A Special Sunday

Sunday was a beautiful day. Not just beautiful because the sky was a brilliant blue, the temperature was a perfect 70-something, and the birds were chirping all around me, but beautiful because of the way God found me on a porch in Kenya.

For church on Sunday, a group of about 10 friends (from 5 countries no less) decided to worship together on our own at the Global Connections house, and after making some tea and slowly waking up, we all met out on the porch. It was about 10am and absolutely gorgeous, so we spent most of the next hour lounging around listening to worship music off of a computer and singing together. There weren't any words on a screen or fancy bands, but none of us were tired of the music when we finally ran out of songs to request. After a few minutes of praying together, I shared some of what God has been teaching me lately about hope and about seeing the big picture (see one of last week's posts if you missed it). That led into an amazing discussion where everyone present talked about their thoughts on the subjects of hope and perspective, shared the parts of it where they struggled, and asked for help and accountability with various things. We put on a couple more songs and prayed on our own for a few minutes, then finished with a rousing rendition of David Crowder's "O Praise Him" to close off the "service."

It didn't really end there, though, as all ten of us made our way into the kitchen and whipped up an amazing brunch with everything we could find. Scrambled eggs, pancakes, reheated sausages, and fried potato cakes (from our leftover hoe-down mashed potatoes) made for an awesome meal, and we all laughed, talked, and ate continuously for another hour or so. Kenyans call this part of community "swallowship," the very necessary companion to fellowship!

All in all it was an unbelievable morning, and later in the day we got into a great discussion about what "church" should really look like. Most of us attend a church in Nairobi somewhat regularly, but we all agreed that this morning of worship, fellowship, prayer, digging into the word, and sharing our thoughts was the most spiritually challenging and encouraging Sunday morning that we'd had in recent memory. We started looking into the book of Acts and some of Paul's letters to the early Christian church, trying to figure out if this kind of "house meeting" was what the early church really looked like. I love my church back in America, and we all agreed that there are some advantageous things to big corporate worship - learning from people at different stages in life, combining resources to help people in need, widening the network of believers that we can encourage and welcome new people into - but we also all agreed that we were more built up and strengthened through this type of meeting in our current life situations. Getting to worship together and talk face to face with the people that we see every day is so valuable because it promotes accountability and follow-up in a special way, and having the opportunity to discuss each point of the "message" together was really cool, but I don't think any of us were convinced that a meeting like this should replace the role of "church" as we've always seen it in our lives.

I think we're all still pondering that question. What should church look like to a bunch of Christian missionaries and aid workers from all over the world who have found themselves dropped into the same place? Should we spend our Sunday mornings together on a porch with tea, a laptop, and our Bibles, or should we get up and make our way into town with a couple hundred Kenyans and a few other wazungu? Should it be both? I know some of you reading this are a lot wiser than me, so I'd love your thoughts if you have a second. Regardless of what we end up doing in the future, though, I am so thankful for how blessed I was yesterday. I'm thankful for friends that truly care about spending time together with God, and I'm thankful for the opportunity to worship in community, whatever it looks like!