Church on Sunday Morning

This past Sunday I had the opportunity to worship at Uptown Baptist Church, and what a wonderful experience that was. I have never really worshipped in a place like it. I really enjoyed the music, and the pastor delivered a good sermon. It was nice to sit back and watch the way all of the people interacted throughout the service - it was not a quiet service whatsoever. People would speak up if something was printed wrong in the bulliten, and there were many "amens" and "halelughias" passed around throughout the service. This was a large difference from the church I have attended most of my life. Not only has church been like this, but my day to day life since coming here. There have been more than one time that 5 or 6 of us from our group will be on a bus and be the only white people on it. Or visiting one of the 77 communities in Chicago of which many are Indian, Spanish, Mexican, African American etc. It is experiences like this that open my eyes to the fact that there is a bigger world out there than the small town where I come from. JPUSA (Jesus People USA) is another example of this. You will find people from all walks of life in this place, yet they all share one common thing - Christ in their lives. I have really enjoyed beginning to get to know some of these people, and they are just so charasmatic and so full of fire for God that they make me look back on my life and think that I could do so much better in the way I live out my faith. I hope that over the next 11 months that I will be able to start living my life more like them.