What It Was Like Visiting a Church Service for the First Time
To my surprise, I wasn’t asked to join a cult or to convert on the spot. I was opened to a new perspective that I would carry with me for the rest of my life.
Hooded figures huddle close together in a dark room, chanting a deep and secret song. Lamps swing rhythmically as the smell of incense fills the air. A congregation closes in on the new face — my face — eager to capture the unbeliever, turn me into one of them, and keep me there… forever.
I was 20 years old, and this was the scene I feared I would find as I walked through church doors for the first time.
I really didn’t want to go.
It wasn’t at all the case that I was forced to go. I was visiting a friend during Spring Break, and in his family’s generous hospitality I was invited to join them that Sunday morning. But I didn’t want anything to do with religion, or at least what I thought would be associated with religion.
I’m still embarrassed to admit that the above is what I expected of my closest friend and his truly wonderful family. As you can probably guess, my first church visit wasn’t anything like I thought it would be. It was a moment of real perspective change for me, and from this experience, I have grown a newfound belief in the importance of a person’s spiritual life.
A growing perspective
Growing up, I never thought about going to a church. For many around me in New York, attending a church was a once-or-twice-a-year sort of event for holidays like Christmas or Easter. As for my family and me, church services weren’t even on the radar; Sunday mornings were for playing video games or exploring in the woods.
I learned about religion mostly from the TV screen, or from jokes that my friends and classmates made, or from the trouble that it seemed to cause in the history textbooks I read. TV shows, movies, and news stations taught me that religious people don’t think for themselves, are judgmental, and will often use their religion for their own agendas. History painted a picture of the religious strife caused all over the world, with fanatics leading violence over thousands of years. My friends and I joked about the silliness of religious people and their ritualistic ways, believing in something that science doesn’t prove.
Having never (knowingly) encountered a person of faith in real life, my imagination was free to turn these people into something evil to be avoided at all costs. This was what I had in the back of my mind as I prepared myself to enter church doors for the first time. I didn’t want to go.
A (not so) surprising first visit
But I did go. There I was, sitting in a pew surrounded by the harrowing company of these “religious people”, anxiously waiting to see what would happen to me.
For anyone sitting in suspense, this is how my first church service actually went: First, we listened to a few songs and waited for a man to come up and speak. When it was his time, he came up and talked to us about a man named Jesus, what Jesus did when he was on Earth, and what Jesus’ life and resurrection meant. Then the man sat back down, we sang a few more songs, and we all got up and started pleasantly chatting with each other until we left for lunch.
It really wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.
In a few years, this news about Jesus would become Good News to me. But for the moment, it was good news enough just to find that I wasn’t being fitted for a new hooded robe or being covered in some sort of animal blood. I found that I was around ordinary people just like me and that these “religious people” weren’t anything like I had imagined them to be.
Sure, in the years to come I would find that these people had flaws like the rest of us did. Some were a bit judgmental, and some do use religion for their own gain. But otherwise, they were largely honest about their shortcomings, quick to love others and share what they had been given, and were committed to gathering together and growing in their spiritual life. I reeled from the difference between who I thought these people would be and who they actually were, as well as how important their faith was to them and how much life they gained from their faith.
A changed perspective
Since that church service, I’ve been to many Sunday gatherings. I have grown considerably in my own spiritual life, slowly discovering and dismantling all of the falsehoods I used to believe about faith. I’ve even had the privilege of working with a faith-based non-profit for a few years, where I helped people to connect with their beliefs. For some, like me, these conversations were their very first opportunities to engage in what they believed.
Even now, after years of being a Christian, I do maintain that there are many valid criticisms toward much of what has been done in the name of religion. But during my time of forming many thoughts about what religion was, I never challenged my growing beliefs about what religious people were like (ironically, this was the very thing that I thought was backward about religious people). I was, proverbially, throwing out the baby with the bathwater. I missed out on a fundamental part of the human experience; a spiritual life.
I now hold the belief that spiritual life is a vital part of our human experience, the same way our emotional, physical, and intellectual lives are a part of it. I also believe that every person would benefit immensely from engaging themselves in what they believe. Examine it; feed it; motivate it; challenge it.
I hope that my experience in my changed perspective can encourage you to start your journey towards exploring a strong and healthy spiritual life.
(Especially if you still imagine a dark-hooded figure chanting their song.)
If you’ve resonated with something in my story and are interested in finding a Christian church to attend for the first time, here is a resource to help you find a church in your area. The Gospel Coalition is a non-denominational fellowship of churches committed to helping people know Jesus, and any of the churches listed here would be a great place to introduce yourself.
