcome
me to the service. I find it unlikely anyone from my home church would act that
way.
What
did you find most interesting or appealing about the worship service?
I
enjoyed the emphasis of the spirit in the service. One great part of the service was at the very
beginning when there were two infant baptisms.
I have always thought that baptisms are never conducted in a fitting
manner. People always recite liturgy and the groans through the words they are
supposed to affirm. This church was one of the closest I have seen to what
Baptism ought to be. Baptism is a
celebration and at Tabernacle, they celebrated with hallelujahs, dancing and
music. The other fantastic portion of
the service was at the end when there was a time of worship and prayer. The
prayer was split up into times of intercession and meditation and after we
prayed for everyone on our left and right, we ended up giving half the
congregation a hug.
What
did you find most disorienting or challenging about the worship service?
I
did not think much of this service was disorienting or hard to
contextualize. The only part I was
slightly conflicted about was the message.
It seemed dangerously close to the prosperity gospel at times. I felt a
little like the pastor was over reading the scripture of what happened to Paul
and applying it to modern contexts. On
the other hand, however, I felt that Paul’s journey is not different from ours
today, since Paul was human, and there are lessons that can be learned from him. For instance, I felt that what he was saying
although not necessarily meant to read the way it was was a true interpretation
of life, based on past experience. I
found it helpful and prescriptive, but I do not think it would be enough to
sustain my faith on a weekly basis.
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 Scripture was over Paul’s journey to Rome,
when he is shipwrecked, marooned, and bitten by a snake. The pastor gave a passionate speech about how
by the grace of God Paul was unharmed.
He spoke about how God wants to bless those who are in His will with
healing; however, he also promised there would be a time when everyone’s ship
wrecks and everyone gets bit by snakes.
In fact, he assured the congregation that if there were not snakes
clinging to them then something in their life was too comfortable. Although I felt like his interpretation was a
bit far reaching I did feel that he was right.
I agree with him because immediately afterwards there was an extended
time of prayer in which we prayed to remove serpents from our brothers as well
as asked God to find in places we might succumb to the wilderness, and that
extra prayer tim
No comments:
Post a Comment