Ioana_Cultural_Immersion

I went to Chinese Church on Sunday. It is on 8801 Centerville Road. It was a very interesting experience, I met Fei at her house and we headed over to the church. The front of the church was a lot different than I am used to. I go to a Greek Orthodox Church and I am not very familiar with other denominations of Christianity. I see them as being very different. It's funny because when I was little in Romania I thought every church was like mine, even though it was called something different, they were the same. That can't be more far from the truth! If people are not familiar with the Orthodox Church, I'll give a brief summary with some pictures.

The Eastern Orthodoxy is considered as one of the old churches. When the Christian religion was just one and everyone was just "Christian", Orthodoxy existed. As Christianity grew, there were two heads, one in Rome called the western and one at Constantinople (Istanbul) which was the eastern. As they grew even more, the Great Schism happened. The west wanted a Pope and the east wanted a Patriarchate, which is among one of the issues brought up at the Ecumenical Council. After this point the two churches split and the Eastern Orthodox has kind of been on the side without many taking notice of it. Here are some pictures of services and what it looks like.

This is a lot different than what I experienced at the Chinese Church. I believe the church was protestant, even though the sign said "Chinese Church". As a side note, I drew some terrible images of what I saw because it felt rude and uncomfortable taking pictures inside where people were worshiping and speaking about churchly matters.

Moving on, we parked in a very spacious parking lot that was gravel and we walked inside the building. The hallway had a table with a lot of Chinese books and a Chinese English Bible. We found out that at 10am everyone goes to Bible study on Sundays. So we turned right after getting into the hallway and I peaked in other rooms as we were walking and saw people sitting in chairs in a circle, all were Chinese. The room we went into however, was a room with a discussion leader that was a white female with curly grey hair and glasses. The class I believe was for English speakers and those not familiar with the bible.
They were all starting to discuss the book of Revalation in class and I was handed a handout that showed the different stages of what would happen at the time of the second coming. I was also handed a book to guide me through the reading of Revalation.

I briefly flipped through the book and listened to what the speaker had to say. I was really surprised at the differences present between the way Revalation and the second coming is viewed. As an Eastern Orthodox believer, our idea is that we focus on the present not the future, therefore the book of Revalation is not heavily discussed in Sunday School and other classes. In our mind we try our best to follow in the footsteps of Christ and hopefully in the end we will be saved, only God knows the answer to that. The handout talked about rapture as being the first thing that would happen at the begining of the second coming. In my mind this is where all of the believers are taken up and given spiritual bodies. Afterwards more things occur that are mentioned on the handout seen below. As the explanation was going on, some had questions and the speaker was very animated. She mentioned that women will be looking for their babies and added "MY BABY, WHERE IS MY BABY". She had examples from nowadays which I thought were awkward things to mention, as she was mentioning things in a judging way. I also didn't realize that there would be a time where those with spiritual bodies come back and people continue to populate the earth after the second coming. I was very confused when I was looking at the handout because it was COMPLETELY different than what I am used to.
There was a bell that suddenly rang and we headed over to the actual worship room (I think that's what it is, I'm sorry I'm bad with those terms). We sat towards the front of the room and we started listening to the service that was starting. There were two people at the front, one was speaking Chinese and the other was speaking Chinese English (as Fei said) and translating what the Chinese speaker was saying. It was hard to pay attention since they were alternating.
The sermon was done by a white guy and the same translator stayed up at the podium to translate for the Chinese speakers.
The sermon was about prayer and how everyone should pray. He actually projected a power point! In my church we would never bring a projection inside the actual church. The prayer sermon was actually close to my beliefs so I wasn't very shocked, however I thought some of the picture choices were a little weird. In the sermon, the guy also talked about how he used to be Catholic and he had to do hail Mary's, at which point a lot of people laughed. I was surprised because in my church we don't criticize religions, we focus on a specific passage in the Bible and how it relates to us. That is not saying that some criticize other denominations but I think that was a little rude of him. What if there was a Catholic visitor that wanted to learn more about their religion? I would be a little put off by it if I was.
After the sermon, they had a PowerPoint of the church duties and who will start having new leadership positions. I was a bit confused at this part because the translation stopped. After this happened, visitors were called upon to introduce themselves. I didn't really want to stand up at all but Fei said I should so I did. I got up and looked back and I was shocked. There were A LOT of people, the church was filled. I gave a brief introduction and sat down again. They also mentioned that visitors get free food the first time. So we decided to stay and eat. What was weird is that there was no hall where everyone is together. Everyone just ate in different rooms so there wasn't much socializing with others at this point. During bible study I talked to someone and another lady actually gave me her card for her hair salon.
We ate the food which wasn't bad at all. Even though I noticed that I don't prefer Chinese food. I like Korean food, out of all of the Asian countries so far Korean is my favorite. Followed by Indian and Vietmamese and Japanese.
I think my experience was pretty good, I felt a little awkward and worried about speaking to everyone but it wasn't too bad. From immigrating to the United States, I don't think I will experience something as huge as that when moving to other countries. As a child, it was a very big and weird experience since I did not know much about were I was going.