Church Friend Day

Learning about other people's religion is in a way learning what their culture is. I don't see it as a bad thing. I grew up going to a Catholic day care, a Buddhist kindergarten, and a Japanese Seventh-Day Aventist Church School on top of regular public American school. (read: religiously messed up)

So if I did run across a Muslim per say and they asked if I would like to mosque, I'd probably be like, "so long as I am welcome to sit in the back and politely observe and it is okay for me to not participate in things that don't coincide with my beliefs, yeah sure, I'd love to learn what your religion is about."

I always try to bring guests and/or friends for special services like Obon (Summer festival; sort of a japanese day of the dead type celebration), buddha's birthday (in spring), new years. Some Buddhist / Japanese traditions are more cultural than they are religious, so for me, bringing someone to one of those special services is like me being invited for Roshashana or Easter. On the plus side the church usually organizes to distribute or giv out food/special treats or snacks/flowers on these days, so it's a nice way to end the service.

Our church is open to visitors (we love curious people!) but we don't actively try to make them join. We mingle and chat and say our goodbyes saying how lovely it was that they came by and we'd love to see them again. Buno more than that. It's also partly because we know that 80-90 percent of even our long-time regular church patrons still don't understand fully what all buddhism means, so we don't press that onto other people. It's kind of he "yeah, it's a difficult religion to understand and we don't all get it quite as good as we should too. If you'd like to join us on our journey to learn the path to enlightenment, we'd love your company." attitude.

Jam it back in, in the dark.