Isaiah Bornman Visit #3

Church Name: Nueva Esperanza

Church Address: 1825 College Avenue, Wheaton, IL

Date Attended: November 2, 2014

Church Category: Different Ethnic or Racial Demographic

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

  I do not speak Spanish…… I’m fluent in French so I can catch many ideas and words, but I don’t speak Spanish at all. Thankfully my good friend is quite fluent and attends Nueva Esperanza. Overall the experience was very similar to most evangelical type services I have attended. Nueva is part of the PCA and so the music sounded similar (many english songs just translated into spanish), the order of the service was the same (music and prayer, offering, powerful sermon, announcements and a sending off).    

  Apart from the language, the other main cultural difference I noticed from the sermon was how the pastor delivered his message. From what I gathered and was translated for me I noticed that he gave a few more personal stories than I am used to at my home church. I could tell that he was a learned academic kind of man but exegesis was definitely not the main feel of the sermon.

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

  After spending much of my younger years as a missionary kid in Senegal, I have missed hearing another language other than English. I miss going to three hour services all in French or Wolof or other language that I didn’t fully understand. This last Sunday was a joyful experience because I was able to again step into that kind of service. As an outsider and observer I was allowed to not always sing, or pay complete attention to the service but could watch my fellow Christians around me worship our God.

 The language was so interesting to hear how it flowed. How it borrowed some words and analogies sometimes and others I was needing to have something explained. I also felt that the warmness of the congregation was very appealing. There were sooo many hugs and handshakes and laughs before and after the service, something that I had been missing from my childhood experience of West African Church social life.

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

 Naturally, it was the language that was the biggest factor distancing me from the service. Like I said, the style of worship was very similar to my own ‘home’ church. It was wonderful to hear the Spanish, to see differences from my French or english vocabulary. But it was also a little humbling (which is always needed) to know that I was the one with the lowest ability to comprehend other than the new baby in front of me. I may have caught many of the social structures of the service and the churches people by watching but I am sure that I missed so much due to the language barrier. People were very welcoming and my friend did his best but I very much felt like an outsider.

What aspects of Scripture or theology did the worship service illuminate for you that you had not perceived as clearly in your regular context?

 I think that I most greatly appreciated the warmness of the congregation with each other. It was evident that these were people walking through life together and supporting eachother in right community. This was also evident in the stories the pastor told, relation the bible message to specific people and their stories. It was a blessing to feel the joy of that morning, language barrier and all, from my brothers and sisters, all of us worshiping the same God. I felt connected to the global church while still in Wheaton.