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Something that has been a big part of my life at home is religion and specifically Christianity but recently it has become a struggle. I grew up in a home where every Sunday my family and I would attend church to the point where it was abnormal not to since it was somewhere I went literally since birth. At a young age church was somewhere that I enjoyed going to because people there were always so kind and after service I’d be able to hang out with my friends. Tallahassee Korean Baptist Church has been the church that my I family has been attending since we moved to Tallahassee in 2006 and it is actually the largest Korean church in town.

Service is held in the sanctuary of course and the room is not the biggest sanctuary you’ve ever seen, but to say it is small would be false. It’s a perfect, modest size for the 150 people or so that make up the congregation. Green is the most eye-catching color in the space as there are three columns of ten or so pews that make up where the congregation sits facing the stage, along with the fact that the whole room has green carpet. Two main paths separate the three columns to lead to the stage, while there are two more paths on the outside. The pastor’s stand is glass on the middle of the stage with a little mic attached to it. Behind the pastor’s stand is the baptismal tub (place where people are baptized). The room has a 20ft ceiling to go along with tall, rectangular windows so that on a Sunday morning the room is full of sunlight. In the room there are two pieces of art work, a stained-glass window that is of Jesus along with a wooden cross that is lit up with neon lights. To the left of the stage is the grand piano and a drum set that is used for worship songs.

First lasting experience in the sanctuary came when I had to perform for vacation bible school. Every summer there is a vacation bible school for the preschoolers up to the 5th graders with some kind of theme that centers around bible stories. During vacation bible school, attendees learn a dance routine that goes along with the themed music. I don’t really remember the theme of that particular VBS, but I do remember performing the dance routine in front of the congregation. Dressed up in prison jump suit like orange t-shirts, me and around 20 or so other friends got up on stage to do our routine with music in the background. Looking out into the sea of yellow, I’m talking about all the Koreans that made up the congregation that day, I could not help but be nervous as all get out because for some reason that I have never been able to figure out, I’ve had a terrible stage fright. The people could’ve cared if we did well or all danced around like monkeys, but just the act of being on stage had me sweating bullets. The music plays, we do start doing our routine, some of us know it and I was one of the people who didn’t memorize it, so I looked at the Sunday school teachers who were knelt down at the bottom to the stage for slackers, aka me. For what felt like an eternity my fellow bible schoolers and I had finished our routine. While walking off stage, I remember being filled with joy and relief. Joy filled me up because the congregation gave us a round of applause for a job well done, but I also felt the joy from the feeling that I had that I did something really cool for Jesus. As corny as it sounds, I really looked forward to going to church on Sunday’s and I saw the sanctuary as somewhere sacred even though I undoubtedly didn’t have that word in my six-year old vocabulary. Or, looking back, was it that I was happy because I saw my parents smiling and I liked to please them?
 

Well one thing that I definitely did to please my parents was when I got baptized on Easter Sunday when I was 15. The sanctuary at this point in my life had become a bit burden-some as I felt that my parents were making a big decision in my life for me. All I could think about as people began to file in and take their seats for the service, was how my parents would say “it’s time” to get baptized in my life, when at age 15 I didn’t even know if I had any sort of faith. Sitting in the green pews I nervously waited for it to be my turn to get up on stage and read my testimony. When I heard everyone else’s, they testified that they had found faith in a very dark place in their life or how they wanted to live life in the way God wanted them to, but I had no such things in mine. I was the third one up and I was not any readier from the first testimony to the second. I got up on stage and at the stand I began to read off my testimony which I had typed out and in my eyes the testimony that I wrote seemed way to short and empty. Reading my testimony was the most difficult part of the day as on top of my trembling I had messed up at least 4 times reading off what I had typed. I got baptized by the pastor and after everyone got their turn to be dunked in the water the congregation came up and congratulated myself and the other people who had gotten baptized that day. More than anything I was a bit confused at what I was being congratulated for and wondered if I really meant what I said in my testimony or if was it something I said to get my parents off my back.

Room was full of everybody that attends the church. The sermon was the usual Christmas Sunday service about Jesus’ birth and how the people came with gifts. Kids did their routine, like the one I said earlier but Christmas themed. So the main feeling I had was of Christmas joy, but joy because it was a holiday. I no longer felt the religious ties so I didn’t even listen to the sermon. It was just background noise to my day dreaming to finding a way to get hammered with my friends. I was ready to leave before I even got there but I felt obligated to show my face at least for my parents, who are very active members of our church. The room did not feel sacred anymore to me. The pastor on stage reminded me of how I saw a Christian man in the student union on campus trying to get people to listen to what he had to say to no avail. I was 19.