Experience at United Methodist

My experience at the United Methodist Church was really interesting, and I learned a lot just by attending it ,In my opinion, there was some significant changes however it was still very much the same process. I will explain my thoughts later in my report.

The very first obvious differences occurred throughout the service. First off, instead of having priests they have pastors and they are also aloud to be women. The Catholic view is that men are representing God in the image of Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ was a man. The Methodist church also held it's service differently. At the service I went to it went something like, singing, to individuals stating their concerns and worries, to individuals stating good things that happened, the pastor giving her lecture, to communion, to closing prayer, and then again singing. This lasted about 2 and a half to 3hours (not sure) compared to 50mins at Catholic church. Now the main differences hear are that the Methodist are more self aware of their community than the Catholics. They want everybody to partake in mass, while at Roman Catholic service, you can just sit in your pew and leave. The lecture the pastor gave was very much like the ones I've have heard in Catholic Church. However communion was a pretty significant difference in itself. In the roman catholic service all you did was take a peace of bread from the priest eat it and you had a choice of drinking wine or not. After this you would go sit back down in your pew, kneel and pray. At the Methodist service, when they gave you bread they held a mirror underneath the bread, and then you dipped it into wine(actually grapejuice). After this you went and kneeled at a pew up front closer to the actual altar. As I see it, the Methodist and Roman Catholic views of things are remarkably similar in service but in teaching completely different. If I walked into a church not knowing whether it was Roman Catholic or Methodist, I could not tell the difference.

Now for the differences that you can tell only by actually studying both religions. The Methodists first off say that "God in Christ s truly present in the Eucharist, but do not affirm transubstantiation". Methodists do not recognize the authority of the Pope, Bishop of Rome. They also stay out of politics matters and accept birth control and abortion. They affirm only two sacraments, Baptism and Eucharist. Lastly Catholics believe that the Church's teachings and traditions as just as important as Scripture, whereas Methodists teach that 'truth' comes only from the Scripture. This last difference is why there is a Catholic and Methodist church, not just one.

My thoughts and opinions:

Well I guess you could say that I like both sides of both religions, I would like to pick and choose certain things. I don't like the fact that Methodists allow abortion,