This class has been quite the experience. I was raised in a Christian family. My parents met in church. We attended church every Sunday. Sometimes we would go to more than one church on a Sunday. On those particular days we were at church from 9 am until 5 pm.
As a child and teenager, I remember being so bored at the church services and couldn’t wait until it was time to go. I remember playing hangman and tic tac toe with my brother or cousins on the church bulletins, just to pass the time.
I was not really interested in listening to the sermon or the Sunday school lessons being taught in my childhood. I didn’t like the church we attended because there were groups and if you did not belong to the group, you were treated like an outsider.
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I felt like the church (no matter what church) was filled with hypocrites. I seemed to never feel comfortable. I began to talk to my mother about how I was feeling because I couldn’t understand why I felt that way. I wanted to be a better Christian. I thought that meant I needed to attend church every Sunday but I has having a hard time finding a church I felt comfortable going to.
My mother made me understand that I still had my own personal relationship with God. I still prayed and I still believed in the power of prayer and forgiveness. I felt extremely blessed at a young age. I did not attend college right away, I went to work. At the age of 25 I had my own apartment, had an awesome job (in which I am still employed today), had a dependable vehicle and was financially dependent on myself. I was very grateful and gave thanks everyday.
Fast forward 15 years later and I am continually being blessed. In addition I have been blessed with a set of 11 year old twins that brighten up my life. I have been interested in finding a church home again. My children are older and are very curious. They know about God and Jesus, however we do not attend church on a consistent basis based on my
My father had always pressured me to follow his religious beliefs and traditions. At first I was eager to attend his church sermons and Sunday school because it made me fell like I was pleasing my father and he would reward me with praise and ice creams on the drive home. But as I got older I started to realize that certain rules and regulations of the church were unnecessary and some were even ludicrous. For example, at the age of twelve my father had announced that we would discard our television because the church th...
Looking back on my childhood, I have many memories shrouded in fear and self-loathing. I was raised in the Baptist church. My mother and grandmother made sure that I attended church every Sunday morning. My grandmother was from the mid-west. She carried her strict Bible belt background with her as she traveled west with my grandfather. The many lessons I learned from my grandmother and the minister at our church played a big part in how I began to see the world and my place in it.
I loved church. From belting "Father Abraham" to watching Gospel Bill videos to coloring pictures of David and Goliath, it was endless fun. The Sunday School teachers seemed immortal, and I loved talking to them, and I wanted to be just like them when I grew up. I learned to obey my parents and love my neighbor and speak in tongues. And of course I learned to love Jesus.
After seeing though the eyes of my pastor I’ve come to realize the importance of faith and committing to one’s beliefs. Returning to church after two massive losses has helped my mother in many ways and it has also taught me as a young man how small things that I could do would turn to have a big impact on someone’s life the same way my pastor impacted my life and the life of my siblings.
We attended several different churches growing up all of a different denomination. The one thing that stood firm in all the churches was that God had all the answers. When you are unsure of what to do next look to him and he will lead the way. I watched my mother pray, attend Bible Study, and Wednesday night service. The one thing I do know is we always had what we needed when we needed. There was no time in my childhood that I went without.
I attended the 11 a.m. morning worship service at First Baptist Church at 480 Thompsonville Lane in Oak Grove, K.Y. on Sunday November 1st. This is the church that mother attends every Sunday. While I identify myself as a Christian I have not attended a church service in about seven years so this was a somewhat experience for me. I was very nervous at first because I had not been to church in a while and because other Christians I had encountered seemed to very strict and judgmental. However, overall I had a pleasant time and felt very welcome in their community.
I was never a big church goer, most times I dreaded it, I mean, who wants to wake up at 8:00AM or 9:00AM and go sit in a building listening to someone talk for what seemed like hours? That wasn’t how I planned on spending my weekends. I thought I was more deeply connected, spiritually, when I was out in the trees. Something about the natural state of something, untouched by any hand beside God’s, to me is far more meaningful than sitting in a brick-and-mortar church or cathedral. After all, it was God who created the natural world according to the first book of
For the next couple of years afterward I lived in an apartment with my brother and dad. In sixth grade my dad met Donna. Donna has now been my stepmom for approximately five years. She is thankfully about 100 times better than my last stepmom. Back in 8th grade is where my second major event in my life occurred. My friend invited me to her church. I had never been an avid churchgoer, but I decided to give it a chance. At that point in my life I was going through a difficult time and decided maybe I could benefit from going to church. Now four years later I’m still attending the same church and am pondering the thought of pursuing a career as a youth pastor. Becoming a Christian was one of the biggest decisions I have made in my
Praise God; that was the phrase I would here every morning when my dad would drop me off for school. Although my family has gone through many hard times, they have grown to know Christ and wanted to share that with their kids. I grew up in the kind of household that if you said “shut up” then you were going to be spanked several times. I knew one thing on Sunday morning and Wednesday nights; you go to church. Church became a hobby to me, I didn’t hate going there but it was just what you did. I thought that all families were like that also, I didn’t realize till my teenage years that not everyone goes to church every Sunday morning and Wednesday night. But as I grew older and started really listening to what my friends would talk about at school, I saw that life wasn’t all about going to church and being a Christian for some people.
First of all, church has greatly influenced many different aspects of my life and caused me to be the person I am today. I have always been taught to treat others with respect and to treat them how I would want to be treated. This has caused me to try to be considerate of others' feelings and thoughts as much as I can. I also respect other people's property and take care of it just as I would my own. I have also been taught at church to respect those in authority including my parents, teachers, and elders. I also have participated in church activities such as choir and video production. This has helped me to improve my social skills by interacting with other people. These things have influenced me and made me the person I am today.
Which brings me to Fowler’s Theory of Faith Development, specifically Individual-Reflective Faith which occurs in early adulthood. Growing up as a family we went to church every Sunday and sometimes even twice a week, everyone in my family was a catholic and that was expected from all of us, no questions asked. I even got baptized as a baby and did my first communion when I was about nine years old. I did not mind the expectation from my family when I was little because I loved church, especially the singing. Then came a time where both of my parents started to work on Sundays, so did my sister, and so my brother and I helped out at my parents restaurant. Ever since then we really have not made church a priority, I believe this is what effected my encounter with my mother when I was eighteen years old. I was currently taking a class called “religion in the modern world” and learned about all rituals and how different religions support different things than others, and it got to me to reflect on what religion I grew up learning about. Some things I liked and some things I was horrified by. So talking to my mother, I was telling her my opinions and what I believed in and that there is not just one way to believe or think. She was furious, I was stepping out of the norm, but it had been because of my Individual-Reflective Faith than lead me to this stage. I am very thankful I was able to reflect on my faith, I now have a stronger bond on my beliefs and now my mother totally supports me on it, so it was all for the best that I went through this
It may seem a little bit strange, but my favorite place in town in none other than this beautiful Evangelic Church. However, it wasn’t always so.
The people there were all extremely nice and would try to help me understand. They understood and accepted the fact that I wasn’t religious, but was showing interest in their faith. There were not as much people there as I had expected, but that might have been because it was a smaller church. It also wasn’t as racially diverse as I had expected. I thought that because it is the world’s biggest religion, that it
This experience was the hardest on me emotionally. As a child, you view your parents as almost invincible and losing them is never a thought that crosses your mind. After my mom had surgery, the procedure caused peritonitis, which is a very severe complication. At the time, I feared losing my mom, but Christ gave me peace in the situation. “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me” (KJV, Phil. 4:13). Through the power of prayer and God, my mom survived the emergency surgery. Even the medical bills were miraculously provided for by many gifts from family and friends. “Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.” (Jeremiah 33:3). The possibility of losing a parent was the most difficult experience of my life; however, during this trial, I experienced enourmous growth in Christ. After my mom healed from her surgery, God called my father to Source of Light Ministries in Madison, Georgia. My family moved to Madison, which is where I would spend the next seven years of my life. My spiritual growth continued a little slower throughout those peaceful
As far back as I can remember, I have been raised around good Christian people with good Christian values. I felt safe in church, knowing that most of the families I had connected with had the same set of values and beliefs that I was educated on throughout my life. Learning what I have in