The voices of the choir danced through the church as I stood there in my button up, denim jeans, and dress shoes. My ten year old self would come to find myself in this very same get-up sunday after sunday listening to some old man preach about the actions people made a couple thousand years ago.
Despite all the rambling I heard as a child I never absorbed any of what my pastors were spewing out of their mouths. As I grew older i began participating in things such as youth group as expected by me from my peers and parents. I believe i was 13 years old at the time I began helping around my church either by helping build scenes and set up tables for events. I forged many friendships through this but I felt like i was missing something. I had spent so much time in that church that I knew everybody and everybody knew me but I felt out of place and this feeling would always linger in the background.
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I can still recall the busride pretty well, I sat near the back reading a good book while chaos was unleashed near the front. While we were in the camp we’d go tubing down slopes, roast marshmallows and relax. Of course every afternoon some “motivational speaker” would come and talk to us and every other visiting church about god. At the time I was really confused where I stood with god, I understood the bible and its teaching and I even still have some of Jesus’ stories memorized, nonetheless I still questioned my belief in some divine angelic ruler. Confused and distraught I sought my youth leader for advice on the matter. They Pulled me aside and we had a discussion about god and “your role in his god's ultimate plan”. After our extensive chat I had a revelation, one very different from what I
“Youth Ministry” in a better way. Having little or no experience in youth ministry, I was not really sure where to start. I believe my start was chosen for me by a higher calling (God) do I believe I pick the right book to start reading or did the right book pick me? The book picked me and here is why.
After reviewing my life, I have decided my life defining moment was when my family and I moved to Texas from Oklahoma. I consider this move my life changing moment because it changed so many things in my life. This move set the stage for an entirely new life for me. Moving six hours away from the only home I knew certainly called for many changes.
I spent every spring and summer in middle school doing mission work and community service. I loved the opportunity that it gave me to build relationships and share my beliefs with people I didn’t know. Little did I know that this would pave the way for a life-changing experience that I would encounter one day. Each spring my church would host a missionary event called “The Ignite Project.” I felt an urge to join the group, recognizing that it was a calling to profess my faith in Jesus. These mission trips helped me to go out
Secondly, the Church can insist on its identity as an inter-generational community. It can do this structurally, by refusing to segment congregations by age, and temperamentally, by recovering a biblical respect for maturity and rejecting popular culture’s infantilism, thereby offering to children a goal of growing up. Popular culture exalts perpetual adolescence.
At the age of fifteen, I was faced the most difficult time of my life. The Lord
refugees, and the second generation who were born here in the states. Finally, I feel now that I have the vision to work on myself to know more about my attitude, my future therapeutic values in the field practices. At the same time, I am planning to work more with my personal therapist on the values, beliefs, and emotions and I will be happy to know about myself more.
The soul of the world to me is my Religion, it has had an influence on my life for as long as I can remember. I was just a little preschooler when I was introduced to my faith, my parents sent me to a church camp after school for an hour or so every day. I had never had any real connections like many of the pastors claimed but I knew as long as I believed that good would come. For many years it didn't, yet I remained faithful. I always believed that if I remained faithful that nothing could ever hurt me, still with all my faith there were days where I questioned my belief. I wondered how any of this could actually be possible, if there was really a big man up in the sky watching me then why don't I ever see him. But as I grew older I learned
There, my eyes had been opened to the horrible things I had done. After that, I devoted myself to changing my life, and helping other people find Christ. I changed schools my freshman year and was devoted to being steadfast in my new strong relationship with God. There was times that I struggled to do the right things, but with new Christian friends to help me along, I was able to pull through and keep pushing. Every summer I go down to camp witness as a student. Every chance I get, I try and find the kids who are struggling with life, and try to help them, and or talk to my counselor so they know to help them. Now, in the summer time I like going to be a counselor at the same camp that changed my life. When I started counseling, I was faced with a whole new level of difficulties. The first time I had ever counseled, I was faced with a cabin packed full of inner city kids from Omaha, and a few kids that were there for the horse camp. This brought many difficulties because the inner city kids that were there had no respect for anyone. This was a great experience for me and I was able to learn many things that will help me with youth ministry. In the wintertime, I go to my sister’s church where they have an awana program and I am one of the leaders
He simply looked at me and said that he loved serving the kids because they are the unfortunate ones. I have learned what it means to serve and what it means to be content and trust God. I have learned what it means to be grateful, even through the hard times. My relationship with God has really improved since my experience in Tecate, and I will be forever grateful for that door that God opened in my life. Over the trip, I had the pleasure of living among and working with the men and women of the orphanage.
Growing up in a Christian based church community, one would expect to be embraced by love, understanding, and open arms. However, that was not the case in 9th and 10th grade. Late in the 9th grade, I made a mistake that strongly affected my image and well-being. Rather than continuing to exhibit Christian qualities, I was outcaste for 2 months. It was a very trying period of time, because the people I grew up with my whole life, the people who knew my family, the people who were supposed to be my friends, and more importantly the church that is supposed to welcome those who make mistakes, turned their backs on my family and I.
On Sunday, November 12th, 2017 I thought church was going to be a normal day. God had a plan for me, and he decided that this day would change my life forever. Everything was going like a normal church day would. Me and my family arrived at the church as the ten o’clock service ended. I went into the sanctuary and sat down.
As a young child, I spent Sundays in the pews of various churches. My extended family had a wide variety of different denominations of Christianity. Some churches had loud music with singing and dancing, others lots of sitting and standing. But the
Besides, I was going to meet my dad, he and my mom divorced when I was seven. He married again and now he was a Christian. I went to church with him, and I remember how people approached the altar after the message of the preacher and fell crying, surrendered to Christ feet; and then they rose with a smile on his face as if a burden had been lifted from their lives. Also, I was struck by the testimony of the brothers of the church, as God had rescued their lives. Then I realized that I was not the only one with problems, that many people in this world also had problems even more difficult, and yet they worshiped God.
As I pulled into the driveway of the church I began to observe a certain energy. I was waived in by church members and basically directed where to park. As I exited my car I began to see several church members and other community members. They were very jovial, and went out of their way to speak to me. As they did this, they also thanked me for my service.
The purpose of this paper is to discuss a service that I got to attend that was different from my own religious tradition. I decided to go with my chosen topic because to be honest I had never experienced or thought to experience a different type of church service other than the one I grew up in. I grew up in a Christian home and attended a non-denominational Christian church on a regular basis. I just never felt the need to experience something that was different. So I decided to attend a mass at a Catholic church. I had been to weddings in a Catholic church and even funerals with a Catholic involvement but not an actual mass.