How Was Church This Morning?

note: I wrote this last Sunday afternoon but my internet has been out all week so I am just now posting it.

I realised today that I have never yet given an account of a typical church service here. Today's apple didn't fall far [too] from the tree, so here was my morning:

First of all, my church has two services. I had planned to go to the 8:00 service this morning but some group in my neighborhood decided to pound on drums and chant into a loudspeaker system until 2:00 in the morning. So this morning I opted for second service at 10:30.

When I arrived I saw three of my friends standing by the front door. Church here starts outside the church, in the courtyard. In fact, chatting with people before and after church is perhaps the most important part of the service. So we exchanged greetings, briefed each other on how the week went, and talked about volleyball.

As we chatted the music started. My friends had already been at first service so I made my way inside and found a pew that was wide open. This is very important because people continue to arrive for the first 45 minutes of the service. If you start out in a pew with four other people you will probably find yourselves squeezed in like sardines by the time the sermon starts. This is especially uncomfortable during the hot season. If you start in a pew that is entirely empty, your odds are slightly better of having some room during the entire service.

The worship was energetic and well-done. Our choir practices at least three times per week and they take it very seriously. They are a really talented bunch and they get into it. But in addition to that, worship this morning was really good. Some Sundays it feels like all of the practice and polish becomes a barrier and the choir gets distracted from worship, but today was good. The choir was clearly worshiping and much of the congregation did as well.

As for myself, I had brief moments. I'm afraid to say that I was distracted during most of worship and didn't get --- or give --- nearly as much as I should have. Instead I was thinking about the marvel of African beat patterns and all kinds of interesting but entirely irrelevant ideas. Entering into worship continues to be a massive struggle for me here. It is truly a shame; my brothers and sisters here know how to do it!

The worship songs were mostly translations of songs originally written in English. There were a couple of original French songs as well. Some Sundays they include a couple of songs in the majority local language but they didn't today.

Today we also had a baby dedication. It was probably the shortest one I have ever seen in any country because the pastor was feeling sick and didn't want to give his flu to the baby. But the dedication was very nice. Short and sweet.

Afterward a young man stood up. I think maybe he is our missions pastor, I'm not sure. At any rate, whenever he stands up it is worth listening. He regularly takes groups out into the villages to do evangelism and sometimes they come back with incredible stories. This morning was no exception, but I think I'll leave that for another time.

Then came the sermon. I have no idea what it was about. I was trying to follow it, honest I was, but I just couldn't. I don't think it was entirely my fault either. I talked to somebody else after church who said that he got absolutely nothing out of the sermon. He was so lost that part way through he just started reading the Bible and tuned the pastor out.

Some Sundays the sermon is really good. Some days it's okay. And some days... See, here people are not always trained to create speeches and sermons which follow an A, B, C structure with three subpoints for each letter. Rather, sermons often follow a stream, with brief excursions down the tributaries before returning to the original idea but perhaps a bit downstream. Unfortunately, sometimes "A, B, C" westerners get lost and are eaten by crocodiles somewhere along the way.

The other factor is cultural differences. Sometimes the pastor will tell a story and at the end of it the entire congregation will burst into laughter. Everyone except the westerners, who stare at each other as if to say, "Did we miss something?" Or there was an entire month of sermons directed at family issues, some of which only applied to local families.

I didn't check the time but I think the sermon ended around noon. An hour and a half is a really short service. Ah, but wait! They had left all of the special details until last. First they took the offering. The choir sang a song while they passed baskets up and down the isles.

Then came the time for first-time visitors to present themselves and for anyone who had a praise report to share it with the congregation. I suspect that, after the chatting time outside the church, this is the second most important part of the service for most of the people here. Church isn't a set of activities. It is a framework for practicing community. Only half a dozen people took the microphone today, which is less than usual.

When the microphone was handed back to the pastor he launched into a story. He told it as if everyone in the congregation already knew about the situation (I didn't) so I had to kind of piece together what he was saying and fill in the details. The story was incredible by western standards. As I listened I went from surprise to indignation to pity. But as I studied the faces around me, nobody else seemed the least bit impressed. "Yup, that's life here." I guess it was another one of those cross-cultural moments.

Then we began the announcements. There are no printed bulletins here. Even though most (if not all) of the congregation can read, we are still in a society that prefers oral communication. All announcements go up on the powerpoint, where everyone can read them, and yet are also read aloud one at a time by the designated announcements guy. The one we have now quickly reads the powerpoint word-for-word. We used to have a guy who would occasionally spend five minutes giving additional details about an upcoming event that particularly enthused him. I'm grateful for the new guy.

When the announcements finished the pastor asked us all to stand for the final prayer. It was short and sweet, and the service was closed. I glanced up at the clock- 12:34. From the end of the sermon to the end of the service was half an hour.

After church I chatted with some friends for a while and then swung onto a public transport van as it rolled past the church.  And THAT trip is worth another blog :-)

Ridin' the van

I do sometimes ride buses here. They are more or less the same as the buses where you live, and therefore they aren't terribly blogworthy. More often, however, I ride the vans. The vans are blogworthy. These marvelous vehicles were built several decades ago to serve as utility vans. I have little doubt that they performed their duties marvelously before being sent into "retirement" in Africa.  Here they had holes cut into the sides (for windows) and benches welded onto the walls. Four used tires, some dirty oil, and she's back on the road!

These are not large vehicles. They probably have the wheelbase of a typical sedan. Yet the seating is expected to accommodate 21 passengers. When there are more than that, up to six people stand between the feet of those sitting down and another two or three can hang off the back. You would think that carrying 30 people would bottom out the suspension but you would be wrong- these vehicles have no suspension.

The vans drive the same route all day long. When they don't have enough passengers they stop until enough people get on to pay for the next leg of the journey. The most you ever pay for a van ride in town is 30 cents (but usually 20 or less), so at that rate you can understand why the vans need so many passengers to pay for gas and never-ending repairs. Fortunately for me there are a lot of vans that run between my apartment and just about everywhere else in town (and lots of people riding). Otherwise you can end up sitting for 5 or 10 minutes waiting for enough passengers to get on so you can leave.

The insides of the vans are usually bare-bones. Well, bare metal. But often they have pictures. This morning I was languidly observing the collection as I rode a van into town. There were three big pictures. Two were well-known national religious leaders. These told me which religious sect the driver belonged to. The third was a wrestler. If I bothered to educate myself in the whos-who of the national wrestling scene, this picture would probably tell me what region the driver comes from and possibly also his ethnicity.

Those three pictures barely aroused my curiosity. Religious leaders and wrestlers are standard fare here and they commonly share space on windshields, bumpers, walls, T-shirts, and television. The only thing that really struck me was that the picture of the wrestler said "The king is back" and the "is back" part was written along the guy's spine. It made me wonder if whoever designed the poster actually speaks good English and deliberately made a pun for his own private giggles. I kind of doubted it, though, since the French line said "le futur Roi" (The future king), which didn't make much sense if the king was back.

Anyway, in between and around these three paper-sized images were lots of small pictures. They fell squarely into two categories: male rappers and female singers. I assume the guys were rappers because they all wore clothes made for somebody twice their size, they all stood in odd positions, and none of them were smiling. The females were all large women with so much makeup that they looked like china dolls. This look seems to be popular here. Unlike the rapper guys, they smiled.

Then an anomaly caught my eye.  Up there in the far corner. Could that be a white guy?! Oh wait. Nope. That's Michael Jackson.

Strange but true! I bet you wish you could take the van with me. You have to admit, it is way more fun than a boring old bus.