Sunday in the local church

Ah! Sunday was the day I was waiting for. We were going to attend a service of the United Church of Zambia in Kabwe. Another heavy rain shower started at 6:45 am. This meant the bus was late coming to pick us up for the 8 am service. When we got there – all rather wet – the service had started and the lay leader was saying a prayer of confession that was a complete presentation of the Gospel. The building was packed, with people in the vestibule. They had saved places for us in the first row. I was in the chancel with the Cevaa General Secretary and President since I would be interpreting for the sermon. I found out after the service that, because of the heavy rain that morning, there were only about half as many people in attendance as there usually are. On a normal Sunday the courtyard outside the church is also full and people follow the service on loudspeakers.

An elder gave 30 mn of announcements. Taking so much time was necessary because the parish is divided into 15 sectors and there were announcements of activities for each sector as well as for the youth and women. In addition he recognized all visitors and people moving into Kabwe, everyone who was going to be traveling and leaving Kabwe, read a list of the sick, and gave information on the special activities that had been held the previous week (including all the winners and prizes won at a fund-raising drawing held by one of the church organizations!) The introductions of everyone involved in our seminar came at this time. The UCZ General Secretary again gave me some very generous compliments.

The church service was in English. There are 72 different languages in Zambia, and Kabwe is a large enough center that people come there from all over the country. So, English is the language they all can understand. There is a second service later in the morning that uses the local language. There were 2 choirs that sang during the offering time. The first sang in a local language with a very “African” style. I took a short video of this group. The other choir sang in English in the style of an American choir, with 4-part harmony, different voices coming in at different times, and metered rhythm.

The Cevaa president from French Polynesia preached the sermon on Luke 5:1-11 and I interpreted for him. After the service, all the Cevaa representatives exited first and, since the rain had stopped, lined up outside the church. The whole congregation came and greeted us one by one, in a line: “good morning”, “welcome”, “bless you”, “journey mercies”… Most of them shook hands, and a few gave the 3-part African handshake: handshake, grip thumbs, handshake.

The women’s group then invited us into the church hall where they had prepared hot drinks and some lovely little cakes. The first thing we all did was line up to have our hands washed as one of the women poured warm water over them. After a couple of hundred handshakes, we appreciated their thoughtfulness!