John Slaughter: Church Visit #1

Church Name: St. Nectarios

Church Address: 133 S. Roselle Road Palatine, IL 60067

Date Attended: 02/28/2016

Church Category: Greek Orthodox Church

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

The service I attended at St. Nectarios was a unique experience for me. When I walked into the sanctuary two things hit me, the first was the scent of incense and the second was the sheer ornateness of the room. The walls were covered in paintings of biblical stories all leading into the story of the cross, which was painted on the main wall behind the Iconostasis. Dominating this wall was a massive mother Mary with the child Jesus. There was a lot of gold happening in these paintings. The service included much sitting and standing and at one point we knelt to pray, but the majority of the time was spent standing in reverence for the Father. The liturgy was spoken in both Greek and English. At one point the elements of the Eucharist were carried throughout the sanctuary as the Reverend Father prayed a blessing. The congregants participated in responding verbally to the liturgy as well as crossing themselves in response to certain phrases in the liturgy. The climax of the service was when the Reverend Father brought out and administered the Eucharist. This church service was very different than what I am used to. I come from a Non-Denominational church. My home church was a church plant of a Calvary Chapel in Oregon. We have no liturgy of any kind and the majority of the service is spent sitting and listening to the sermon. One thing I appreciated about the service was the amount of energy put into planning and executing a purposeful time of worship.

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

The worship service helped to illuminate the historical mindset of the participants. The church itself is designed to emphasize this aspect of worship. Before you enter the building you cannot help but notice a massive mosaic of St. Nectarios, for whom the church is named. This evokes an immediate connection between this church in Palatine, Illinois and the historical church. The décor of the sanctuary was completely foreign to what I am used to; this put me in a more global mindset as I thought about the Greek origins of this church. I thought about the fact that 1700 years ago, an Orthodox service would have been very similar to the one I attended yesterday. The historically static nature of the service made me think about the historical roots of how I have grown up worshiping.

How did the worship service illuminate for you your personal identity as a Christian?

This service exposed me to an entire stream of worship that I can honestly say I had never really heard of or understood until recently. I don’t think I will ever become a Greek Orthodox, but it was definitely a good experience and one that has prompted many qualifying thoughts about my own church background. Although there has been a recent outcry against the individualist mindset of contemporary evangelical churches, I do value the way in which my home church emphasizes the individual, as well as the corporate, value of faith. This is something I didn’t really see at St. Nectarios. The church congregation didn’t know the liturgy or even attempt to know it; there were Divine Liturgy books in the pews, but not a single one was being used. Outside of sitting, kneeling, and standing at the correct times, the congregation seemed to be pretty much disinterested in the service as a whole. I will say that I greatly appreciated the obvious amount of effort and forethought put into the service as a whole; you could feel that every movement was thought through to its fullest extent. As a whole, this experience helped me to come to a greater understanding, and hold in higher value the way in which others worship.