Finding a Church

Even though most people in Norway speak English, it is a challenge to find a worship service in English here. We were able to find a couple of churches to try out today---one very traditional and one very contemporary.

This morning we went to American Lutheran Church. Though it is called American and Lutheran, it is actually comprised of a lot of nationalities and different denominations. Of course the draw for us was that they speak English at their services. It was such a nice change to walk through the doors and be greeted in English and talk freely to people without first apologizing for not knowing Norwegian.

They are a small congregation and the building is nothing fancy, but the people were very friendly and they even have Sunday School for Zach in English. The service was super traditional and sort of "high churchy" including lots of liturgy, which is not our usual style but still enjoyable. We plan to go again next Sunday.

This evening we braved the cold and drizzly rain to try out a super-contemporary congregation downtown called Jesus Church (click http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeGP46Ipydw to see a video). The church building is actually the upstairs ballroom of an expensive restaurant that is closed on Sundays. It looked kind of like a night club set up for a concert actually, but there were tons of young families with toddlers running around and strollers parked in back so we felt comfortable.

Unfortunately we didn't figure out until about halfway through the Norwegian service that about a third of the congregation was wearing headphones allowing them to hear an English translator! It was kind of interesting though to sing along to the same praise choruses we know, but in another language. We've decided to give it another try next week, this time with the aid of the headphones.