Not All Churched Up
On my latest attempt to go to church purely because I wanted to, my boyfriend and I set off to one of the well-known Christian church located at Nikko Hotel. It had its own website and everything and from what I saw they held a pretty impressive crowd.
We planned to attend the second mass which was at 10.15 am and I woke up late, so when we got there the place was already filled and some people had to sit on the steps because there was no space left. It wasn’t like a traditional mass either, where normally people – well at least I would – feel comfortable to be there.
At first I was pretty naive and to be perfectly honest I wasn’t expecting anything out of it – well, yes, a little bit, but the normal stuff; I expected that I would meet people who were like me – real people who wanted to go to church because they wanted to worship and praise God and just merely be merry about celebrating Easter. Pretty much like the masses I’d seen on movies with all these black people singing and praising and just looked so happy to be in church.
But to my disappointment, I came across to a de ja vu-like experience of being surrounded by superficial people who put so much effort on their appearances and looked at us up and down as if we shouldn’t be there at all. The people there looked pretty well-off and most of them were Chinese and when I saw the way the look at my boyfriend I was filled with so much dismay I felt the urge to leave straight away.
Not to mention that the church committee was so inattentive and ignorant, they reminded me of one of those shop-keepers at expensive boutiques who wouldn’t even say hello to people who looked like they couldn’t afford some ridiculously overpriced keychain with the designer’s logo stuck on it.
There was another mass which started at one thirty but by then I already lost my motivation to church. Appalled as I was, I didn’t really believe that they were that bad – I even asked my boyfriend whether it was the standard atmosphere setting for most of Christian churches, to which he said that back in his hometown, his church (which had branches all over the world and used English as its main language) always welcomed newcomers and escorted them to their seats and the people were polite and friendly to everyone.
Call me idealistic but I thought the whole idea about church is that it’s a place where people feel safe and comfortable and welcomed, so that they can all gather to sing and praise in unison and enrich their spiritual needs, not a place where people feel the need to dress up to the nines and the girls wear heavy make-up as if they are attending fashion shows, and by “welcomed” I mean people from different races and backgrounds because going back to the basic knowledge, God loves everyone nevertheless so why couldn’t people do the same?
I realised that it was foolish of me to think that such place could be found immediately without much additional effort. But I was somewhat encouraged because deep down I had faith that such place must exist somewhere.
We ended up trotting around Plaza
When we got to the car, we both prayed that we would find the church where we could truly belong and meet people who were just like us. I am still positive in this holy quest and I trust that God would show us the way.
Written on April 8th 2007
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I always like to go to church when there’s no mass, the atmosphere of the church is totally different when there’s mass being held. But that’s for me though, I like to feel God in a personal way
Agree totally with your opinion, I especially dislike the way churches being operated nowadays…