Church and Fellowship Experiences 
Introduction
Christianity being a great religion, dimensions in various aspects of believers has been quite splendid because this belief and practice was taught by Jesus Christ. Therefore these positive beliefs that differ from the other religious groups like the Muslims, brings out how this religion has attracted billions of people thus enhancing greater relationships (Keating, 1908). Through this interaction, Christianity majorly focuses on the way believers view God by fellowship and worship. By definition fellowship commonly means that it’s an amicable association with people who share same interests and beliefs. As opposed to worship, it’s an abundant honor given to God for He is regarded as sacred.
The experiences that believers undergo daily enable them to change a lot of issues based on the religion platform. From these experiences that believers have, are shared at their respective churches by their priests and also other believers. These struggles are called ‘testimonies’. The real world is quite a jungle because through Christianity background, all the events that come forth and attended by all these kinds of believers provide aid for the Christians. This is achieved by enriching their spiritual beliefs about the God they serve and encourage them to get through the hard life full of challenges from day to day. In my opinion, some religious institutions though tend to regard these experiences as a way of sympathy seeking and go way beyond what Christianity is believed to be. Therefore they end up causing distress and havoc by bringing about humiliation and conflicts between believers and their pastors or priests.
Therefore, religion as a whole is diverse and no one yet has accomplished fully the various wide beliefs, traditions, practices and also the customs. Some churches though have to really distinguish what entails their existence and how they came to be adopted into the real world. This world is skeptical in different sections of the religious methods; not only from the Christianity point of view but other religious affiliations.
Based on acquiring these spiritual experiences, the worship and fellowship practices that I attended made a considerable impact on the spiritual benefits through the church events
Some of the church events include bible study, fellowship for intercessory prayers, mass for worship, a day camp and many more. In a simplified way, the provision of the experiences undergone through the events stated below.
Event #1-Worship
At midtown church in St. Louis, their worship event was incredible, but started with a sermon. The sermon was expository, where the content was entirely explained in depth and brought about the comprehensiveness of the scriptures taught by pastor. It increased the congregation’s morale and enthusiasm to honor and praise God more. When it came to singing and worshiping, the music was exuberant and energizing where the participation of believers was magnificent including mine. It made me open up more in faith and upcoming believes that sounded merely important on any other day.
The most meaningful part of this worship experience was a time where a homeless man shed tears and became born again. The homeless man experienced tough times and even lost his family from a gang of robbers that killed them. In his life he had committed a lot of unpleasant things and got away with it, but that morning, he really declared it all to Jesus. It genuinely touched me and the believers at large.
Although the worship went on so well, I experienced a confusing scenario where some believers spoke different languages while worshiping and made me quite shocked a bit. I tried figuring out maybe it’s their way of worshiping but some seemed a little violent according to my observations and I got frightened a little. Apparently, I was told that they were influenced by the Holy Spirit and at point I couldn’t understand.
From all that, I met with Josy, an accountant who was a born again Christian. Josy was an exceptional woman with a big heart and humble. She briefly encouraged me to join the youth of the church so as to grow spiritually.
On a further note, their sermon described Jesus Christ as a friend to all where everyone can share their problems and troubles with Him. The pastor described him as a humble and kind hearted from the word go. For instance, the pastor explained his character by referring to the life he grew up on with his father, who was a carpenter and his mother, who was a young woman. This brought a lot of light on how one should live in the today’s world.
By elaborating the characters of Jesus Christ, most of the believers had a few words to say about how Jesus Christ brought them from the desperation of life to praying every day and having faith through putting into practice what the scriptures stated through Him (Retrieved from www.midtownchurchstl.com).
Event #2-Fellowship
When it came to fellowshipping, I attended the event at Midtown church college where the students had invited a few guests to host the occasion. One of the guests was a leader student from another college from the youth Christian service which was a great opportunity for the Midtown church college. The invited leader student gave a short sermon on which was topical and focused it mostly on the challenges the youth face in today’s world.
When the sermon ended, there was slow music but mostly they majored on prayer outreaching to believers to pray to their fullest till morning. I was impressed by the fact that believers prayed till morning and would continue with much energy. For most part of the event, a negative experience was the idea of tithing for your blessing and the tithe being mentioned. Through the process of chatting for a few minutes, I met with Caroline and James who were a couple from the neighboring state and had heard of the fellowship. They were social and spiritually encouraging; that means that they were also born again couple full of love.
According to them, Jesus Christ is the rock in every situation of their lives and Jesus is selfless to all because he gave His life for all of us for the sake of redemption and forgiveness. Due to this, Jesus changed their lives by comforting them after they lost their two children through multiple miscarriages that almost tore their relationship apart. But by His grace they found peace and forgiveness in prayer.
Event #3-worship
On a second event for a church in Saint Louis University, the mood was quite different because worship to them was not only about reading the sermon and praising God, but also believing and showing that believe. The priest was really approachable and inviting where he made every visitor wanting to return to his church after the service. The sermon was intriguing and captivating because he used his personal testimony to describe it.
Firstly, the content of the prayer was a group analogy where people were divided into groups to pray for different sections like the sick and nation. These group prayers helped me get enrolled in the bible study that they had and met very good people in the process. I had good memorable moments that I would not want to forget. This is because the best part of it was that I got a chance to contribute my thoughts and feelings without feeling like I was being judged or criticized for being me.
Confusing thing from the togetherness that the believers had was based on the ages and it brought out a little bit of discrimination because I thought age was not supposed to be issues in interacting with people from all walks of life.
The bible study group that I got the chance to be take part enabled me meet with Kelvin and mercy that I discussed a lot of Godly issues with. They had soft personalities where they did not say much but spoke deeply about their faith in Jesus Christ. They were also humble and playful and this made me look at life at a brighter and happier side of it even when life seems hard sometimes. To them Jesus Christ is a fighter and a strong believer in humanity and this brought out another part of themselves they did not know about, and made them feel a lot privileged to be called the children of God.
Kelvin and Mercy did not really explain their reasons what Jesus meant to them but truthfully as you could see He had changed their lives for the better. Their friends from the bible study told me they are more relaxed now because they had a bad influence from growing up in foster homes.
Event #4-fellowship
The last fellowship I went to was the Canaan fellowship held every Friday in the evening. It made me reach my maximum potential in the spiritual deliverance that I never even thought of. Mentioning the sermon, the fellowship was profound because the priest used textual sermons that most of us did not know how react fully to it. As much as I tried to comprehend fully what was elaborated, it diminished the morale to be more attentive. Differential circumstances like class and money was kind of the order of the day and this wasn’t pleasing to the eye at all.
Melodies and prayers were just simple and fast but to the point; they did not beat about the bush The priest valued what was there and then without putting a lot of energy on the past occurrences that believers had like for example the testimonies I talked about earlier in previous events I attended. Therefore, the music contents were not as precise and deep as I had anticipated.
Valuable moments though on this event was how believers seemed to be strong in their own way however much the fellowship was not as lively. They stood by each other through prayers and strength from bible scriptures. They had bible study also but one wasn’t given a group to join but rather was based on interest and commitment on oneself. One had to request if you wanted to join the bible study and if approved one would pay a specific amount of money for registration. This didn’t feel good because I thought that everything that one does for God is for free.
Partly on the issue of awkwardness or confusing and negative, was a big yes for me because as I stated earlier, first of all the payment for registration did not seem fair to me as the work done for the Lord should be done whole heartedly and freely. Secondly, all ages should be allowed to serve God and interact to share, mentor and also encourage each other in life situations faced every day to promote the practices and teachings that Jesus taught to overcome all that.
The good thing though, I managed to meet a few people in the congregation and interacted briefly on the basic beliefs many people face in this real world today. The few ones were John, Preston and Carly whom shared similar beliefs like I did. First and foremost, Preston was a laid back person who did elaborate much for him being an accountant said much about him, as for John, being a consultant, was friendly and a lot more social and out spoken than the two. For Carly, being a television anchor was simple in speech articulation and also sociable. They inspired me a lot from the experiences they got from the various situations they faced in life.
Funny enough, they all had different ideas of who Jesus is and his background too. For Preston, Jesus Christ is simply a cool guy whom touched his life through a dream. That’s astounding I know but it worked for him. As for John, Jesus Christ is the messenger who brought the ideal message of enslavement to free us from the devil. Last but not the least, Carly explained that Jesus Christ is the person everyone wants to have as a friend because he sacrificed His own life for our sake and that touches her in the sense that he is always there no matter what for those who believed in Him. Carly’s statement touched me a lot too and I had a different perspective of Jesus Christ from the one I had before.
Jesus Christ has changed a lot of people’s lives in many ways that we the humans cannot understand. Pointing it to the three individuals, He changed their lives through salvation and opening doors that they thought would never be opened in many years. Preston got a wife he always hoped and prayed for; John received a huge amount of love from the people he did not expect in his life while Carly got the baby she always wanted after trying for years and losing hope at all. This was an amazing moment for people to find inspiration in other people’s live because it changes the whole person as a whole.
In conclusion, all these experiences enabled me to grasp that this doctrine is not something to farce about because believing in something or someone makes a huge difference in someone’s life through the restoration and fulfillment of one’s desires. Another aspect is that religion has an unknown stronghold that is left to the imagination of the human eye and thinking. As stated in these events, people have their own way of distinguishing the existence of the God they serve, whether seen or unseen.
In my opinion therefore, God can be related to different things, people or places only if the belief and believe in all that is of importance to the deserving individuals of the same mind set.
