My first experience in the Church

It is the first time in my life, I attended church today. I went to Christophorus church in Goettingen, to attend the Fixton programme. It was the international pray programme with some connection to Christian Festival etc...

It was my wish to attend the church programme since long time. I really wanted to know and experience the Christian culture and religion. Since we are in the Christian majority country with lots of beautiful churches, I donot want to miss the opportunity to experience this activities, but I feared with being blamed many nonsenses from Hindu fundamentalists and feared to blamed as the opportunists however there is no other opportunities rather than earning valuable experiences.

When I entered into the Church, I felt quite wonderful. I compared our deities and temples, and people' behaviour and the church people. There are some similarities and differences also. Similarities are both place are meant for peace, harmony and intergration. Both places teach the messages of dedicating ownself for humankinds and others. But, I find many differences in surrounding environments. People in the church looks like quite happier, richer and well dressed. There are no discrimination between sex, gender, castes and classes. People are found well dressed, mixed up with people. The preacher (Pastor?) attending every people individually and taking care of them. There is pray..........and pray is in music..........songs..............instruments etc. It seems quite similar to our BHAJAN. We use to pray in similar way in bhajan.

Another interesting thing that I found today is, at the end of pray, the Pastor described about need of humanitarian aid in the Myanmar after Catastrophic Nargis. They asked all the people to contribute to the relief fund to help Myanmar people. They rotated donation collecting bags, and everyone put some Euro inside. I also contributed 5 Euro. I think this amount is too little but it shows my connectivity with rescue cum rehabilitation operation.

The official website of Chritophorus church is:

http://www.kirchenkreis-goettingen.de/gemeinden/stadt/christophorus.html

There were team from South Korea, Indonesia and Africa, who sung prayer songs. Since everyting was in Deutsche, I understood only few words but I enjoyed the peace and cooperative people inside. It is nice to experience church activities once in life sothat people will learn and understand the views of other people. Respecting all the religions irrespective of christianity, hinduism, buddhism, islamisms etc...will reduce the communal tensions in the world and contribute the integration of society. The world is one and the people of this one world cannot be divided into conflicting (Voilence) community. All of them should work for the sake of reducing hunger, poverty, climatic changes and all forms of discrimination. My experience in very first day of church visits taught me that there is nothing to be hated in the world. All the creatures and human beings should be respected and supported at the time of need. We should not hate others, if we start to hate others then we will be also creating society to hate ourselves.

I donot know whether I did right or wrong by joining today's Church programme in the views of critics but I am satisfied with it. I have paramount respect to my own religion (Hinduism), and I will always remain in the same faith, but I will not resist myself from knowing and equally respecting other religions too.

Suggestings and comments are welcome!