I wonder how many of you have a church or other Christian presence in your Sims community.

In my own case I felt it odd that for my Sims, Sunday was just another day. Many of them had to work, and there wasn't even an option to go to church. I suppose it seemed odd to me because in real life, church has always been part of my life. Then I read about Father Stratford in freefalldreams's TS2 game (in posts on the Sims 2 What's happening in your 'hood right now? thread) and I felt I had to have a church too. So I built St. Simeon's Parish Church near the Market in my Veronaville. Of course the name St. Simeon's is a pun on "Sim", but I also think that Simeon, who recognised Jesus as the Messiah when he was presented as a baby in the Jerusalem temple, is a perfectly worthy person to dedicate a church to. A quick check on Google suggests that some Eastern churches are indeed dedicated to him. Of course my St. Simeon's, in the heart of the English side of Veronaville, is Anglican not Orthodox.

Partly because I found here on MTS some good female clerical dress, I created a woman priest for the church, the Rev. Elspeth Anderson. I gave her the Popularity aspiration and high nice points, so she would want to go out and meet the people of her parish. I treat her as a genuine Christian minister, working in a sometimes difficult parish. Do you have clergy in your games, and, if so, how do you play them?

I wonder too how you conduct services in your Sims churches. I downloaded a hacked pulpit from retailsims, and as a result St Simeon's is very much a teaching church -- Sunday services consist solely of Rev. Anderson preaching a very long sermon -- 3 hours or more! I would like to add other aspects of worship (prayer, Bible reading, music, etc.), but don't know how to. I wouldn't know how to begin to have a communion service. I'd like to know if anyone does better. Including how you play churches in TS1, 3 or 4. My only experience of The Sims is TS2. I didn't have OFB when I built St Simeon's, so it's an unowned community lot. I make sure the priest is there for services by including her in groups visiting the church. When they get there, I make her selectable and tell her to preach. The hacked pulpit makes at least some Sims sit and listen to her. Eventually I tell her to stop -- before any of her flock die of starvation! I have Open for Business (OFB) now, so I wonder about getting her to buy the church. (Obviously I'd have to use cheats to give her the money to buy it -- she'd never be able to save it up from her CC Church of England career !) If you play TS2 churches, are they owned or unowned?

Veronaville has a young population with a lot of teenagers, and as I mentioned in another thread a lit of them are gay, especially in the downtown area. This is reflected in those actually attending the church. For this reason, it's an issue that the church in Veronaville has to face. The Rev. Elspeth has noticed that teenagers, straight as well as gay, tend to head downtown to some rather sleazy nightclubs. She would therefore like to start some sort of youth outreach to provide them with a better, more wholesome alternative in Veronaville itself.

I'd be very interested to hear how other people deal with these issues.

I prefer playing with made-up religions (and worlds, for that matter).

One exception are my Settler Challenge Sims, who are supposed to live in Australia in 1790, so I built them a church. I tried to make it look cheap and primitive and plan to upgrade it as the generations progress (just like with all the community lots in this savegame). I do not make my sims go there every sunday and the weddings happen at home more often than not. Also those settlers practice baptism at the age of six, since you cannot bath babies in Sims 4, but children can use the font just fine. It´s always a big celebration. Other than for baptism my sims only go to church for contemplation when they face an important decision or to give thanks or something similar. I suppose this reflects my own church going habits.

http://enkisstories.tumblr.com/post...lther-blackbird

A Church for the hood,
And a pastor.
With the occasional home having a decorate cross and bible.

Not much of a presence.

I had to post, feeling lonely stalking the Christian threads here and finding no one else but me.
(I spend too much time here waiting for convesation )

I built an outdoor church area overlooking Bridgeport. My sim's Sunday routine consists of admiring the crosses I've put there, playing their musical instruments near the altar, and donating money to charity.

I've thought of building churches, at least to have somewhere dignified for my Sims to get married. They all to often use the "propose in the bathroom, exchange rings in the back yard with half of the family in underwear"-approach. At one point I was planning an "English village" for Sims 3, and among the characters there was going to be a kindly old vicar like the guy from Postman Pat. He was going to have a young woman as his, what is the word... the person who would take over the parish after he retired. I was going to build him a small, cozy vicarage next door to the church, where he'd live with his wife of 45 years, and all their dogs and cats.

One of my Sims is a devout Christian. The only CC I had downloaded are the cross necklace and praying pose pack. That's it . I don't really play TS3 anyway, only doing some screenshots for my own story. If only there's a mod to make "Church" rabbit hole CC comes up with list of religious activity options, like workplace rabbit holes. I would glad to play my Sims can live their religious living without too much "pretending", attending church CC but doing nothing other than sitting on long chair and looking at the painting on church wall.

Can´t speak of Sims 3, but Sims 2 has some fantastic religious cc. There´s an invisible speakers pult (for making a convincing pulpit) right here on MTS I think and Affinity Sims has some great stuff, too. There´s also the option to discuss books with other sims (though they sit down on the floor while doing so).
The Simlogical School system could be used for setting up a sunday school, something I plan to add to New Gameshire when I ressume playing that neighborhood.
My church in TS4 has several bookcases and sims can use the "study book" interaction to become focused, which I think is appropriate. But I also placed the future telling cube there, which is probably less than appropriate when taking literal, but serves as representing the result of contemplation.

It took me some time to make the mental leap from "christian presence = things that happen in church" to "christian presence = all the small things that we do in our lifes".
For example in Sims 3 and 4 with the open world, the children and teens could walk from house to house as Starsingers (carolers in english?). It´s the first thing that comes to mind, but I´m sure we could gather quite a long list of at-home activities.

I loved the look of the cathedrals in The Sims Medieval with furniture as well as the vestments. I do not know how to do it, not do I know if it is possible, but I would love it if someone would convert some of those things for Sims3.

My hood does have a considerable presence of Christianity to it--the story for my hood is that the pastor's family was one of the four founding families. I have a church for worship on Sunday mornings, a parsonage next door where the pastor and his family lives, and there is a residential lot that has a church and a reception hall on it for weddings (the couple is sent to "live" there so they can get married). The pastor and his wife are invited to every wedding, and there are crosses in all the houses.

One of these days I'm gonna make a set of robes for my pastors, and if I'm brave enough, I'll upload them.

As for playability: the pastor "owns" the church, has no job but I give the family money when they need it, and he does nothing all day but tend to the garden/pond outside and call his parishioners to make/maintain high relationships with them. I have my sims go to church on Sundays, except for the ones with babies/toddlers (they have that cross object that allows you to call up and read Bible verses). I also have that cross object with the cloth on it that allows sims to pray for forgiveness and praise God. Lastly, I have a pulpit for the pastor to preach from in the front, which is a bit of a headache, since kids are attracted to it and keep belching into the mic XD.

As for baptism, I have an old-looking sink set up close to the front where they wash their hands (just once), which I pretend is their baptism.

I've wanted to establish a Christian presence in Liberty Village. So, I plan to build a Baptist church there. My idea has been to build a church lot with a house at the back for the pastor. In the worship hall, there would be a pulpit (cloned from the teleprompter thingy and found on Retail Sims) for the pastor to preach sermons. I would use Simlogical's meeting controller to bring the congregation and make them selectable so they will sit down and behave! There may be instruments in the worship hall, I haven't decided which ones. I tried something similar to this in another 'hood, but that good fell victim to my neighborhood ADHD.

To represent donations and to provide income for the pastor, I think members of the congregation can use Monique's computer (since almost everyone has one) to transmit funds into the pastor's household funds. I have more ideas, such as how to have youth group for teens on Wednesdays using meeting controller as well. And if the large congregations become too much to handle, I can simply create other churches of different worship styles (contemporary, traditional) or denominations (Church of Christ, Catholic, etc.) Or maybe non-denominational fellowships catering to certain groups (college kids, geeks, aliens, etc.)

Oh, and @Enki, I love your ideas of using Simlogical's schools for Sunday School and having sims live out their faith beyond just going to church.

I finally built that church! I also made my pastor and his wife but I haven't moved them in yet or tried to have worship services. Do y'all want pictures of the church here?

That would be great. I want to see your creative spark.
Now I have to figure out how to load pictures up here.

I like that! It can be like street evangelism, or a form of worship at contemporary churches!

I agree I really like this idea!

Ever have a Sim suddenly stop, and look at you, out of the blue? They KNOW there's a god!

Well, I never had much religion in my sims but I would build churches and stuff for them.
I'm gonna make a Church Mod for simmers.
Link to my website: https://cutiepiettv0kcrk.wixsite.co...e/copy-of-shops
It has links to places you can find my mods. It doesn't link directly to them, you have click on photos to get directly to the mods.

Well, I made SimNation to be part of the Bible Belt where most of the more traditionalist characters like the Goths, the Smyths (my own creation), the Newbies/Brokes, the Burbs, the Dreamers, and the original Pleasant family from TS1 (except Daniel, who was raised that way but grew up to be atheist) are fundamentalists. The twins ended up adopted (Daniel and Mary Sue went to jail for abuse/neglect, long story behind that) by Angela's cheerleading coach Amber Morgan, a strong Independent Baptist and military wife from Milton (next to Pensacola in the Florida panhandle in real life), and they both grew up to be strong fundamentalists as well, both becoming members of First Baptist Church of Pleasantview and Angela also a member of the Gideons International Auxiliary (Gideons are the group that puts Bibles in most hotels in the US and many throughout the world). As a side note, I made the twins go through role reversal in high school, in which Lilith became more of the "good twin" and Angela became the "bad twin" after getting arrested with Dustin, but their new parents did not pick favorites and both of them turned out nicely.

Sims like Don Lothario and the Caliente sisters are not part of the whole fundamentalist thing because I just don't get those vibes from them. Probably the Capps and the Montys are going to be fundamentalists, as well as possibly the Grunt family in Strangetown. I'll probably make the Summerdreams be followers of a new age religion.