A Dieu soit la Gloire

My family attends Eglise #8 in Moundou. It is a congregation of about 1000 people and it is conducted in French. There are other churches in the city that operate in Ngumbai, but according to Mama Kiri, there are no congregations that are much smaller than our church. You would have to travel to a neighboring village to see a congregation with only a few hundred people.

The service technically begins, I believe, at 8:15 but we usually arrive shortly thereafter, and we are usually among the first 10% to sit down. The majority arrives sometime before 9:00 or maybe 9:30. I can understand why there's no rush to fill in, because in my experience the service has lasted a minimum of 3 hours and upwards of 5, in the case of Communion Sunday.

The worship space is large, but even so we squeeze tightly into rows on the long wooden benches. Overhead fans and open windows have helped to keep us from overheating, but I've also noticed a number of women with large plastic fans. People look wonderful. I sit in a sea of men and women in their Sunday bests,  which are colorful, sparkly, chic fabrics and, for the women, matching head scarves fashioned in dozens of different ways.

In the past weeks I have spent the service not understanding much of anything that was happening, but this past Sunday I had the benefit of being seated next to Ruth, my SALTer friend from Canada who speaks French quite well. She very helpfully informed me what was being said from time to time, which was especially beneficial when we were called up front to be formally introduced to the congregation. Pastor Sem, who is also the director of the English school at which Ruth works, let the congregation know what we are doing this year and invited us to share a few words. Ruth did the talking, and I peaked out from behind her and smiled.

The sermon on Sunday was about one hour long. The scripture verses that it centered around were Ephesians 5: 22-24. "Wives, submit to your husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands." With the aid of Ruth, I understood that the message was that indeed, the man is the head of the household, but the head needs not weigh down the body. Furthermore, men and women are not unequal, but rather they simply have different roles. The man's role is to make good decisions for the household and to love his wife, and the woman's job is to respect and obey him. Of course I only got snippets of this sermon (through means of Ruth's translations) but the congregation seemed to be loving it. There were ripples of laughter and head nodding, especially noticeably from Mama Kiri. The sharp contrasts between the parts of the Bible emphasized in my familiar Mennonite circles with those I've been exposed to here has been a reminder to me that culture tends to shape religion just as much as religion shapes culture. We believe in the things that give us comfort and strength, and we reject or disregard the things that are incompatible with our deeply held values and ways of life. It has been fascinating and jolting to participate in family life and worship with people whose deeply-held beliefs about God and humanity are different than mine and sometimes totally foreign to me.

Following the message we had about another hour of songs, offerings, and prayer. Prayer is very frequent in our church. After the first Sunday, I asked Ruth if she thought we'd prayed more than half a dozen times and she said that surely it was closer to 20. I had to agree she was probably right. Of course, I'm not a great person to ask because sometimes I'm not sure if we are praying or not, so I just half bow my head and look out of the corners of my eyes to see what others are doing. One time I had my eyes closed for a particularly long prayer, and eventually looked up only to realize we had never been praying at all, and I just appeared to be asleep.

The offering time is a joyous occasion, and probably my favorite part of the service. All 1000 of us stand up row by row and walk or dance to the front of the space to deposit our money into offering boxes as the choir leads us in singing. Eglise 8 has two choirs: one French and one Ngumbai. The French choir sings a lot of classic hymns and worship songs that I already know, which is wonderfully familiar for me, especially because we don't have hymnals with written notes so it's not as easy for me to join along singing. On one occasion, during the worship song "You are Alpha and Omega," the leader began belting it out in English, and the whole congregation joined in, soulfully forming syllables that vaguely resembled the words, "You are Alpha and Omega. We worship you, oh Lord. You are worthy to be praised." I'll admit that I'm usually one of the last people in a room to join in when this song, or any other contemporary worship song, is played. But on this particular occasion I could hardly stop smiling as I sang!

It is my hope to be standing with the French choir before too long. In fact, Ruth and I were dropped off by our families last Saturday for rehearsal only to find out that instead of the usual 4:00-6:00 meeting time, they had arranged a slightly longer meeting from 6:00 pm until 5:00 the following morning. We were told this by a few members of the choir who were there early to prepare a meal for everyone else. We did not stick around for this particular rehearsal,  but from what I understand it's not all that rare, and is considered a bit of a spiritual practice, or proof of one's devotion. I will not neglect to mention if I ever make it through an 11-hour choir all-nighter.

Then there is the Ngumbai choir. I think they tend to be the show-stoppers. Whereas the French choir sits to the left of the podium and performs with the accompaniment of some guitars and a keyboard, the Ngumbai choir sits to the right and their preferred means of accompaniment are drums, hands, whistles, shakers, and high-pitched vocal theatrics. The harmonies are very distinct, and different from anything I've ever heard before. The music is very repetitive and somewhat chant-like, but anything but sleepy! Sometimes during the singing, people up front will do these incredible dances that involve moving their shoulders forwards and backwards at impossible speeds that make them look like chickens! I joined a dance party in the courtyard after church the other week and they made me try, and it is absolutely harder than it looks. Anyway, it is all great fun, and does wonders for waking up a sleepy congregation after an hour long sermon. Following the offering this past Sunday, as the choir finished a rousing piece, Mama Kiri and a woman on the other side of the sanctuary had a contest to see who could make the loudest, most enthusiastic "Ayayayayayayay!!!!" sound, to the laughter of the whole congregation.

After church this past Sunday, before taking my exit on Mama Kiri's motorcycle, I bought my own copy of the hymnbook. Perusing it this week, I have discovered lyrics that are clearly translations of some deeply loved sings from my life. I have enjoyed sharing them and learning new songs with members if my community since then, and I'm excited to add more to my repertoire. While so much about these worship experiences are certainly going to be very insightful cultural experiences, it's nice to know that there will also be snippets of the familiar in it all!