Church Angst

Sunday 17 August

I can't even go to church here without a philosophical crisis...it's rediculous. This sunday I went to a church that was really comfortable for me. Too comfortable it seemed. We sang "Praise to the Lord the Almighty" and "It is Well With My Soul", we did responsive readings, a couple chatechism questions for the kids, communion...all in English. So what's the problem, you ask? It was so much like my church at home, that's why it was so comfortable. The pastor was Ugandan but educated at a reformed seminary in the US. He used Africa appropriate examples in his sermons, but otherwise the service could have been in St. Louis. Keyboard and electronic drum set, a smallish congregation. Is this what happens when African pastors are educated in the west or by people from the west? You end up with western churches in Africa...this doesn't seem good.

Maybe it's because I have a naive idea that churches in Africa should be somehow African...the music, the style of worship, the instruments, etc...Maybe this is the way they want to worship? Or maybe they worship this way because they've been taught this way by westerners...I don't know. I mean, the elements of our worship at G&P aren't American, we probably borrowed them from Europe, but somehow it seems out of place for them to be here in Africa...there's a lot of people reading this who could blow my knowledge of church history and missiology out of the water, but I'm just telling you what was going on in my mind on Sunday and since. I don't know what's right or wrong or if there is a right or wrong, but I couldn't totally relax on Sunday even though I longed to, because I felt like surely this is too easy...this is too comfortable...this is too American...I don't know what I think an "African" worship service should look and sound like but it seems that everything else is so unique here, worship should be too. But for now, I've found a place that is a place to worship and feel at home.

But I spent the rest of the day, and evening really, until about 10pm, hanging out with my Navigators staff friends Brendan and Joanna and a guy Brendan had met this week from England named Paul. Paul had us to lunch at his house on the campus of African Bible University where he's the librarian and has been since the campus started 3 years ago. We spent the rest of the day and evening eating and drinking and snacking and chatting and laughing and discussing and talking about our experiences of this country and our work and our previous lives, etc. It was really fun and a great time to kick back and just hang out. I don't do that much here.