Worship Character in different German churches

Just a quick note - it's been a blessing lately to do worship in sooo many different churches and see that although the outward form is so different, it's still really blessed.

In the FeG (evie free) worship is chopped up into blocks and you rarely have more than 4 songs at a time, but so often it is so intense and blessed, I just love it.

At the Gemeinde Gottes (Church of God - Pentecostal) it is very free and can be very long if God leads, also very spontaneous...recently they said they sang one song for a really long time until it really sank in, there's freedom to pray or prophesy in between. It can be pretty lively at times, but not out of line.

At the Chapels (Calvary Chapel) there's a little less open space on Sundays, but there are still usually about 6 songs and time to really open up to God. I'd place it somewhere in between the last two churches mention. ;-)

One really amazing experience we had was doing worship in a huge Catholic cathedral in Augsburg working with Night Fever, a youth outreach. "Missionaries" (which are catholic kids on fire for Jesus) go out and give people candles on the street and invite people to come into the church, light it in front of the altar and just spend time with God. They can receive counseling, confession, prayer, or just sit and enjoy God's pressence. The few times that we did worship for Night Fever have been so amazing...it's really quiet, intimate worship that echos in the huge church buildings, everything is very reverant and you can totally sense God's pressence and holiness. A leader usually prays in between, prophesies, encourages, but the worship continues for about 4 hours on end in the church and the bands quietly tag team it along in hour blocks. The church was always PACKED- tons of people came in with their candles from the streets - revival - and really amazing.

In the Lutheran church where I recently played the "worship" was more like a sing-a-long concert, but I have experienced radically different things in Lutheran state churches when I have worked with the youth - it totally depends on the pastor or leaders. This particular experience was a bit disappointing for both sides.

In Altensteig there is a pretty famous charismatic church. There they had the youth doing the music (really gifted kids!) while one of the elders stood up front and guided things spiritually, listening for guidance by the Holy Spirit. The kids had to be really sensitive to this and they did a great job, I THOROUGHLY enjoyed the worship in Altensteig. I think this is a great way to train up worship leaders spiritually or also a way to utilize musicians who don't feel comfortable leading a worship time spiritually.

One final experience (for today that is) was in a BFP (Assemblies of God I believe this is in English). They had a single guitarist, a woman who had a great voice. Her voice was very powerful and her worship was easy to follow for this reason, she often encouraged and prayed in between in a very loud, but not over-imposing voice. That and the sermon were very blessed. The worship was simple, but good because of her authority based in her calling to her ministry.

I'm sure these single experiences can't determine what all churches of these types are like, but you can learn a lot from other churches. What I have experienced is that as long as the people are in love with Jesus there isn't much difference when it really comes down to it.