A Different View

The only religion I’ve ever known has been that of the Catholic faith.  I attended a Catholic grade school from first through eighth grade and continued in my religious faith by going to CCD classes throughout high school and getting confirmed my senior year.  Although I don’t agree with everything the Catholic religion believes, I continue to practice the religion because it’s tradition in my family and it’s what I’ve known my whole life.  Even though I’ve had the opportunity to experience other religions, I haven’t strayed from the Catholic faith thus far.

This past weekend, I had the opportunity to attend a service by Stevens Point Tapestry Church.  The funny part about it though, was that the service wasn’t performed in any sort of church at all.  It was held at a local elementary school in the gym, and when I got there, I was greeted by fold out chairs, a table full of food and drinks, and people singing along with some young adults playing instruments and leading the songs.  I found this to be very welcoming and comfortable as I’m used to pews and priests lecturing with a choir singing in the front of church.  The part I found to be most surprising, in a good way though, was the fact that the leader of the service made it out to be more of a discussion than a lecture.

He first read to us the scripture from Mark and then continued to explain it.  He did a very good job incorporating slides and describing in more broad, literal terms what was going on in this story.  It was very cool to see the audience start interacting in this discussion, as people would ask questions when ideas were unclear and others from the crowd would offer up their interpretation of the scripture.  I found this to be very intriguing and made me think of the scripture in new ways as I had a lot of ideas to pull from and brainstorm off of.

The man leading the service was a very good public speaker as he got me very interested in what was going on.  He did an excellent job with eye contact and adding to the speech by having slides to go along with it.  Some things I found he could work on though, were slowing down when reading from the Bible because this caused him to stumble over his words a few times, and also not using so broad of hand gestures as this became a little distracting at times.

Overall I really enjoyed this service, as something I am unaccustomed to.  I would highly consider going back because the fact that people can express their views and ask questions was very appealing to me.