Lazy Sunday

This morning I got to sleep in. Usually having to be at church at 8:00am (though I almost never actually make that), I couldn’t believe it last night when we were told to meet for church at 10:30. Since I crashed only a very short time after posting my blog last night, I still got out of bed at around 7:15, but it was really nice to sit around and read and have breakfast and not have to run out the door immediately.

So the four single MITs, the Ross family (dad Nate and five kids are present so far), and the Mosey family (Ted, Caroline and 1-year-old son Jude) were taken to church by Rich and Zo Becker, two full-timers here at the EMC. And we went to church at Willow Creek.

In case you aren’t familiar with it, Willow Creek Community Church is a megachurch just outside Chicago, and about twenty minutes from here in Elgin. It averages 23,000 attendees in a weekend (three services) and the main auditorium holds 7,200 people- the largest theatre in the United States.

Definitely a new experience for me. We came in through the food court (yes, the food court) and found the “Sunday School” classes for the Ross kids and the nursery for Jude (who wasn’t just signed in, but given a computer-generated barcode sticker on his back) and headed for the auditorium, past the waterfall and the escalators. The auditorium has two 14×24-foot LCD screens (I had to look up the dimensions) and a huge stage, aside from just the daunting amount of seating (which was so full I thought Rich would never find a place for us to all sit together).

Typical of a lot of super-contemporary and non-denominational churches, the service was basically music right at the beginning, announcements, and then a message. Although of experienced the lack of liturgy before, it still caught me off guard that there was absolutely no theological context given to the offering (which I noticed on my own) and a little disconcerting to realize there’s not a cross in the building (a fact which I knew beforehand, but was careful to look and confirm). For a congregation whose goal is to reach the unchurched, I understand the reasons behind these (which for the sake of brevity I won’t discuss here), and though I don’t like tradition for the sake of tradition and at the cost of sincerity, I (coming from a very traditional church background) tend to be observant of and opposed to incidents of the Church taking direction from the world.

Not that the service was in any way not great. In fact, it was a very positive worship experience for me when I switched myself from “analytical” mode to “God” mode. The music was both powerful and good, and the message was really Scripturally rooted. In fact, the message was almost entirely Scripture, with the focus being on internalizing Scripture for strength in everyday life (something that’s not necessarily one of my strong points, and so was really good to hear).

After the service, we reunited the group in the food court and had lunch together. It was really nice getting to hang out some more and getting a chance to talk to some of the people like the Moseys who I had only briefly been introduced to before. As Caroline observed, it’s funny how roundabout everyone’s story is of how the ended up with International Teams. Before she said that, I had felt like I was the only one (I mean, I got here because I interned last year because Deborah planted the idea in my head when I went on a team the year before, to which I was invited because I’d been on a team with Julie, who had gone the year before with team members who she’d grown up with, who were connected through the Episcopal Church through Cameron, who had also met Carrie years before at camp and who has her own totally roundabout way of ending up a missionary)¹.

This afternoon was grocery shopping. Two unpicky twenty-something guys with an envelope of money in a grocery store. We came back with a lot of pizza.

Seriously though, I will be making enchiladas at some point this week, so that should be an adventure both in cooking and blogging.

After that was more down-time. Having learned in Quito not to sit around the house and wait for something to happen (because you end up sitting around the house a lot that way),² we headed downstairs to see if anyone was in the lounge. Although it turned out to be locked at the time, we eventually wound up jumping on the opportunity to play basketball and football with the Ross kids, and within thirty minutes half the people living here this week were outside playing, talking and hanging out with us.

Another funny realization (a continual one, really) is the connections between people. It was amazing to me how many familiar names were dropped this afternoon (for example: Matt, Cameron, Lane, Danielle, Teddy, Nicole, Miguel, Bob, Phil and Howie just out of one conversation on the sidewalk). To think of all the places that all of these people have crossed paths, and how much more of that there is because of the twelve people here this week (two years from now some of these people will be saying in Ecuador “yeah, I was in training with Danny Peck.” It blows my mind).

Tomorrow class actually begins with Devotions, The Word of God, ITeams Vision and Values, orientations to Mobilization and to Facilities, and presenting testimonies. Wow.

¹What a parenthetical phrase!
²Even if it does produce really great blogs.

Author: Danny

Occasional Ecuadorian View all posts by Danny