A Real Church Home

Church has always been a big part of my life.  Ever since I can remember I've been at church.  I love to see my friends each week and worship together as a family.  When I got to Sydney I knew that I wanted to find a church to belong to.  I knew that church would be a lot different than in the South, but I didn't quite realize just how big a difference there would be.

For starters, Sydney does not have a huge range or quantity of churches.  In Tennessee you see a whole block filled with churches, and in Sydney you have to travel at least 20 minutes.  There really are only two types of churches, Catholic and Pentecostal (aka Hillsong). I myself visited a Hillsong church this week and I really enjoyed it! It was actually very similar to my church in a lot of ways, but there were some things that I noticed.  For one, the people are so friendly, genuine and nice.  I have met some Christians that seem nice at first and then don't really talk to you at all.  At Hillsong, the people there were genuinely excited to meet me and even offered to take me to the beach! At first, my friends and I figured they were just being nice, but then the next day they were inviting us to go places with them and were connecting us to all their friends. I thought this was so refreshing to see Christians that actually had the love of Christ in them.

Another thing I noticed is how real they all were.  There was no pretending to be someone they weren't, and they all behaved the same way all the time.  Everyone dressed differently and stylish and they also danced around and acted crazy singing Beyonce.  In America, I always felt like people would try to pretend to be a perfect Christian, and pretend that they don't listen to secular music.  Here, everyone would gather around and sing secular music like it was no big deal at all.  I love this, because they are not trying to be perfect Christians and legalistic.  They just do what they think is right and have fun doing it!

One of the main things that I noticed is how much they genuinely love God.  You can always see people really taking in the message that is preached, and no is on their phones.  They are completely awestruck by how God works and they just want to get to know Him more. Worship is always so real and everyone sings loud and worships how they want.  Although the "denomination" is technically Pentecostal, a guy at Hillsong told me that no one really cares what the denomination is.  They just care about learning how to be in a relationship with Christ.  I find this so fascinating, since in America we seem to be all about labels. If someone is Baptist, we don't go to their church because we are Methodist.  We put more importance on what we are then who we are trying to serve.

I honestly think that the reason everyone loves to be at Church is because of what a commitment it is to go.  At home, it only takes five minutes to be at the next church.  Here, it can sometimes take an hour to get to Church.  I think having to take that much time out of your day just to go to church really makes people think about whether it's worth it to be a Christian.  Although there are a ton of Hillsong churches in Australia, Sydney seems to be a predominantly non christian place.  It really makes me appreciate the fact that I am almost always around fellow Christians.  I still have 12 weeks left in Sydney, and I can't wait to experience God in new ways here!