Traveling with the Choir

Last Sunday, I had the opportunity to travel with the choir to a nearby village where they had two performances. (For those of you who don't know, Caminul Felix has a choir that does concerts to help raise money for the orphanage.) The concerts were performed at two different churches that were very different from each other.

First of all, church in Romania was pretty different than church in the U.S. The morning service begins at 9 am and ends at 12 pm - yep, that's right, three hours! The worship part of the service consist of singing a couple songs, then someone coming up and talking (I think they may have been reading scriptures, but who knows!!), and then everyone prays individually - but audibly - and then they start all over again; this continues for the first hour and a half. Then someone does announcements, and then the pastor preaches for the final hour. For someone who doesn't speak the language, this is an exceptionally LONG service!

If I were to describe the first church in one word, it would be "genuine". The people were friendly, and a couple of them came up to try to speak to me (I say try because my Romanian sucks!). When they prayed individually, it really seemed like they were genuinely crying out to God (once again, "seemed" because I have no idea what was actually being said, haha).

In the second church, the atmosphere just felt so oppressive. All of the women wore scarves on their heads (the younger girls had their's folded into headbands, but they all had something on their head); plus the men sat on one side of the church, and the women and children sat on the other. The order of the service was the same, and when the congregation prayed individually, it didn't seem genuine in the least. It was as though they were just making noise so as to seem as though they were praying. At the end of the service, when the fed us dinner, no one came up to speak with us at all. They kinda just handed us our food, stood back, and watched us eat. I also got some very strange looks since I was sitting with the congregation and not wearing anything on my head!!!

The second church really got me thinking about two things:

1. Why do we go to church? Are we there because it is expected of us or because we genuinely want to be there? And, if it's only because it's expected of us, should we even be going at all?

2. How do we treat new people who come to our church? Do we welcome them and try to make them feel at home, or do we stand back and hope someone else will talk to them so that we don't have to?