Tom O'Connor- Church Visit #1

Church Name: St. Herman Orthodox Church
Church Address: 991 W. Prentice Ave, Littleton, CO 80120
Date Attended:10/16/16
Church Category: Orthodox Church of America

Describe the worship service you attended. How was it similar to or different from your regular context?
The service was incredibly interactive. As the priest told us afterwards, you could take the sermon out of the service entirely, and still be spiritually fed because of all the scripture readings, all the prayer, and all the interactive worship. Other than the sermon, almost everything in the service was chanted, and almost everything was call-and-response. A choir led the response part, meaning probably less than 5 minutes of the over 2 hour divine liturgy was spoken normally. Nearly all of this, including the length of the service, was different from my regular context. I have transitioned from a non denominational upbringing to attending an Anglican church at Wheaton, so I'm already used to the use of liturgy and having a participatory service, but Anglican liturgy is not nearly as lengthy or in-depth as Orthodox liturgy. Another difference from my regular context was the lack of traditional musical worship, even of traditional hymns. The choir sang hymns, but the congregation was not invited to join.

How did the worship service illuminate for you the history and contours of global Christianity?

One of the members of the congregation was telling me after the service that one of the beauties of the Orthodox church is that the structure of a church service in the orthodox church is the same now as it was in the first century. Whether that's entirely accurate or not, it definitely shows how much emphasis the Orthodox church puts on history and tradition. It was cool to see how invested the whole church was in this aspect of their faith. However, the current division in the church was just as evident as their devotion to church history. Part of the divine liturgy was to pray for the "pious orthodox Christians", and that phrase was repeated multiple times. Also, the priest emphasized in his sermon how important it was that the congregation knew what it meant in their personal lives to be orthodox in everything they do. He very specifically used the term "orthodox" as the defining characteristic of his church, not "Christian". This was discouraging to me.

How did the worship service illuminate for you your personal identity as a Christian?
It's a really encouraging thing as a Christian to walk into a church in an unfamiliar community, from an unfamiliar faith background, with no familiar faces, and to still be able to participate in worship and hear the scriptures read. For some reason, it just struck me in the service today how special it was that I was hearing the same gospel of Luke being read in an Orthodox setting that I hear read in my home church or that I read personally at home. Even though the church visit highlighted certain aspects of the division of the global church for me, it also was a wonderful reminder of the global community of believers that I am a part of because of this realization. The service also helped me to solidify my personal view on various theological issues. When you grow up in the same church for years around people who have roughly the same theological views, you never have to really think about what you really believe on deep issues. Hearing such a drastically different church tradition do worship allowed me the opportunity to say to myself "we connect in this way" on some things, and "that doesn't seem quite right to me" on other things. This was helpful for me.