church visits

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Feature photo: Military camps in Africa

Since Christianity has been with humanity for quite some time, it is actually possible almost anywhere in the world to be able to attend such a service - perhaps not exactly one of your own denomination, but definitely a Christian service.

If you work as a soldier abroad, you can basically assume that you will also be accompanied by ministers or priests. An advantage that should not be underestimated, which unfortunately only becomes clear to many on site — and if you are away from home for months, it can also lead to a completely new assessment of your own faith.

Unfortunately, a few years ago I was not able to get my staff and I to have access to at least one pastor when we were out in sub-Saharan Africa. Admittedly, we didn't miss it that much, at least in the first few weeks — the challenges were simply too numerous.

But when we had established ourselves locally and apart from a lot of landscape there was only more area available, we were very pleased that we found a church in the "neighborhood" that could provide us with some variety at least on Sundays.

And when, a few weeks later and a good day's journey away from most of my employees, I had found my way around so well that I thought I could dig out one or two Sunday mornings, so I also looked for somewhere near my accommodation a church.

I even found these very close by and made a pilgrimage there very early on Sundays, because not only was I woken up by the loudspeakers of a mosque in the neighborhood, but also a very large and, above all, very loud pair of birds, which lived right in front of my window and themselves always complained for a long time about the prayer leader, so that sleeping in was not an option. During the week you could get to work straight away, and on Sundays you could go straight to church.

The advantage of this church was that at least the Sunday services always took place in shifts, and the church was always filled to the last seat. The times given were less good, as they served the congregation more as a rough guide.

Based on the procession line-up in front of the church, I was able to see how long it was until the next service and then decide whether I would go to the current service or wait for the next one.

I spent the first services, which always lasted a good two hours, in the back of the church so as not to attract attention as the only white person, but I gradually lost my shyness and finally, for the sake of comfort, managed to get a seat in the middle of the congregation. Incidentally, this once led to a little girl sitting behind me pushing back the sleeve of my jacket during the sermon to see if my arm was also white. When I turned around and looked the girl in the eye, she broke into a fit of screaming and the otherwise very noisy church suddenly went quiet as a mouse. The mother calmed it down and the sermon went on. Shortly thereafter, the little girl pushed up my pant leg and I didn't dare look back.

With the exception of the morning service, every service followed the same order. The square in front of the church was full and people were talking. Before the pastors, the band, other volunteers and the congregation solemnly left the church, the same procession gathered in front of the church, only to enter the church with the same solemnity after the first had left. Some pastors accompanied at least two services, which I noticed when I went to the service too late and then immediately followed the next one.

Since the services were mainly held in one or more African languages, it was difficult for me to follow the whole content, which was less tragic, since the music and singing always dominated. And otherwise there was usually hustle and bustle in the ranks of the congregation, which sometimes gave the impression that the pastor and volunteers in the front were celebrating a different service than the rest of the congregation in the back rows.

Sometimes it even happened that a member of the congregation suddenly rushed forward screaming, waving his arms and legs and shaking his whole body and one of the pastors performed a kind of “exorcism”, whereby the entire congregation fell into a kind of ecstasy.

Even after a few months, the two-hour church services were always over faster than many a church service here. My visits did not go unnoticed either, so it was only a matter of time after the service that I received an invitation to the Bible study that followed, which extended my Sunday church visits to a good four hours.

In the beginning, these Bible studies were a very special experience, because the participants analyzed one chapter after the other under the guidance of a pastor and tried to involve me. But this also meant that I got to know more and more about the community and the religion represented there. When several pastors then insisted in the Bible study that homosexuals must be killed because they were the devil, my visits to church in this community were a thing of the past and I preferred to use the free time for Sunday excursions into the countryside.

My experience with parishes is that no two parishes are the same. Each congregation is different and unique, reflecting the individual church members and developing its own traditions, even if they are all based on one scripture - our Bible. And so one can consider oneself lucky if, as a Christian, one finds exactly the church in which one feels comfortable and secure.

"The irreligious are more religious than they know, and the religious less than they think."

Franz Grillparzer, Studies in Philosophy and Religion. Historical and political studies (2011: 32, 1857.)

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