Church Experience

Throughout my time here I have been blessed with several different religious opportunities. The places I've attended and the services I have been part of have been something completely different from my childhood, and for that I am blessed purely because it has given me an opportunity to broaden my experiences plus find out what I truly want in life religiously. I have been to four churches since I've been here, Bath City Church (Right across the street), Westminster Abbey (In London), Bath Abbey, and Manvers Street Baptist (in Bath as well). Bath Abbey and Westminster were very similar.  They both have a very strict way of doing things full of traditions. I have never experienced a worship service anything like it before. The whole time I was just sitting back a bit confused and trying to understand what I was watching. I don't think I could ever call a church like that my home purely because of the lack of worship I felt like I was doing.  I felt like it was almost a show, with the people in the audience just admiring the beauty of the building and the quality of the choir. That being said, I enjoyed both their services just because I feel like I got a taste of true European religion and how the majority of them worship. Bath City Church on the other hand was more of a comfortable experience for me. It reminds me of Ethos back in Nashville but maybe a bit more charismatic. They meet in an old theater and the crowd is primarily young people.  The one thing I noticed is people at Bath City are definitely not afraid to express themselves spiritually. While I enjoy being around people who clearly love the Lord, I also found some of the worship distracting.  Maybe this is the inner Church of Christ coming out of me but I found it hard to concentrate on the Lord when some people are convulsing or basically speaking in tongues. I haven't ever been around anything like that before and I don't think that it's wrong of them to worship with that much energy, I just find it hard to judge what's real and what's a show. Then again it isn't my place to judge. Bath City church and the two abbey's were completely different purely because of the overall atmosphere in each worship service. People at Bath City Church expressed themselves in anyway imaginable while they were worshiping, but at the Abbey's it seemed like if someone would've been loud while they worshiped or did anything unusual they would've been asked to leave because it might be considered disrespectful. The Baptist church I attended seemed very similar to any Baptist church back in America. I never felt uncomfortable and it felt like any normal Sunday morning service. Granted this was the first time I went to church on an actual Sunday morning because all of the other services were either in the afternoon or night time. I felt like I wasn't able to experience the church fully because they had a guest military speaker who spoke about his time in the military (which I found interesting) so I was unable to see a normal Sunday routine. Overall, the amount of religious exposure I have had this trip has encouraged me to really dive into what I believe in when I get back to Nashville. I'm excited about the opportunity to go to new churches back home so I can continue to develop what I truly want out of a church. Until next time.