The church is like a second family for me. I made so many great friends there!
Of course it will not be for everyone, but if you are open to it you can try.
Of course it will not be for everyone, but if you are open to it you can try.
I have seen my congregation rally around new parents, people with mental health conditions, and other such common struggles. Serving others is a great way to feel that you are part of a community. Church can be a great framework for that kind of thing.
We span many past religions and world views. Poor backgrounds and wealthy.
But we all now hold a very similar world view. So we don't have the kind of diversity some people think of. We're not defined by our pasts as much as we are by our common beliefs.
Everyone is welcome to even attend Mass (they just don't receive communion) and participate in activities that we organize. We also have many support groups for elderly, grieving families, young adults and so on.
Additionally, if you want to do volunteer work, contact the closest Catholic Church. You can join pretty much all of the events regardless of your background.
We are not some "exclusive" membership, the doors are open.
Example: You need a job, you know your great buddy Bob has a spot that you could hop into, he knows you pretty well and that you're not an idiot, so he hires you on the spot into a job you never would've had the qualification for otherwise.
I'm thankful that this is the case for my church, but unfortunately, that's not the case in a lot of churches.
The Church is 2000 years old. It has outlasted basically any other institution that has ever existed in the history of humanity. The things The Church encourages are:
1) Building families
2) Building communities
3) Using these things to make the world a more loving place through volunteerism
It should not be surprising that this is a good place to make friends and connect with your community.
You may say "the doors are open" and in fact they may be in your local church but official membership has requirements, rules to follow and some larger churches also are very much opposed to equality for all humans. I don't believe the Catholic church (or other denominations of Christianity, or Mormon church) would allow a LGBT couple to officially join.
I understand that yours and others experiences don't reflect the entirety of ~1700 years of the organized state religion of the Roman Empire. When we're talking about finding community outside of work, I find large churches will have a facade of community but in practice are not as welcoming to all.
That's not entirely true. No legitimate catholic church would prohibit lgbtq couples from joining. The more conservative ones definitely would not condone their lifestyle, however, and probably none would agree to marry them. So if you are lgbtq you should probably just give some serious thought into more liberal denominations.
The Episcopal Church is very welcoming of LGBTQ people, however. We perform same-sex marriages and ordain LGBTQ people to clergy. My particular parish is marching in a local Pride parade this year.
Denominations are different flavors of Christianity, and which denomination you visit is important. I'm personally a member of "The Episcopal Church," which I find to have a very small amount of dogma and is tolerant of a wide range of beliefs. The theological dogma can be summarized in the "Nicene Creed," which is a pretty short list of what the church holds to be true (and even if you as individual differ, TEC is chill about that). After that, members of The Episcopal Church are more united in what they do together rather than what they believe togther - songs, taking communion, common readings, etc. The Episcopl Church is generally one of the more liberal/progressive churches around (we ordain women and LGBTQ individuals into the clergy and perform same-sex marriages, for example).
Otherwise, it's a nice group of people that I see every week. A lot of churches have a "coffee hour" or a meal after the service, and it's a time to chit chat with others. They care about me and I care about them, and people check in on each other to see how everyone is doing. When we had a baby, people brought us food, and we always get cards in the mail for birthdays and such. It's nice.
Since we're a community of people, we can sometimes work together to accomplish things I wouldn't be able to do on my own. We run a food pantry and we've supported families fleeing from bad situations (and not in abstract sense, but doing the legwork of finding an apartment in town and providing furniture and stuff). One family attends our services, and their kid is about my kid's age, so we've become friends over that.
Again, I know religion can invoke strong feelings, so if the very idea is offputting, leave it alone, it's fine. But for me, it's been a community I've appreciated having.
I’m fine with the concept of the right church because of the community effects especially as a parent and wanting my kid to have as many positive role models as possible in his life; peers/adults/seniors. So after many years of being with my wife, we decided to start when my kid was 4. We actually wanted to start earlier but it’s a hard habit to just introduce, then 2020 happened, etc so here we are. It’s been quite a positive adjustment. It’s easy to see the cult and abuse headlines and write it off, but when done right I still think it’s incredibly powerful and religion as a whole is just a framework for peaceful civilization and coexistence with communities.
For those who are spiritual but not Christian, there's also the Unitarian Universalist Association: https://www.uua.org/
At any rate, potential friendship is a weak rationalization for joining a religion when there are many avenues to do this.
On the other hand, if you spend time with some people, go and watch the movie together, and talk afterwards, it'll feel a whole lot more impactful and you'll find the shared experience fosters a sense of community if you do it on a regular basis.
Denominations, and individual churches within a church, will definitely all have different levels of cohesiveness and character to their communities. It begins and ends, however, with getting out what you put into it.
Uh, I don't know about you but I've never known anyone leaving a theater try to solicit strangers for conversation. You talk to the people you arrived with.