I am writing this week about two of our church services. One was International Women’s day service on March 6 and the other was the Sunday I preached on March 13. I took quite a few videos of the choirs singing (yes plural) and that is why the lag time in posting about the church services because it took a long time to get transferred to my computer then uploaded to YouTube.
The International Women’s Day service was much like those I have written about in the past. The ladies take over the service and it is common in Tanzania for them to do several segments where the dance in (all of them dance in but then most sit down unless they are part of this segment), the pass the microphone around and each has a speaking part, then they dance out. This is done for each segment and normally there are 6 to 10 segments.
They do this instead of the normal 1st hour of the church service which is just singing. Some of the segments are singing instead of reciting pieces of information.
The pastor’s wife did the second hour of the service with the message. Yes, normally they spend about an hour singing, an hour on the message, then an hour on things like business reports, additional special offerings, auctioning off items people donated in lieu of monetary contributions. Another big difference is there is no “passing the plate” they collect multiple offerings with people walking to the front of the church to put their donation in a box.
Typically the ladies have a lot of fun doing their service on International Women’s Day. I am not sure how much time they spend creating the segments and any skits they perform, but it is well worth to see them all laughing and having a good time in worship.
The next Sunday was my week to deliver the message, normally I do this a couple of times a year. Actually the pastor had scheduled me for the week of the Women’s day but fortunately I think his wife reminded him in time. So what is the most important element in doing a sermon at our local church-having a translator on hand and understanding you have to stop a lot to let them translate. The week I did my message Max, Pastor’s oldest son, was on hand so he did the translation. One important not is that when you do this, you really don’t need a microphone because the translator does as he will be saying it in their language.
Of note is that the children have a service or Sunday School in the main church prior to the actual service. I normally get there during the middle of that and find my seat (hopefully away from the speakers and in the shade). This Sunday they had the kids singing for the kids collection. Their are several of our students in the kid’s choir including Daniel, Agape, Obedi, Gladness, Lazaro, Samwel, Teresia and being led by Grace.
One big difference between the Sunday’s is that they don’t dance in before each song. Some of the songs are mixed in to make two seem like one in transition. There is always a lot of microphone passing like it is a hot potato.
I think I have mentioned this several times before, but I am not considered an evangelistic preacher or sermon giver. I am ok with that, actually I think it is my strength as a Christian. What does that mean? Well most who come here to preach and the pastor himself change volume a lot, hit heavily on the basics of our religion (Christ died for our sins) and they love to have people come down to be “saved” or counted as souls saved. This has it’s place and Tanzanians love these type of preachers. They love going to crusades and tent revivals for this type of music and preaching.
Those at my church who have heard me preach probably remember this, but I prefer to really put out thinkers of sermons. I don’t mind getting emotional, especially when discussing my own failings as a Christian but I really start screaming or yelling into a microphone. I love to have discussions about a specific Christian topic. This Sunday I choose to discuss “unanswered prayer.” In quotations because as most remember, God answers prayer just not always with the answer you want.
Specifically I discussed the difference between wanting something and needing it and our will vs God’s will. I used the discussion of several passages in the new testament about God hears our prayers and when we pray for God’s will He hears our prayers. From there it was to the Lord’s prayer and discussing the part before the Lord’s prayer about not shouting or constantly babbling on and not praying to be noticed. This allowed me to discuss how prayer for me is a conversation sometimes with the empty chair method but it has to be an honest discussion about our failures and our actual needs. I even used the old testament part of exodus about manna and how our daily need was spelled out though not in today’s terms but still an understandable context. How when we are not honest with God especially about our sins He knows because the Holy Spirit knows what we are to pray for even when we don’t. I got to use Garth Brooks and Jim Carrey in one sermon. Garth’s “Thank God for Unanswered Prayers” and Carrey from Evan Almighty and answering yes to everyone’s prayers and the problems that caused.
The conclusion was that a “no”, “maybe”, “not yet”, “yes”, or even a “yes but a different way” are all possible answers to prayers and we may not understand why. We just have to accept God’s will much like Jesus praying three times in Gethsemane asking for the cup to be taken, but each time He said not my will but Your will. There was a time I thought I was going to be our church’s youth minister. I had been doing the job for free, we had positive developments and numbers. But God said no. I did not understand it at the time. But He had something more like me in mind. On my ninth year in Tanzania. Something I think fewer people could handle than being youth minister. Not a knock on those who are youth ministers just recognizing my life and the weird turns it took in the military leave me uniquely prepared for this journey.
