Church Observation

I associate myself to be Christian, Baptist to be exact. The Church I attended on Sunday the 23rd of October is called St. Michaels Archangel Church in downtown Greenville. Their religion is Coptic Orthodox and in comparison to my own church, it was very different. The Coptic Orthodox Church I attended was very traditional and so much was happening. To compare their Church to my own church, I will briefly describe the procedures and beliefs of my own. There are usually 2-3 services offered every Sunday and sometimes people in church will get together one other day of the week to study the Bible. Each service usually lasted like an hour to an hour and a half. Everyone that comes in seats themselves wherever they would like, whether it be with …show more content…
Usually a priest will lead the service but this was a special occasion because the bishop came. The bishop and the priest split the sections, since he was there. They read mostly from their holy liturgy book and the service was filled with the congregations responses to the priest’s and bishop’s readings from it. The interesting part was that they did not use just one language during the service, they used three; English, Arabic, and Coptic. As they read from the book, they would read it out loud but in more of a singing/chanting way. There was only a brief time period where they would speak without chanting, the rest of the time they would sing. As each section was read, the congregation (that is people in the audience, watching and responding to the priest) would change their position. Sometimes they would sit, other times they would stand, and a few times they would bow their heads as they sit, almost touching their head to the chairs in front of …show more content…
A cloth like napkin is given out to anyone who is taking communion and this is so that no crumbs are dropped. Communion is very sacred and everything needs to be consumed. The wine is also treated the same. After communion, they pray. The bishop walks around after the prayer spraying the congregation with holy water. The water was a bit cold so it surprised me when I was sprinkled with it, but when I looked around many people were smiling and happy to be blessed with the bishops presence and his sprinkling them with holy water. At the very end, everyone lines up to greet the priest but since the bishop was there, we greeted him. When you are in front of him, you take his hand, kissing it and the cross that is in his that same hand. It happened so fast and I did not know I was suppose to kiss the cross that I barely even kissed his hand. He also hands you a gift, and it is different each time but we received a key chain with the bishop on