I was shooting a promo video for Yaaka Afrika, standing in the jungle of Uganda when I was asked the question, ‘what, if anything, can the American church learn from the African church?’ The tone in Nathan’s voice was respectful and seemed to indicate that he was entirely okay with the answer, ‘nothing.’ But, obviously he asked the question for a reason.
It was a good question.
Is there anything we can learn?
Of course there is.
I only wish I had the time, wisdom and insight to know fully what we could learn and implement in our Bridgeway version of the American Church. Being in country for only two weeks and having such limited access to observe their ‘normal’ church services didn’t give me much to work with, but I was at least able to be around Christian African culture (at least Ugandan) for a number of days. This was enough to recognize at least three things that we would be blessed to blend into our American Bridgeway-style church services.
May I share them with you?
1.) Stop Putting Time Frames on God
Why are we in such a rush to leave church? We got dressed, focused our minds, drove away from our home at a rather inopportune time when we had a million other things we could have done, so with all that effort why are we so eager to get the service over and out the door?
I’ll admit this is more of a Caucasian church thing. Other cultures (namely the African-American and Latino/Hispanic) are far more content to go to church and stay there. Unfortunately the white community tends to design our lives around efficiency and there are many unintended consequences to that, this being one of them.
I was walking down the dirt road from Pastor Steven Trint’s house in Toggo Village to T.I.C.C (Toggo International Children’s Center) school about ¾ of a mile away with one of Pastor Steve’s adult daughters. Imac (short for Imaculate) is a beautiful, serious and wise young woman and mother. She was my primary translator for teachings at the school. As we walked she turned to me and said respectfully, ‘Pastor Lance, may I ask you a question?’ ‘Of course,’ I replied, thinking she was about to ask a deeply personal question. ‘Why do you Americans walk so fast?’ I looked up the road and realized that she was keeping up with me but we were far behind the rest of the team that had left us in the dust.
Right off the top of my head (or perhaps under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit) I blurted out, ‘Because we design our lives around efficiency believing that the more we can accomplish the more valuable we are. We have forgotten how to BE and only know how to DO.’
Church for Ugandans is over when it’s over. You preach until you’re done. You worship until the inspiration dwindles. You dance until you are tired. You pray until there is breakthrough. At least that’s how it appeared.
To be honest, they don’t have multiple services back to back to watch out for, nor a huge amount of staff members and volunteers to organize on and off stage.
2.) Simplify
The Ugandan culture is difficult but simple. In the villages, each day consists of simple routine (the city is a bit more complicated but similar). Each village “center” had the same types of stores: market, hair salon, building material store, cellular kiosk, pharmacy, clothing, butcher. Each was a simple 10 X 20 storage unit looking concrete ‘store’. Basic needs, simple items if you can afford them. Each simple home (sometimes a dark mud brick one-room hut, sometimes a small concrete 2-room structure, rarely a small home) seemed to have a goat out front on a rope. Usually in the mornings you would see a woman sweeping the loose dirt off the hard-packed dirt front area to clean up for the day.
This simplistic existence in the villages continued on in the schools and the church. The classrooms were full of wooden desks with no backs and chalkboards built into the stone wall. Everything in the church (wall hangings, banners, chairs – everything but the walls) had to be set up and torn down each week, so it demanded simplicity. All you needed was a few aesthetics, a few chairs and the Holy Spirit and church was on. Beside the need to set up a sound system, they brought their own feet for dancing, their own hands for clapping and their own lips for praying.
Maybe I’m fooling myself, but their simplified approach seemed to allow for freedom to follow the spirit in the air and the Spirit in their heart. I look at our services in America and the tight schedules, the jamming in the information, the quick exit and wonder whether we have made our lives so complicated that we don’t really have time to do church like church should be done. I’ll have to reflect on that a bit more.
3.) Let Joy Flow
Ugandans dance and sing all the time. It’s kinda stereotypical and odd, I suppose, but it’s so beautiful. When the kids need to stand up and stretch during the school day, sometimes they break out in dance and singing. In the mornings around Pastor Steve’s house, the young ladies in the adjacent dorm sing worship. In the evening they sing again. In church we did just as much dancing as preaching. At the Grand Opening the whole day was filled with orchestrated dance numbers up front, to ‘let’s all get out there and dance’ free dancing. Even at the VBS we set up had lots of dancing involved but that didn’t stop each day from having added on dancing at the end. Even I was drug out onto the floor in front of over a thousand people and asked to dance a traditional ‘booty-shaking’ dance, which I did to the hilarious roar of the crowd (nothing funnier than a white tall guy trying to do traditional African dance).
I asked two young ladies the same question: “Why do you dance in church?” I went on to explain my question. Some of the dance just looks like they are having fun and enjoying one another. It seems less like worship and more like ‘I just want to dance right now and get my groove on with my friends’. What does this have to do with Jesus and church? Each of them gave me a similar answer – It’s expressing joy before the Lord. One of the young ladies said, ‘I don’t go to discos/clubs. I don’t dance with men. I dance only with my Lord. I love to dance and dancing with Him is my favorite thing.’ How can I argue with that? The other said that to her dancing is an expression of joy and that praise to God is partly just appreciating His presence and being thankful and joyful for what He’s already done for us. I suppose it’s like dancing for joy when something exciting happens (i.e. a homerun from your favorite baseball team, winning the car on Price is Right, etc.).
As I further reflected I realized how communal it is. Dancing together. Who would have thought? Connecting at a fun level, enjoying the time together, moving to the rhythm of a worship song (should it always be left at home in the kitchen when no one is around?) and laughing together. What a beautiful community thing to do. I suppose we could play Bunko, have a potluck AND dance, right? Although I’m quite certain most of us (white folk) need to find our inner groove in order to not make an abomination of our worship dance.
But what stuck out to me the most was the joy. I don’t care if we dance or not. I don’t really care if we sing per se (although I think that singing to the Lord is one of His favorite things we do), but I do care if we have joy in our hearts spilling over on our neighbor. Why are we so unable or unwilling to express our gratitude outwardly. It’s like we are stuck in the Puritan era of grasping our hands to our chest and just smiling big when God touches our heart. But King David danced with all his might. Maybe our joy can be a bit more expressive to impact those around us and stir joy in their hearts as well.
Conclusion
I don’t think that African church is better than American church. I think that it’s different. But why wouldn’t we be open to learning from one culture to another various ways of honoring the Lord and brightening our atmosphere? I’m sure there are things that they can learn from us as well. Maybe that’s why we need to be as culturally diverse as possible and listening to all the hearts. You never know, what’s weird today may be natural tomorrow.
