church ethnography

7/30/2019 Church Ethnography

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Ethnographic Research PaperCultural Anthropology

Dr. Brian Patterson

Philip McBride

Box: 775

12/2/12


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For my Ethnography Report, I wrote about how people worship in a primarily Anglo-

Saxon church, specifically Parkside Church in Waconia Minnesota. Being in a rather small town,

Waconia is not very culturally diverse. However, being near to Crown College, Parkside

attendees range from a very large variety of ages. There are many college students, young

families, older families, teenagers, and elderly. Parkside is generally used as a worship center on

Sunday mornings. In fact, the 2 times that I attended to observe the church, was at the 10:30

service. While Parkside is home to many different people from many different walks of life, the

people in the community tend to be a little bit on the upper-class end of the social spectrum.

Therefore, this tends to be true of the people who attend Parkside. It is interesting to observe the

different subcultures of the church. There is a good group of college students from Crown who

generally sit together in the back of the far left side of the sanctuary. There is also a good amount

of teenagers who attend Parkside Church. Amongst the congregation there are also a good

amount of younger families with small kids.

Many of the elders and people who hold positions of leadership in the church are

professors from Crown College. In fact, a lot of those who contribute to Parkside

Church are from Crown College. Other occupations that are held by Parkside attendees include

Doctors, County political figures, and many different blue collar positions. While I was

observing the worship that was happening at Parkside, I sat in the back left-hand side of the

church. Coincidentally (or maybe not so coincidentally) I was sitting amongst mostly other

Crown students. It was interesting to observe the people around me and take into account the

different ways that people worshipped.

The question that I centered the focus of my report on was the way that people worship at

Parkside Church. For the most part, the story is the same regardless of the age, gender, or


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ethnicity. Most people at Parkside just sing along while they stand and watch the band play

worship music. A couple things that I gathered were social-nonverbal cues that people would

pick up from each other. It seemed that there were specific times when it was acceptable to raise

your hands in worship; however, at other times it was not. No one seemed to clap their hands

unless the worship leader started to, in the same fashion, people would stop clapping when the

leaders would stop. I did not interact with very many people, in order to be removed from the

situation I was observing so that the results would not be different.

Some challenges that I faced included not interacting with more people. It would have

been more productive to have done research at a church that I do not attend on a regular basis.

This made my observations a bit skewed as I am part of the system that I was observing. Despite

these difficulties it was very interesting to observe the different trends and habits in a scenario

that I take part in on a regular basis. I did not use any other kinds of methods besides participant

observation in my research. It is interesting to think about why these patterns in worship happen

this way at Parkside while at another church they may worship differently. However, one must

also factor in all of the other variables, such as the way the band is set up or the position that the

pastor is in when he is speaking. These things factor into how the congregation responds.

The way the band is set up puts the worship leader on one side, the drums behind him,

and all the other musicians on the opposite side of the leader. Their attitude towards worship and

even the spots in which they are standing makes a difference as to how we respond. In this semi-

small town in Minnesota, most of the people in the church come from more reserved and

conservative backgrounds. Also, when the pastor speaks, he is sitting in a chair. While I know

that the pastor got in the habit of sitting in a chair after he tore his Achilles tendon, and has just

kept doing so after it healed up, this may be a turn off towards some new comers. No matter how


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interesting the message is, people are bound to get into it more if the speaker is more animated.

The people up on stage have a big effect on the people in the congregation. This is shown by the

fact that the people stopped clapping when the worship leader did, rather than continuing on as

the Spirit led. While some of the younger people seemed to get more into the worship by tapping

their feet or raising their hands.

Another interesting observation that I found was that at certain times in the songs, people

would put their hands up in worship. It was like there was a social code as to the exact point of

the song that everyone should raise their hands at. I have always been curious about this topic

because I grew up overseas where worship was brought to life in a much more charismatic way.

After doing this research, I believe that the way that we worship, hugely depends on the

examples put forth by the leader. There were people in the congregation however that

disregarded these cultural norms and were worshipping God in their own ways. This generally

just included irregular patterns of clapping and maybe a little bit more dancing.

There was the exception of the family in front of me that was breaking a couple social

norms. The two sons wanted to talk but they were separated by their parents who wanted them to

pay better attention. Watching this family was very interesting, the more that the sons committed

social deviance through disruption of the worship service, the mother seemed to be trying to

overcompensate by raising her hands more and being more intentional in worship. Other than

this one instance, there were not too many moments in which I could observe social disruptions

to this worship service. There was one point in the service that a baby started crying, this seemed

to break the congregations focus of worship for an instance, but not for very long.

In order for a stranger to survive in this scenario, they must learn to observe the way the

people around them are acting, and put it into practice. This project taught me a lot about the


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church and how we dont put a lot of energy or joy into our worship and act more like it is just a

chore to be done in the church. It was very insightful for me to do this observation in my own

church and see all of the weird habits that I generally dont even notice. As far as the positioning

of the people in the church, it seemed that most of the regular attendees sat in the center section,

the college students on the left side, the teenagers on the right section, and most of the new

people in the back of all three sections. This made it less awkward for newcomers to come and

sit down quietly in the back of the church.

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