Scott Wurtz - Church Visit #1

Church name: Saint Athanasios Greek Orthodox Church

Church address: 1855 East 5th Avenue, Aurora

Date attended: 3/6/16

Church category: Greek Orthodox

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

In my regular context, the service surrounds two things: worship through song, and the pastor's preaching. Time in church is approximately 45% singing, 45% preaching, and 10% a grab bag of congregational sharing, scripture reading, praying, silence, or other things. 

The Greek Orthodox Church was a lot different. For most of the service the priest was standing with his back to us, chanting, singing, and saying prayers to God, with a choir responding in one voice. The service was focused on building up to the Eucharist, rather than on the preaching of the pastor or on singing. Incense was used frequently throughout the service and icons covered the walls of the church; practices that I am not familiar with. Mary was discussed a greater amount than I’m used to, and the largest image in the center of the Church was of Mary holding Jesus. I was initially uncomfortable that she was bigger than Jesus, but she is central because of the desire to focus on the incarnation which is very centered on Jesus. The Nicene Creed and the Lord’s Prayer were recited which I was more familiar with.

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

I appreciated the acknowledgement of church history in the service. The church is named after Athanasius, and so the bulletin contained a hymn referencing his refutation of the Arian heresy and his commitment to orthodoxy. The priest in his brief sermon mentioned some sayings of the church fathers as well.

I felt myself wrestling with how different their worship service was from my background. I didn’t connect with the way things were done. The prayer felt distant and I was not able to enter in and pray with the community. But this made me consider that my uniquely Protestant way of doing things is about 400 years old, with significantly less history and tradition than the Orthodox Church, and I should have a respect for that tradition. The liturgy has been carefully developed over a long period of time and I can trust those words in a fuller way than I can trust the one week planning of an Evangelical service.

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

After leaving the service and getting in my car, I was struck by the stark contrast between the music playing on my radio (yes, K-Love) and the attitude of worship in the Orthodox church. There was little encouragement or prompting to consider yourself in the Orthodox service. The prayer was primarily about communally asking God for mercy, grace, blessing, giving glory to God, and other things that do not involve a separation of the self from the rest of the gathered church. In contrast, K-Love’s music felt very self-oriented.

A common struggle of mine and that my peers struggle with is how much we should try to “get something out of it.” For example, going to church in order for your motivations and desires be corrected or purified through worship in a tangible way where you feel different after the service. That’s not an inherently bad thing I don’t think, but it can go too far. I bet that there is less of a temptation to go to church in order to “get something out of it” in the Orthodox tradition. The worship is focused on God and is not as concerned with the individual. This reminded me of my place in the Church as a community and helped me focus on God’s holiness more than my own feelings.