Antioch Community Church
311 W. Seminary Ave, Wheaton, IL
9.21.14
Antioch International Movement of Churches/Nondenominational
Describe the worship service you attended. How was it similar to or different from your regular context?
I chose this church since I heard it was significantly less liturgical than the church I normally go to (Church of the Resurrection). I have always gone to a church with a designated building. My churches have also been more on the structural side. Antioch was odd for me because it was very informal. Service was held in an elementary school gymnasium with rows of folding chairs and breakfast offered beforehand. Clothing was also very informal. The service started with basic introduction and then went into worship with music. Everything was quite loud and electric. I knew none of the songs they sang. After the worship with music they went into corporate prayer. They specifically were praying for a team being sent to France to learn French and then eventually to Cameroon. They made the congregation get into groups of 3 or 4 and pray specific things for the team. After that they went into the sermon. After the sermon there was a short announcement and then I believe a prayer. I was free to go after that. The whole service was very odd to me, it seemed very free-form.
What did you find most interesting or appealing about the worship service?
I thought the corporate prayer was neat. It was a bit uncomfortable and there is always the dreaded process of finding people among a crowd of strangers to plunge into spiritual nudity with but it was alright, I got through it. I thought it was good to unify the congregation over a specific topic of prayer. It made the focus of prayer external to the self. I thought this was a powerful practice, there's plenty of time for personal oriented prayer outside of church. Being together on Sunday seemed for Antioch to be a unique time to pray together for a unified point.
What did you find most disorienting or challenging about the worship service?
I found that the setting and the music disoriented me from worship. While I believe it is important to prepare your heart to be receptive and willing for worship no matter where, I know my tendencies and what softens my heart the deepest. Environment and music impact me deeply in every matter, worship and church is no exception. As mentioned before, the service was held in a gym and the music was rock-ified Christian songs that I had never heard before. My issue with this was that it didn't strike me as set apart for God. A building built and designed for the purpose of being sensitive to worship through space and architecture moves me profoundly as well as music that displays reverence for God through creativity. I fully understand the virtue of starting churches in tiny living rooms when no money is yet available to obtain a building, however, one form of worship I find so lacking in America is worship through space. For a country that has so much of it we dedicate so little of it to God. Also, I had a hard time seeing the music as reverential and set apart, it seemed derivative. They also used the NLT.
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 sermon was on the passage about the seeds falling on different qualities of soil. Before sharing the sermon they showed a video which I assume is distributed by the Antioch International Movement. The video showed a farmer talking about what is involved in harvesting an actual crop. The point of the video was to give a reference to us suburban folk who have no actual encounter with the metaphor. What was emphasized was the intensity of work required at harvest time. The pastor also emphasized the amount of non-church goers in Wheaton despite the assumption that everyone is Christian and goes to church. While the idea of "don't rest until everyone is in church" made me a bit uncomfortable, I enjoyed seeing that passage in the light of the intense amount of work required in actual farming. We suburbanites aren't too acquainted with the metaphor beyond its imagery.
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