Study of a Church Service
Nonverbal in Context Observation #1 Date &Time: November 19th at 7-8 pm. Location: Church (Friday, Youth service) Participants: The Pastor and the church members In this observation there was a series of nonverbal communication. I will start with Kinesics (facial).
In this church service people have happy faces and are worshiping God, some are bored because they don’t really understand what is happening; others are excited because God let them experience his presence, and last but not least mostly everyone have outgoing faces because our Pastor is singing a song that says there’s no better greeting than the greeting of Christian.People start to handshake and hug each other (Kinesics; Gestures). When it’s the pastor people use both hands and when it is other regular church members; people just use one hand to shake. There are different types of hugs from the very affectionate to the unaffectionate. Also, people clap their hand to thanks God for his wonderful doings. Body appearances are very noticeable; women have skirts/ sit straight and men have pants / they sit more in a more relax posture.
There is lots of olfactory for the smell of Holy oil, perfumes, and food.They all smell good and have a pleasant smell. In addition, there was the vocalic; people speak low and others speak loud. There are a lot of vocal characteristics like laughing/ crying or mumbling / screaming. They are either laughing about a joke, crying because they are suffering, mumbling because their talking to God, and screaming because there are rebuking some demon out of someone to liberate them. Mostly everyone has a high pitch in order to catch people’s attention.
In the other hand there are those who decide to stay silent; these are the one that are the vocal segregates.They chose to respond to anyone’s conversation with “ummm’s , ers, oki or simply a yeah”. In the proxemics area people are sitting next to those they feel comfortable with and those who don’t have a person with whom they feel comfortable with, are just sitting alone or simply forced to sit beside someone (due to the lack of chairs). Some leave chairs in between each others to let people know that they have a proxemics bubble and don’t want to be approached by others. At the same time there was some Haptics touches happening. There’s the ritualistic touch, playful touch, control touch, ositive effect touch, accidental touch and the hybrid touch.
Some are shaking hands and hugging, others are tickleling some of the children or people are laughing and hitting each other, the pastor is patting people who have grown spiritually and those who have been coming to the church services, there is some youth the touch each other in a positive way showing tie signs, hold hands or kiss each other on their cheeks. In this church service the accidental touch is present when the people are receiving the Holy Spirit or when they are being prayed for.Last but not least the people in church touch each other with love, and some have aggressive Hi five’s. Moreover, there is the chronemics; the church service is in a microtime. Everything is polychromic; most people are multitasking, to them time doesn’t matter and in a way it is formal but informal at the same time. They start with the formal service, but once the Holy Spirit is present; the Holy Spirit guides them on what to do.
The environment is sociopital; everyone is encouraged to talk.Finally, this is what I found in this observation. I was surprised of all the things that were happening at the service. It was nice to have had the knowledge to understand what was going on. Observation #2 Date & Time: I took a little time from each day of the week (Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday) Location: Church Participants: Church members & Pastor In this observation I was only looking at the Chronemics. In this church there was a schedule made for the days of service.
They go based on the microtime and it is polychromic.There is service on Sundays; regular service, Tuesdays; Bible study, Thursdays Children service or prayer service, and on Friday youth service or gentleman/ lady service. There people are always assigned what to do for the service, but there is always someone that will be multitasking. The service is composed of reading the bible, praise & worship, prayer for the sick, and all the church members petitions, offering song to pick up any offering, prayer, parts given to those that were chosen by the pastor to bring something for God, and then the preacher does his sermon.They know at what time they start, but there is no ending time.
Usually the church service starts at 7 pm and it can end at 10, 11, or 12. The service starts formal and ends up informal. People talk about their past, present and future. They talk about their past to let people know about their testimony this helps people’s faith grow more and more, they talk about their present to help people cope with whatever their passing through and they talk about their future so that their believe in God will be there for generations.They just want people to know that God is an awesome God and he provides and blesses us each and every day. This was a great thing to write about; I never looked at this in this way.
There is so many nonverbal communications going on at church. You would be amazed to see what really happens at church. Maybe someday I will have the chance to talk about my experience with the Holy Spirit and about how greatly God has changed my life. Interview:
