Vienna Community Church

*Nick in Vienna

I thought I might write a bit about the church community I've found here in Vienna because some of you might be interested. I've been attending the Vienna Community Church, and English speaking church that is open to all denominations. It meets downtown in a Lutheran church at noon and has been around for a little over 50 years. The services themselves are a mix of various traditions, but probably most closely resembles Lutheran services because the current pastor is Lutheran. The music is quite good - hymns with a nice organ, but overall the service is more relaxed than ordinary liturgical services in the states.

The best thing about the church is the diversity. As many of you sadly know, American churches tend to be very segregated. That is certainly not the case here, mainly just because there aren't a lot of English options here (there are some English Catholic masses and I think a Methodist church in English here as well). Today alone I talked to at least one person from America, England, China, Korea, Nigeria, Egypt, Honduras, Japan, Germany, Austria, Scotland, Hungary, and some others I can't remember. For a lot of people at the church English is their second language, but they know it better than German. We did Communion today and it is really quite a wonderful and beautiful thing to celebrate our faith with people from all over the world.

There is also a young adult group where I have met pretty much all of my friends here. We meet every two weeks for dinner and I've gotten to know some of them quite well and have done quite a bit of stuff outside of the church. It's not quite the cohort in Columbus, but it has proven to be quite the blessing.