Essay: My Experience At Grace Lutheran Church

Before I discuss my experience at Grace Lutheran Church I feel it would be beneficial to explain my Church Background, so that you can better understand my outsider view of the Sunday morning worship Service I attended. I have been raised in the Baptist/Southern Baptist church my entire life. My parents are from South Carolina, which is also where I grew up, so our idea of Church has always been a small community with a very relaxed atmosphere. I stopped attending the Baptists church when I was 16. I chose to join Bent-tree Bible Fellowship, a non-denominational church. I attended this church for about 2 years when I started my sophomore year at DBU and was offered a position in children’s ministry at First Baptist Colleyville. Bent-tree and FBC were the two largest churches I have been a part of both between 3,000-5,000 in total Sunday attendance. Both follow the same basic order of service. Begin around 11am with 10-15 minutes of worship singing, then announcements, followed by an special aspect of the service like a video a special song etc.… The sermon lasts about 25-35 minutes and we close with prayer and one final worship song. Again all the churches I have ever attended have been very relaxed, shorts

From the outside of the church I could tell it was a smaller church, but I was very happily surprised by the comfortable size of the church, not so big that one feels lost in the crowed but also not so small that one feels like an intruder in a tight nit group. I was also very happily surprised by the age of the church. From my background I am used to seeing an older congregation and from my study of the Lutheran church I expected the same. But though this may seem to be a more traditional, the church the congregation was rather young. I also expected the dress to be more formal, but again the church was very similar to the Baptist churches I have been a