Attending a Meeting

Attending a meeting or event that is outside of our own comfort zone might sound like an awkward experience for most people but you can learn a lot from these types of interactions. From my own experience I learned more about the beliefs of others as well as reinforced something that I have always been taught and have learned. That being said our assignment this week was to go to a meeting outside of our comfort zone and write about our experience. The meeting I attended was a church service of a different denomination in my hometown while on break, I am Catholic so I went to a local Lutheran church to accomplish this assignment.

Entering another church was something very foreign to me and felt really weird compared to walking into my own church. The way the service was set up as well as the customs were very similar but different and this made me somewhat uncomfortable. The potential differences also made me a bit apprehensive because I wasn't sure what to expect or how to conduct myself in a different church but in the end I just followed everyone else. The reason I felt the way I did was probably due to my own norms and beliefs being different than those I was expecting or experiencing. However I realized while I was there that both my own church and the one I was visiting were similar in many ways and it felt a little less foreign. As the service progressed I noticed differences and started to try and see how many there were and in the end there weren't that many. 

As far as I could tell during the service people treated me the same as they would any other visitor to their church or member. Everyone was friendly that I interacted with and seemed pretty comfortable with guests visiting their church. The reason I knew this is because everyone was friendly and I didn't feel like anyone was looking at me any different or like I was doing something wrong.

Comparing this to my own church I realized there were a few differences in how the service was conducted as well as the beliefs being slightly different. In my own church we make the sign of the cross and say different prayers to saints during mass which is pretty normal to me but this is something that was not done during the service I attended. Additionally I noticed that there was no Communion and I was later informed that it is given every other week compared to every week in my church. These differences are part of that churches norms and beliefs which are the reason it is a different denomination. However the culture is similar and the reason for attending the service is the same and in the end I realize the two churches aren't much different. 

From this experience I have learned that although you might think something will be different from your own experiences it might actually be very similar. I also learned/reinforced the idea that people aren't that different even though they might have different beliefs or cultures. In the end this reinforced what I have learned and been taught which is that people are people and even though they might be different have something that they can teach us and are happy to do so.