Blogs - Chief of Pray Blog

A Jewish Girl’s Guide to Choosing a Church

A Jew walks into a church. …sounds like an opening line to a joke, but it’s not; I decided to go to church on Sunday. They call me Chief of Pray, I’m the founder of Prayables.com, a multi-faith prayer community for women. Every once in a while, I test my theory and go offline to pray with people from different religions. Choosing a church to attend was my first task. I picked one because it listed an 8:30 a.m. Praise and Worship service or 11:00 a.m. traditional. I liked that I was given a choice.

I’m hardly traditional, so I started off to go to Memorial Presbyterian of West Palm Beach. Unfortunately, when I got to the church at 8:25 a.m. it was locked. A couple who were regulars there, showed up too. They presumed church must have been called off because of the Christmas pageant, scheduled for 11:00 a.m. Their loss— one less Jew to welcome to their ranks for the day.

Choosing another church was easy, I passed First Baptist Church of West Palm Beach on my walk over. These doors were open, and two friendly faces were manning the doors distributing hand-outs. It seems I stumbled onto a themed Sermon Series: The Chosen. Call it kismet, but when a Jew walks into a church, and the Christmas theme is a tribute to the greatest Jewish novel of all times; I figure I’m in the right place.

I’m not a person to dwell on the differences between Christian and Jews. Of course the culture, traditions and doctrine is different. But, true to form, we’re praying for the same things and much in the same way. There was a time for study, petition and silent reflection. There was a sermon with a message, urging us to be our best selves. And best of all, there was rousing praise for God. We praised God with song, with “string and lyre” and with love in our hearts.

As it turns out, the Christmas theme The Chosen, had a sub-title: A Baby Changes Everything. It was nothing like the Chaim Potok novel of the 60’s where the teen-age son of an Orthodox Rabbi made friends with a Reform Zionist Jew. The preaching that day was about the Pastor’s international adoption of three of his children.

I found a great place to pray. I returned home on Sunday, uplifted and encouraged. There’s too much that we have in common, to dwell on what we do not. What a blessing to be able to walk into a house of worship as a stranger, and leave with a little better understanding of fellowship that crosses all faiths.

Choose a church, synagogue, mosque or sacred space that speaks to you. Walk in with an open mind and an open heart and walk out closer to God.

Making Room

The sign on the wall simply reads: Be Open.  
I pray I can be open to change,
open to hope, open to love.  
I want to be open to joy,
and open to unexpected grace.
I will be open to gifts You
bless me with, whether I know it or not.
I know I can do what I ask of myself—
to be open to the life I need.

-Miranda Claudius