David Huizenga: Church Visit #3

David Huizenga: Church Visit #3

Church name: Resurrection Life Church

Church address: 5100 Ivanrest Ave SW, Grandville, MI 49418

Date attended: November 2nd, 2014

Church category: Different Ethnic Context

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

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

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

     I picked Resurrection Life Church (ResLife) because I had attended the worship service once before when I was very young with my mother and remember being very surprised when I realized that the service was attended primarily by African Americans and Latinos.  I had never been to a service where I was in the minority before and I remember it making quite an impact on my understanding of my regular church which, despite having a congregation of over 2000, was mostly white.  As a child, I assumed every church was like Calvary Church (the church I attended growing up), and it simply never occurred to time that there were congregations different than mine.  For this reason, when I grew older (maybe 12 or 13) I started going to several black churches around the Grand Rapids area and was struck by the strength and closeness of the congregations, no matter the size of the church.  Because ResLife had this profound effect on me as a child, and because since then I have attended Cuban, Latino, African American and Greek churches (making it difficult to compare my regular context to a new ethnic context) I chose to return to ResLife for this church assignment.

     When I did return, I was very surprised by the extent to which this church has grown.  I learned that they have opened several other ResLife campuses and because of this, the church has in a way naturally segregated itself with many of the minorities choosing one specific church campus rather than everyone coming together to one location as I had remembered.  The main location (where I attended) is now very diverse and has a significant number of white members in addition to many of the minorities which I had remembered making up the majority of the church 10 years ago.  The community, to my disappointment, did not strike me as very close-knit anymore, seeming to choose fancy video cameras to film the sermon, well put together media presentations, and even coffee shops and bookstores in the church, to a tight community.  The church building has been expanded to be significantly more spacious and with so many secondary auditoriums and meeting rooms, I feel that the congregation has grown apart from one another.  The service is very flashy and the sermon very open ended in a way where I believe most people of all ethnicities or cultural backgrounds can feel that it is meant for them specifically.  Although this has merit in so far as it can appeal to a larger population and bring more first-timers to the church, it also has the effect of distancing the congregation from the church and in turn each member of the congregation from each other.

     I feel that ResLife had an choice: to focus on creating a strong congregational community or to focus on creating a megachurch with a very broad appeal.  To my disappointment, they chose the latter.