More Worship with My Congolese Brothers and Sisters This Weekend

Friday night was another church service where Didier preached. Earlier that day I posted a blog article describing how much these Congolese Christians remind me of Acts 2:42, and interestingly enough, Didier was preaching on Acts 2:42 that same night! He was talking about how important it is for us to keep those 4 elements in that verse central in our Christian lives: being devoted to preaching, fellowship, breaking of bread, and prayer. With their weekday morning services, Wednesday night preaching service, Thursday night teaching to youth, Friday night preaching service, and then Sunday morning extended preaching service, these Africans are an example to us Americans of being “devoted to teaching.” The same can be said of their fellowship, breaking of bread, and prayer, all of which I’ve experienced in greater measure here than anywhere.

    This mom has a son the same age as mine who wanted a picture together after the Friday evening service.

You may remember her and her kids in a pic from my first trip. Her house doubles as a small pharmacy and her husband (who’s taking the picture) helps lead singing at the church and their love for the Lord is very evident.

The women here amaze me at what they can balance in their busy lives, and I don’t mean “balance” merely metaphorically – this lady on the left has her infant on her back with a native wrap and walks around the town selling a ginormous amount of greens (lettuce-type stuff on her head, Jaime could better tell you what it is). The lady on the right has several gallons of water on her head (think how heavy it is to carry a couple gallons of milk with your hands, then think about trying to balance that on your head).

They are strong people – Didier opens Coke bottles with his teeth, my front tooth got chipped a year or two ago by a piece of hard candy I was trying to catch in my mouth at a friend’s house! Saturday afternoon I met some strong Christians as well. Pastor Jean-Pierre runs a 24-hour Christian radio station here in town, and said maybe we could put together some American music or special service together sometime and they could air it for free (Jerry or Ron, if you’re reading this, maybe we could take him up on that offer as we put our radio programs together, maybe we could do one for them?). He asked that we in America pray for them.  I did that day, and said I would ask you to as well, which I’m doing now. Below is his face which I hope you will pause to pray for. There are many in this country who attend church but who need good Christian teaching, so please pray for good teaching in whatever venue God allows, including radio.

Below is Pastor Damien, who Didier hopes he can help re-start a church early next year, which is part of their fellowship along with Church 1 (Didier, Micky, Koko) and Church 2 (Peter, Stephan, and Mickey). Please pray for this brother as well who is currently working 7 days a week at this store to make ends meet but would like to be back in the ministry soon, if God allows and provides resources, a place to meet, etc.

Saturday we visited the local seminary where Pastor Peter attends. It is the Protestant Seminary of the area, and costs $350 a year to attend. Didier is helping Peter to attend as the church can’t afford to pay Peter’s way through school (their church benevolence fund always has more needs than they can meet just for the poor in the congregation). This semester the seminary is offering Hebrew, Greek, pastoral ministry, methods of exegesis, homiletics (preaching), etc. They pray God will provide funds for Micky to start soon – if he can’t by November he’ll need to wait till a year from now.

Didier explained Peter attends from 2:00-9:00 p.m. on Saturdays I commented to Didier, “wow, he must be tired when he has to preach tomorrow morning after a long day.” Didier replied, “Oh, no, tomorrow YOU will preach. You will preach on conversion, on regeneration, and on repentance.” I said, “oh … well, ok.” What else can you say when you know 2 Timothy 4 says “preach the Word. Be ready in season and out of season …”


I’m not sure when he would have told me that if it hadn’t come up in conversation then, but I’m glad that fact came up so I had at least a few hours notice to get ready! (a few days would have been nice if he had this planned a long time ago :) Whether “in season” or not, it takes time to warm-up, or you might pull a hamstring like me on the softball field when I didn’t warm up (of course I hadn’t played softball for probably 15 years).


If I’d known I was preaching before I came I could have brought some study materials, but with nothing but a pen and 2 sheets of paper and Bible and about 3 hours to prepare (in the U.S. I usually spend 20+ hours in prep for Sunday morning), I prayed and prepared as best I could and relied on God to do the rest. They were kind enough to take my leg-hugging little man away for that time and for the 30 minutes before church so I could actually get some decent preparation and prayer in.

Here is the little man in his Sunday best

The church service on the compound (Church 2) had about 80 people, I estimated, packed into an estimated 20 foot by 30 foot space. The signal to start is not a church bell but drumming on a tom tom at about 9:20 a.m. and then people file in for the next 20 minutes to join the worship. This corporate worship service was still going at 12:40 in the afternoon when Didier and I had to leave so he could drive and pick-up his family at Church 1. Yes, that is correct – their church service was about 3 and ½ hours (and only about 80 minutes of that was me preaching :) It is a family-integrated service and the number of babies and toddlers and young ones who sat through 3+ hours stands out, and when they get too loud an older sibling takes them outside for awhile. The nursing section is whatever seat the mom happens to be in. Something else that’s different than most American services is that during worship all kinds of noise-making things are used that I’ve never seen before, including whistles.

There was much singing, exhortation, much time for corporate prayer, special music by the youth choir, then the “traditional” women’s choir as Didier called it. He explained they have 4 different choirs, today we only heard from 2 of them. “Traditional” worship here doesn’t mean Western traditions or hymns with piano as opposed to modern “contemporary” songs with electric guitar, etc., Didier explained it means “traditional” African dance. The choir doesn’t “walk” to the choir area, they dance, stepping and swaying in unison and singing in choreographed praise that does not strike me as performance, but as praise from the heart. They clap to different rhythms than this white guy is used to but on some of the songs I was able to keep up. If the internet wasn’t incredibly slow here, I would love to upload a video, but this picture will have to do for now.

Didier told me later my message was “a very good food and meal from God’s Word” and Peter later also thanked me very much. As they translated into French and Swahili I suspect they made it an even better message than the English original. I preached on Mark 1, on John the Baptist’s message of repentance for forgiveness of sins and how Jesus in that same chapter commands “repent and believe the gospel … follow Me” (and spent a lot of time explaining what that means). I talked about how “repent” is the NT’s first recorded word of John the Baptist and Jesus (in Matthew 3-4), it’s what His disciples preached when He sent them out 2-by-2, Jesus said the reason He came was to call sinners to repent, after His resurrection He commanded that repentance for forgiveness of sins be proclaimed to all nations, and I talked about how that’s what we see Peter and Paul do to Jews and all nations in the book of Acts. I talked about true repentance and the fruits of repentance and regeneration, using several biblical examples, and then closed with the story of the remarkable conversion of Mark Njoji, a Congolese saved from being a witch-doctor in the days my great-grandfather was in Congo, and a great illustration of that chapter. Sometime I hope to have time to share more of his amazing story. I realized as I closed that I had been preaching longer than the entire worship service back home, but no one seemed to mind and God seemed to be really blessing his message.

At the close of the message, a number of men and moms with babies came forward and knelt on the concrete slab in front of the pulpit to express repentance publically and their desire to follow Jesus. Whether this was their first real repentance or a renewal of repentance as believers, only God knows, but they prayed, and then I prayed for them as well. By this time it was 12:15 and Didier continued with “many more words” (reminding me of the Apostle Paul in Acts speaking to a church he wouldn’t see for some time). This is Didier’s last Sunday with them so there was much to say. This afternoon we got some rest and tonight for the 2nd night in a row I’m taking Didier out to dinner so Mama Annie gets a break from cooking. Tonight is Chinese food. I asked him what his favorite food is of all he’s had (including in America last time he came) and he said his favorite is foo-foo and okra. Even when we go to the restaurant he brings his own foo-foo.

Didier will be greatly missed by his family and church family so please pray for them and the strength and unity and blessing of the churches here in his absence.