A Speech On Attending A House Church Essay

Years later in this process of growth, I was blessed with a summer internship at a larger congregation in Dallas, Texas. Although I grew from my relationships and from the mentorship I received, I also observed that the bulk of the ministry meetings focused on changing and adapting our church’s corporate worship to be more and more “seeker sensitive.” The thought was that corporate worship was something malleable that could be altered into something more like the culture of the surrounding neighborhood, so people would want to come. “After all,” so the thinking went, “scripture provided only a rough guideline as to what the church is to do when coming together and there is little-to-no reason to keep intact what past generations did or passed down.” In essence, we sought to form our corporate worship for the purpose of evangelism. I believed that the important thing to focus on is love of God, love of neighbor, and piety. Something in the line of reasoning that insisted on changing the community worship ritual to reflect the world didn’t feel right to me, yet I could not articulate what it was. Several months later I visited an Eastern Orthodox Church as part of a course on Christian spiritual development and after a didactic

I chose to do my religious ethnographic study at my home church, Tabernacle Baptist Church in Youngstown, Ohio on Sunday, May 8, 2016. Tabernacle is an 112-year-old historic Black Baptist church located on the lower Northside of Youngstown surrounded by a mixed income housing development, homeless shelter, Youngstown State University, and St. Elizabeth’s Hospital. I would say the average age of a Tabernacle member is 55 years old. About 70% of the members at this church are “middle-class” families. Until about five years ago, its membership was almost exclusively middle class. There has seen an influx of membership in working class individuals and students since the arrival of Tabernacle’s young, vibrant pastor, Rev. Christopher McKee, Jr., three years ago. The church is attentive to the needs of this demographic but remains true to its historic Black Baptist church roots. The church previously struggled with this conundrum until it came to the reality that an exclusivist mindset around worship is detrimental to the body of Christ when it did not have a pastor for over three years. The church was dying because no one was welcome to it and it did not have a leader. Though it was difficult, this reassessment was beneficial in making Tabernacle more relevant and welcoming to the community it is blessed to serve.

The First United Methodist Church of Lindale has become a second family that I spend time worshiping with. FUMC Lindale has been my only church, and I began learning about Christ before I can remember. For a while, I even went to school in my church! I participated in children's programs such as BIG, sunday school, and summer camp. Growing up in the traditional service, I became a regular Acolyte. This began as a terrifying experience, but grew into a wonderful appreciation of being part of the service. Each experience within this church is valuable to myself and many others I introduced to my church. Many of them followed until Conformation where we learned about the importance and structure of our church along with Biblical text . Following

55% of Northwest Texas’s churches have fewer than 50 weekly attendees (and 9% of the conference’s total weekly attendance) while 9 churches contain 27% of the conferences total weekly attendance. In comparison to other conferences, a large portion of the conference’s

On the Sunday, the 20th of September I went to St. George Antiochian Orthodox Christian Church located in 4335 16th St NW, Washington, DC 20011. The church rents out the National Theater for service every Sunday. This church is a non-denominational church and it is not at all traditional. The Pastor is Brandon Samuel, a middle-aged man with a wife and kids. The service was from 10:00 am to about 12:00 pm. I am a Christian so this church experience was not new to me, but it was quite different from my church at home as the church I attend back home is a Pentecostal church.

OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE COMPLETION OF THE COURSE MUSC 610 – TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES FOR WORSHIP

Once during a passionate sermon at church, my pastor had made a vivid statement about incorporation of sin in law. Pastor Smith stated, “the world has developed loopholes to maintain its dignity by incorporating sin into the law, and as long as we are operating under the law, our actions are perceived as being justified”(Smith). Reflecting on his theory has brought me to the realization that the United Stated has established a profitable industry, governed by the creation and the manipulation of laws. Although, it’s ideal to believe that the standards of laws were truly orchestrated with the foundation of equality, justice, and freedom. It is imperative to be informed of historical events that has transpired through the history of the black race each operating under the ordinance of law. Beginning with the development of slavery, to the alarming rate of black men behind bars. I am compelled to present the clause of injustice that has labeled the United States as the home of 25% of the world 's prisoners ().

I’ve gone to the same church in Hartford almost every Sunday since I was born. The old building holds countless number of memories for my family and me. It has set the stage for a number of Christmas plays and Sunday School concerts. It’s where my little brother and I were baptized, and just recently it was where my goddaughter, Aurora, was baptized. After 20 years of marriage, it was where my parents renewed their vows, and a year later, it was where we held the funeral for my dad after he lost his battle with cancer. When it’s not a place of worship on Sunday mornings, it’s a daycare, where I work and care for a group of rowdy three-year-olds. In my 19 years of membership, the church has seen three different Pastors and

Once service started Pastor Mark went to the front of the room and opened service with a welcome and announcements. After announcements Pastor Mark told everyone that he was going to change things up for this Sunday. So instead of worshiping first he gave his sermon. Pastor Mark preached on Paul and how even in all his pain and suffering, Paul still had joy. Once the sermon was finished, Pastor Mark showed us a short clip relating to the message and then we split off into prayer groups, based on gender.

This weekly event invited all people of Schoenfeldt to spend time in a welcoming environment focused on developing our faith both individually and as a driving force in the growth of our community. Each week, I invited all members of Schoenfeldt to come enjoy food, conversation, and scripture as it applies to our everyday life. “Find out how to get to heaven, Mondays at 8:57.” During the actual event, we would begin with prayer, followed by an opportunity to share what has been on our minds. Next, the leader for the week read their passage and offered question for thought to guide the conversation. To end, we once again spoke whatever was on our minds and concluded with prayer.

The risk for organizations during this phase is to assess for good yet a limited set of qualities in potential church planters. Current tools are helpful, but they are lacking. What they are lacking causes a problem because what is missing in the gap is not emphasized during the earliest stages of church planter formation. What is being emphasized, in other words, assessed is being communicated as a value such as skills, ability, knowledge but what about a planter’s posture towards God, the church, and culture? Church planting organizations will often teach and train about what the purposes of the church are and what the planter needs to do in those areas but without an assessment of their current preferences

When the service started it began with prayer, during the service there were moments of prayer, and the service ended with prayer. Something that I found very entertaining was the form of worship that they used which was singing. They sang a lot of different songs that worshiped God. You could tell who went to church a lot because they knew all the songs by heart. For those like me that didn’t know the songs, the words were projected on to the wall so you could sing along with everyone else. There was also a live band that played the music to sing to. This part of the service was really entertaining to me and I really enjoyed it.

The Chinese Christian church in the United States often has ethnic characteristics, but different Chinese churches often have special concentration in the composition of the congregation, which reflects the tide of Chinese immigrants in different stages. For example, descendants of early immigrants from southern China usually have their fixed church. International students from the mainland of China have the church which they set up together. And other "informal immigrants" also formed Christian organizations. According to Aihui Lee, she divides American Chinese Christianity into four categories.

Worship comes in different forms depending on how the church wants the service to proceed. For the Amazing Grace Church, the service began with the congregation singing a number of worship songs to the Lord that lasted for about an hour. Christian praise and worship by music, and in fact, music is a great tool for helping them feel closer to God. Music is an emotional language because it effectively affects their emotions and the lyrics can swell their hearts. There is nothing bigger and greater than the grace of God that is delivered to them from condemnation through the sacrifice of his own Son. Thus, Christian chooses to praise and worship Him by singing. While singing, the congregation stands on their feet and they seem to be affected by the songs in some way as they raise their hands as a sign of accepting the Lord into their hearts. The emotion that was thrown from the congregation was very distinctive to us as we could see that the songs are an important tool of expression. According to the pastor of the Amazing Grace Church, singing let the people focus on the worship, helps them respond to God’s grace and also guide them to reflect on God’s glory. In his opinion, singing mean nothing if people do not respond to what they have sang and related it to God and reflect it to make them better believers.

Reflecting upon the readings of Torrance’s Worship, Community, and the Triune God of Grace and White’s Introduction to Christian Worship will deeply shape how I look at worship in the churches I now order worship for the congregations. I used one of the churches in which I serve to do the Order of Worship assignment. It is a blue collar, small membership church located in a rural, retirement/ vacation area of North Carolina, Lake Gaston. It is also predominately Caucasian. Torrance’s focus is on trinitarian worship, participating in Christ’s communion with God, the Father and Christ’s life, death, and resurrection through the power of the Holy Spirit. And White’s focus is to look at how the forms used in worship give worship its meaning. These forms include but are not exclusive of, time, space, music and art. There are implications for both focuses in the order of worship for the congregation used for my order of worship.