Diversity in the Church

As you may know, Mission Year gives us a couple of weeks off during the holidays. I'm now in my second week back in Philly since then. With the busy-ness of the season, I didn’t have much time to write, but I’ve found a moment at last to share some of my thoughts about my break.

One element of my break that ties into what I’m learning in Mission Year was the diversity of the Church I was able to enjoy over the past month. I attended four different churches in December, all of different flavors and varieties. I have written before that encountering God through different cultures is a hobby of mine. And by different, I don’t just mean different from my own. I suppose a better way to phrase it would be, “Encountering God through a variety of cultures is a hobby of mine.” Here is some the variety I enjoyed in December:

My church in Philadelphia, which I have written about before, is Grace Christian Fellowship. Of course, I attended there for the first couple of weeks in December before my break began. It is a vibrant, young, growing, black church that honors both traditions of the Church and African American heritage. It is loosely liturgical, but congregants are always responsive and interactive to whoever is leading the service, vocalizing their affirmation of the prayer, exhortation, or testimony. Songs are repetitive and passionate, allowing worshippers to dig deeply into the lyrics they profess with each successive proclamation of them. Congregants consider each other family and refer to each other as such. Hugs and kisses abound.

For the first weekend of my break, I visited a dear friend in New Jersey and attended church with him one Sunday while I was there. He is Japanese, and he attends a Japanese church. The band of the small congregation fills the front of a fairly ornate Lutheran sanctuary that hosts them. They use the space in a way that is less formal than the building itself. The service is reverent and reflective, congregants respectfully quiet and thoughtful unless instructed to participate, for instance through song. The service is conducted fully in Japanese, save the lyrics of a couple of hymns sung in both Japanese and English. After it’s over, there is a snack-lunch where the close-knit community catches up with one another, lingering as long as conversation flows.

By Christmas Eve I was home, and I joined my brother, sister, and brother-in-law at their church in Charleston, a young satellite campus of a mega-church committed to reaching the state of South Carolina. The stage is raised high above the large audience, highlighting the feeling that the congregants gathered for an experience, a divine encounter. Every element of the service is technically excellent and perfectly timed, including vocals, music, multi-media, and concert-style lighting. The sermon is displayed on a large screen, a broadcast of the live speaker in another city. Short videos are sprinkled throughout the service. Those gathered follow directions closely as to how and when they should engage as they are guided through a journey. At the conclusion, they are starkly challenged to consider Jesus as savior. Many do, and leave the auditorium for follow-up conversations.

I was home for one Sunday, and I spent it at my parents’ church, a small country church just outside of Charleston. The casual service matches the simple sanctuary of white cinder blocks where it takes place. Members pop up from seated positions in the audience to fulfill various roles as musicians, vocalists, ushers, and preacher. It’s a team effort to bring worship to God. The music is sometimes played live and sometimes played over speakers, but usually has a country twang, and participants often close their eyes while singing and bouncing back and forth to the song. After the sermon, a few congregants use the open space at the front of the church for prayer alone or in pairs while everyone else sings a hymn.

I take the time to detail my experiences (can you tell I was a religion major?) to demonstrate the diversity of my church involvement in December. I take such joy in observing how different communities interact with God and joining in with them in their own style. My appreciation for difference has grown so deep that I don’t know any more what is a normal way for me to interact with God. And I like it that way.  

I’m grateful for this season of my life, being fully immersed in another culture’s way of encountering God. African American church traditions are rich and hearty, and I have much to learn about God through the way my brothers and sisters encounter Him. I’m grateful, too, for connections to brothers and sisters from many different cultural, denominational, linguistic, regional, etc. backgrounds who are willing to share with me their encounters with God.

I’m grateful for the diversity I was able to enjoy over break. I want my life’s pursuit of God to be defined by such diversity and more. 

Grace to Grace, Part II

Last time I reflected on ways that the Lord has changed me to be more open to new ways of worshipping and new ways of conducting worship services. (Read it here!) When I first sat down to write, I didn’t intend to elaborate so much on that journey. My first thought was to rave about how awesome my new church is. That spurred me to consider how crazy it is that I think so highly of my church, considering my background. It represents in many ways how my values and comfort zones have shifted. But I return now to my original thought: how much I love Grace Christian Fellowship in Southwest Philly!

My new church, GCF, follows the same spirit of freedom and fluidity at Grace Midtown, so much so that a few Sundays ago Pastor James scrapped his sermon in the middle of service! The normal flow of service includes musical worship, scripture readings, greetings and announcements, selections from the choir, and the sermon. Although in that description it may seem formal, the atmosphere is not. It often feels more like a group of friends gathered for a weekly sports event than a service. They all know what’s going on, but they are all free to engage with it however and whenever they please. For instance, there are many services where we are never instructed to sit or stand. Folks just do what’s comfortable for them: sit, stand, clap, shout, dance, raise arms, shake fists, etc.

On this particular Sunday, we had spent ample time in musical worship, had heard from the choir the usual two times, and before Pastor James got up to speak, he invited one of the members to share her testimony. She shared that she was several years clean and sober, finished with her schooling (with straight As!), and completing her final training for a job in the medical field. She praised God for redeeming her, and the church celebrated her victories in song. As the music continued, she began to dance and march in place, overcome with triumphal joy at the victory.

Following the lead of the Spirit, the church continued to clap, dance, sing, and shout in celebration. If they were like me, they began to reflect on their own stories of redemption while celebrating with hers. As the praise rolled from song to impromptu song, I began to add up the time left in the remaining elements of the service—having not yet started the sermon, we probably had another hour left. And at that point we were an hour and a half into the service! Whereas a former Preston would have been annoyed at such a realization, the new Preston didn’t care and kept on clapping.

Pastor James, seeming to know my thoughts, soon reassured us that he wouldn’t be delivering his sermon. On that day, following the Lord’s leading meant celebrating a testimony. He later shared with our team that he started the church with a hope that people would be able to share deeply and honestly, and share difficult stories from their lives that that they had carried with shame and embarrassment. He said something like, “Most churches—my old church—would have shaken their heads at such a ‘shameful’ story, as if they didn’t have similar skeletons. But at Grace, we can celebrate prostitutes, addicts, and dealers being transformed.” Some—my former self included—may shake their heads at how our time was spent that Sunday. We didn’t even hear the sermon! Why would we go to church, except to learn from the Bible? Sure, it’s great to celebrate transformation…but for an hour?? Maybe these are valid concerns…maybe. But I think heaven is a little bit less like a Bible study and a little bit more like a rave, where for all of eternity we will celebrate transformation in Jesus’ name.

Praise God for helping me to appreciate a place with values different from those I grew up with! Praise God for transformation, both of the black, female drug addict from Southwest Philly and the white, male PK from North Charleston. 

Grace to Grace, Part I

This week I want to write a little bit about my church in Southwest Philly, Grace Christian Fellowship, mostly because last Sunday was such an exciting week! I didn’t know it, but the Lord has been preparing me for a long time to be so comfortable and energetic about our church.

Growing up, I went to a small, white church where we sang hymns in a reverent service full of instructions like “please rise” and “you may be seated.” In high school I upgraded from a service with an organ to one with an electric guitar, where some people raised their hands or bounced in place. I felt the Spirit while the music played, but for the most part if I wasn’t singing or praying I wasn’t really engaged with God. This was my comfort zone: a structured, ordered service and a reverent, calm environment with white people who spoke English, most of them with a slight (or thick…) Southern accent.

As with so many aspects of my life, four years in college challenged my church comfort zone. My involvement in InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and my commitment to Grace Midtown Church gave me opportunities to explore new ways of interacting with God.

InterVarsity opened my perspective to the multi-ethnic beauty of Christ’s Bride, the Church. Before, I would have labeled a spiritual, a chant, a liturgy, a call-and-response sermon, or song in another language as something strange, weird, or perhaps inappropriate, but at least “not for me.” Studying passages of scripture like Revelation 7, Acts 10, and Ephesians 2 helped me to understand God’s design of a reconciled, multi-ethnic church. Engaging with God through other languages, cultures, and styles of teaching became a hobby of mine.

InterVarsity helped me theologically to appreciate and even celebrate difference, but I still wasn’t fully comfortable engaging with God outside of the way I first learned how. That process happened some in InterVarsity as well, but mostly at church.

In my shophomore year of college, I began attending Grace Midtown Church. I was drawn to it for several reasons, including the newness and freshness of the ministry model, its solid Bible teaching, its heart for the city of Atlanta, and—what I will discuss in detail here—the worship. If you’ve ever been there, then it’s obvious why, but for those who haven’t, it’s not so much the music style or selection that makes it so powerful. It isn’t the skill of the vocalists or musicians. While those elements are strong, it’s the heart of the worship that makes it so transformative. Worshippers are free to engage with the Lord however they see fit: standing, sitting, kneeling, prostrating, dancing, journaling, shouting, praying in the corner—and people do each of those things each week. There were many times when all plans and agendas were abandoned to follow the Spirit into 20 minutes of silence or spontaneous refrains or dance breaks. And if the worship leader reaches the end of the set list of songs and feels there’s still more praise to be given, then he or she will continue with a couple more songs.

This environment helped me a lot to be comfortable with others interacting with God in ways unfamiliar to me. Grace Midtown goes beyond the emotions of a song to a yearning to be with God through the Holy Spirit. And it’s not done just through music. I learned to worship through in posture, prayer, silence, writing, shouting, sharing with a friend, testifying, crying, laughing, chanting, liturgy, scripture, and even speaking in tongues, although I have yet to experience the latter myself. I was so grateful to have Grace Midtown as a playground for my worship so I could become comfortable in any context of worship, whether it be a solemn, structured, liturgical service or a comfortable, casual Jesus jam session on the floor of a living room. This adaptability has released me from judgement and condemnation of things unfamiliar to me. If the name of Jesus is being lifted up, then I can usually join in and engage with God.

With these transformations fresh in my past, I greatly anticipated the element of Mission Year that partnered me with a local church. I was eager to commit to a cross-cultural church experience that would be well outside of what used to be my comfort zone. As you can imagine, the adaptability I learned at Grace Midtown prepared me well for the transition!

My church in SW Philly is Grace Christian Fellowship. I thought it funny that I was going from one grace to another. Read again next week to learn more about how the Lord used my years in college to prepare me for my time at GCF!