Mike Shaw – Church Visit #2

Oak Brook Community Church (Spanish Service)

3100 Midwest Rd, Oak Brook, IL

9-7-14

Different Ethnic/Racial Demographic

I went to the Spanish speaking service at Oak Brook Community Church in Oak Brook.  The building itself was very similar to my home church building.  I knew coming into the church, an Assemblies of God Church, that it would be substantially more charismatic than my white suburban Baptist church.  As soon as I stepped in the lobby of the church I could hear the music blaring and knew that it would be nothing like what I’m used to.  Although the look of the church itself looked similar, the service itself was, for the most part, entirely different than my home church.  It was in Spanish, there was dancing, etc.  Due to the fact that I can speak Spanish I was able to keep up with most of what was said but often times the prayers and songs were far too fast for my mind to keep up.

The most interesting aspect of my worship experience was the language itself.  Due to the fact that I’ve taken several years of Spanish in high school, I considered myself at least fairly competent coming in.  For the entire time I’ve taken Spanish, I’ve had an inexplicable infatuation with the Spanish language and culture.  Not only that but my roommate also grew up in Nicaragua and Panama, and I frequently barrage him with questions about the language.  I actually went to this service with him.  I have attended church services in other languages when I was in Malawi and, although I couldn’t understand anything that was said in the native language, Chichewa; I still found a beauty in the ability we have to worship the same God in every language.  This feeling was multiplied even further in a worship service where the other language was one I more or less understood.

The most challenging part of the service was being a definite outsider in the church.  From the moment my blonde hair, blue-eyed self walked into the sanctuary, I felt like every eye in the congregation was constantly watching me.  I was the only white person in the audience and I definitely felt it.  This insecurity I had was furthered when they brought a translator from the audience up mid worship session just for me.  Coming into the church lobby the lyrics to the songs I heard were all in Spanish.  And about two minutes after I walked into the church, they started switching between Spanish and English.  Not only did this make me feel uncomfortable, but the constant pausing for the translator to catch up made the church service run an hour over schedule.

One of the largest theological aspects that I perceived more clearly from this service is the importance of the familial aspect to the name “Abba Padre” or Abba Father.  The entirety of the message was about how incredible of a gift it is to call God the Father, Father.  Now I’ve heard this message before, that no other religion has the relationship to God the way Christianity does, but the thing that grasped me most was the application to peoples troubling times, particularly finances.  Financial situations are typically shied away from conversation, let alone messages, at my church.  Another big thing that isn’t often spoken of at my church is spiritual warfare.  However, the service I attended talked frequently and openly about how God the Father protects us and our finances from attacks by the devil.  The service I attended captured beautifully the fact that our ability to call God Father is such meaningful gift and relationship that our worries of this world are unimportant.