I’ve been missing church, the fellowship and gathering together. I miss that collective expression of faith. We are doing church a different way and for some it feels not right or not the proper way. We miss familiarity and the security it brings, though it’s good to get out of a rut every now and then before it becomes a grave. I took this week to recall some memorable services.
It was a really hot day when the taxi collected me but I felt an excitement tempered with trepidation. We drove for about 20 minutes from the edge of Malindi to near the centre of town. The roads were awful but it was Kenya and the hustle and bustle gave a useful distraction from the potholes big enough to swallow a small family car.
Being a Sunday I was determined to experience church in a culture unfamiliar to me and I was not disappointed. The building was like a long chicken shed with not doors or windows just openings in the structure. Much needed to allow a breeze through. For the occasion I had put what I thought were conservative tidy cloths on, no tie, too hot! In the carpark I looked around and felt completely under dressed, boring and colourless. Yet I was clearly welcome and instantly different – which has greatly contributed to my appreciation of diversity and the experience of the other.
After about two hours I noticed people were still arriving and some were departing. Another hour went by and I recognised some of the earlier leavers returning. Was it a drop-in Church like a perpetual service? Hotel California came to mind, ‘You can check out but you can’t leave.’ My experience of worship back home was calm, orderly, predictable and no matter how much the worship leader wanted to continue the pastor would call order at some point before tea time. Not here. Everyone was engaged and able to start a song and keep it going by adding lines and blending several tunes. It was fantastic exuberating but the heat just got me in the end.
Did I mention the building looked like a chicken shed? Well when it came to the first collection I took out my little neat brown envelope, no point writing gift aid on here, and readied myself. The basket didn’t go round it was up the front. As the band played and the singing rose people would dance down the aisle waving their offering and as each one landed the congregation thanked God. Then came the lady with a chicken waltzing to the front and my little neat enveloped went back in my pocket. I’m guessing that pastor had roast chicken for supper. As I left three and half hours after I had arrived I slipped my offering in a basket by the exit.
Walking to the taxi I thought to myself that I had been the only worshiper in there who thought the service different, unusual, and maybe not orderly enough. I suspect that the other members of that congregation would say, ‘Is there any other way to do church?’
As I recall, we are encouraged to not give up meeting together which is a principle not a method. Our methods, styles and approach to meeting together will be open to social and cultural influences even Covid19 restrictions. So let’s embrace one another albeit through Zoom for a while.
Rob Wykes 