Pentecostal Church in Taiwan - Essay Example

Visit to a Pentacostal Church With a background steeped in predominantly Asian traditions and practices with virtually no introduction of Western mythology, personal knowledge of Christianity has been confined to the stories heard from friends and teachers and a recent single field trip to a Greek Orthodox Church located in downtown Los Angeles. This visit was enlightening and inspiring and thus encouraged further explorations into the various factions of the various religious traditions under the Christianity umbrella. For my second visit to a church in my lifetime, I opted to attend the New Life Worship Center located in Woodland, CA. This pentacostal church stands near the home of one of my close friends who is a devout but non-denominational Christian. Although I had seen videos of the various activities conducted during the typical worship service so that I would know what to expect, these seemed to make me feel more anxious. It was slightly intimidating to consider going to a church that had such active worship traditions. Some of the things that made me feel intimidated about attending this type of church was due to what I had learned in class about this domination of worship. The Pentecostal church places a great deal of stress on charimatics and the gift of the Holy Spirit. This enables them to speak in tongues, a condition referred to as Glossalalia. This idea of glossalalia was very difficult for me to understand. The closest thing I could relate it to from my own experience was the hymns the monks sang during the Buddhist worship services at home. However, they are actually speaking a language when they do this and glossalalia is supposed to be a meaningful meaninglessness – the words are not a language that any linguist can study. As I struggled to understand this concept, I learned that the mother of my friend Melissa grew up attending a Pentacostal church in Taiwan and has the gift of glossalalia. She explained to me that this gift just comes to her as she feels herself being filled with the Holy Spirit and is the language she uses to talk with God. She told me that when the preacher puts his hand over her head in prayer, she experiences a strong sensation of the Holy Spirit that weighs her down. I remembered scenes in the videos where the subject would just collapse and wondered if this was the same experience. In my academic studies of the religion, I learned that the Pentecostal Church is a newer branch of Christianity and thus tends to hide some of their more extreme religious views and practices, particularly in the larger churches where they are attempting to appeal to a more mainstream audience. Even though there are many of these types of churches found throughout the Woodland/Sacramento area, I was seeking a more traditional experience of the uniqueness of this worship style. This was the reason I opted to attend the smaller church in the tiny and modest town of Woodland. The church itself is located on the corner of a quaint residential district in Woodland. Services are held in a modest, heavily weathered structure covered in a light and strongly faded pink or peach-colored paint. From the worn look of the outside of the structure, it could be anticipated that the inside would also be highly run down, but it was not. It was clean, warm and beautiful in a very modest way – not at all like the almost gaudy displays in the Greek Orthodox Church. The room was mostly white, filled with dark red theatre chairs facing a low raised platform at the head of the room. My friend and I were greeted warmly and immediately as newcomers at the door by a very diversified congregation. The people were a fairly even mix of white, Latino and Black ethnicities, but no Asians. When they discovered we were there to conduct research, they were surprised but eager to help. It wasn’t necessary to request for interviews after the service as several of the congregation members made the offer of their own volition. One message that continued to be conveyed throughout these offers was the idea that God had brought us there for a reason and they would do anything they could to help us fulfill that purpose. Something that struck me about the demographics of this church was that the congregation seemed young compared to the Greek Orthodox Church and it was much, much smaller with only about 60 people, many of these young children. Even though the congregation seemed so small, they filled the available space. The service started with the Worship Leader and his band, which consisted of an organist/singer, a keyboardist, a guitarist and two female backup singers. To start the service, the Worship Leader asked the entire congregation to stand up and sing along. Everyone was very quick to join in as they danced and sang along, sometimes clapping their hands in time with the music. My friend didn’t recognize any of the songs, which surprised her, but we found out later that this was because the pastor’s wife preferred the more recent music as it appealed more to their congregation demographics. During this music session, the worship leader and several members of the congregation also began running around the room, showing their excitement as they became ‘filled with the Holy Spirit.’ The service continued after about three or four songs with a prayer led by the worship leader and then a speech by the pastor’s father in law. He talked about how blessed he was to be able to visit his children and grandchildren and this was all because he had lived a life of God. This speech was followed by announcements in which the guitarist invited the entire congregation to attend his wedding this summer. It was touching to me to see how closely knit this congregation was. They stood as a solid community to help and support each other. The mood was so friendly and casual that I almost forgot this was a church service until Pastor Nik began delivering his sermon. It was short, but in it he stressed the idea that we are freed from our sins because Christ carried them on the cross. It was very emotional and some of the congregation even started speaking in tongues. This glossalalia was surprising, but not as scary to witness as I had feared. Instead, I found it very natural and deeply felt. A girl (around 20) started crying and the pastor came down to her to comfort her. When his sermon ended, many of the congregation started coming to us to make sure we were okay, how we felt, if we needed anything. They were very friendly and caring. The worship leader approached us and gave us a ‘private prayer’ in which he indicated that whether we are committed or not, we were blessed that day for our having been there. We each felt overwhelmed by the warm expressions of the people who flooded toward us, offering us handshakes, hugs and welcoming us there. Then the pastor invited everyone back to the front for more singing and people again started speaking in tongues. As I stood there in the front of the church, I felt an overpowering sense of emotional response in spite of my non-religious stance. Just as the service was coming to an end, a woman who introduced herself as Sister Beverly Gomez came to us offering to answer any questions we might have. This was a strong contrast to the Greek Orthodox Church in which it was necessary for me to aggressively pursue interviews. Sister Beverly indicated that she was a very senior member of the congregation and works there as often as possible. She also works at the Davis Veterinary Clinic with another one of the sisters at the church. One of the things she wanted to know from us was whether any part of the service frightened or intimidated us to which I answered no. She then explained that she first came to the church 30 years ago when she was 23. She had come with her husband, both of whom were looking for salvation from a life of drug addiction. Her husband was given the gift of glossalalia 10 minutes into that first service and that was how they knew that God was with them. She received glossalalia three months later and indicated that this experience couldn’t have been more convincing to her that God exists and was with her. After revealing this story, Sister Beverly introduced us to her daughter, Dylan, who was helping with the Sunday school and first received glossalalia when she was 5. She showed me the room in which she was first converted, a small worship room near the kitchen, and then she explained a little bit about the ideas of Pentecostalism and its basis on the text from the Book of Acts. Instead of just allowing me to ask all the questions, she also asked me how I felt and about my outlook on life. As a typical college student, I answered honestly that I often felt stressed and lost. She assured me that God would help me and offered to send me more information via email and to arrange for me to talk later that afternoon with the pastor. I had several errands I needed to run that afternoon, so I declined thee further interview, but I did accept her friendship request on Facebook later that evening. Having visited the church and talked with its congregation, I have come to some surprising conclusions. I discovered that Pentecostal worship is not as mythical and intimidating as I had been led to believe by the academic sources I had studied. Instead, it seemed much more mainstream to me than the service I witnessed at the Greek Orthodox Church. The social network of the congregation is amazingly close and supportive. The friend who attended the service with me said that she had never felt so welcomed and befriended at any other church she has attended either. The congregation was actively engaged in every element of the service, interacting with each other and their leaders in a way that I hadn’t really understood from study. I noticed that for many people we talked to, their break through moment, when they turned their lives around from one of drugs or crime to one of God, was when they got the gift of glossalalia. This is what defines them from other Christians whose break through experience come in multiple venues and through multiple channels. For the Pentecostals, belief comes with this language of God. Read More