Grand Rapids First Church Center Of The Church

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

Pastored in 1952 by Alice Lavern Riles, known as Mother Sheppard, The Church of Columbus remains today within the city of Columbus, Georgia. From a tiny building on 49th Street, to the over a million-dollar facility today, The Church of Columbus has gone through its share of change. Growing up, the church was called the First United Pentecostal Church, but once the church moved locations, Pastor renamed it The Church of Columbus. Located on 2001 Double Churches Road, there lies my second home, with its grand 36,000 square feet structure. Growing up, I was always at the church, whether it was for practice, or just to play sports such as volleyball and football with my lifelong friends that I had made throughout my attendance at the church. According the church’s website, “the church has grown from a Sunday morning attendance of sixty-one in 1985, to a consistent attendance of over 400 in 2013” (The Church of Columbus). The church’s motto is “Loving all to Christ”. The motto refers to the church’s ultimate goal of reaching the 290,000 souls of the Columbus, Phenix City, Fort Benning area (The Church of Columbus). A church member, Lisa Gail Stringer-Johnson described the church; “The first thing you feel when you walk through the doors is an outpouring of Love and God’s presence.” I am extremely grateful that I have such a tremendous place to call my second home.

Located in the heart of downtown Cedar Rapids this Historical brick building with its’ decorative molding and beautiful stain glass windows is the home of a subculture of biblically based Christians. This church family meets every Sunday like many churches who revere Sunday as being the Lord’s day, set aside for rest and worship of God. Biblically based Christianity is a vast culture of faith in God carried out by many subcultures called churches, made up of people who seek to worship God and to foster a personal relationship with him. One of the most important things that make a subculture is a question of what is it that brings these people together? This foundational question is not only the question of the subculture, but is also the defining

Some of the values of the culture I visited were the religious values. They were all Christians and most of them were from different parts of Africa. They believe in god and believe that he was the king of the universe, I could tell by the way they sing and the way they participated. They also believe in Jesus, based on how they had the statue of Jesus in the center of the church. They also saw each other as a community, as a church. They all looked really united and even though many of them didn’t knew each other they great each other like they did, because that probably might be a norm for them.

I went to Bishop Gadsden on Friday, September 16th, 2016 as soon as I got into Charleston. It was a little before

Being born and raised in San Antonio, Texas, I was exposed to many different cultures. A few of which were Hispanics and German. They both had different languages and customs. My mom would take us to a festival in San Antonio yearly that was called the “Texas Folklife Festival”. There, our family would experience many different cultures with singing, dancing, food, art, and language. Our family enjoyed learning about the different places others came from and how they celebrated their heritage. Learning to appreciate where others came from and their back ground, gave me a better appreciation for differences.

While we were approaching, I could hear them singing. I was so excited, my heart rated so fast. We went there. No cross, just a plain building and above the door a sign in big white letters “City Church Chicago”. We went in. I was speechless and I couldn’t keep my mouth closed. There were kids, young people, old people, colored people, white people. Everybody was there and everybody was accepted the way he/she is. That was my first time in a different church. They sang a song. It was mind blowing. I was holding my tears. After the song, pastor started preaching. I loved that the pastor was explaining bible quotes on real life situations, it was like an motivational speech. He ask us to stand up and sing a song with him. I didn’t know the lyrics, but that’s not the problem. They have karaoke! So we sang, it was amazing. I really enjoyed

I participated in Storm the Mountain which is a night where my church walked up Rib Mountain and had a church service with singing and a message.

Milton Reid was New Hope Baptist Church’s first full time pastor. Before Rev. Reid came to New Hope’s the pastor only served on the second and fourth Sunday. Our communion was held on the second Sunday. Rev. Reid changed the communion to the first Sunday and rearranged the choir. He gave the Senior Choir the first and third Sunday and the Junior Choir the second and fourth Sunday. My mother made robes for the choir and even embroidered names in them to prevent any mix-ups. She also ordered sheet music for us from the Theodore Presser Company in Chicago, Illinois. At the time there were no available places in the area to purchase sheet music. These things were done by the “Grace of God” and at no expense to the church. We had rehearsal every Monday night. The memories are pleasant even though for many years during the winter months there was no automatic heat. I would go to the church ahead of time to make a fire. Most of the time my father would help me, and sometime I was on my own. I would make sure the fire would burn before going back home then return later for rehearsal if it was not warm when the choir members came in they would gather around the potbellied stove and I was up front on the piano with my coat on. By the time the church really got good and warm, it was time to

We have just come into our own at Park Lake Drive Baptist Church, after years of

Coalbush United Methodist Church is in Mishawaka, Indiana. The Indiana Conference church development team selected Coalbush as a strategic location for potential growth. The church is located right off of the US 20 bypass on the south side of Mishawaka. The city is slowly moving out toward the country, which is how this church views itself: a country church. Mishawaka is not predicted to experience great growth in the next ten years with the make up of a household having little change either. The majority of the people are Anglo-American with little diversity. This is a somewhat traditional community where the majority of people report a sense of well-being. The average household income is approximately $60,000. The largest age group is between 35-55 years old.

As I mentioned, event number one occurred this past summer when my church youth group traveled to New Orleans, Louisiana, for a national Lutheran youth gathering. We departure on July 15th and arrived in New Orleans to meet and worship for a week with 25,000 other Lutheran youths from different states and across the world. Much had traveled from Germany, Hungary, and Canada. The lyrics ¨Every Sunday I see people filling in through those front doors, got a cross up on that steeple, yeah itś time to praise the Lord,” from The Saltwater Gospel by The Eli Young Band relates to my time in New Orleans, especially for a mass event at the Superdome, when 25,000 people came together. Each night, we would enjoy personal stories, skits, and songs about

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.

On March 16, 2015 I attended a daily service at Durga Temple called Aarti. I went there at 9:30

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.