I have discovered that church services are run much differently here in Kenya. Planning is much less essential and time is relative. A few weeks ago, I experienced my first church service when the pastor arrived a half hour after the service was scheduled to start. It all worked out though because people here have a gift of waiting patiently as things usually start about an hour after the scheduled time. I am learning this well as Pastor Habib told me to be ready around 9:30 AM a few days ago to go visit some families that had lost children in the recent oil tanker fire. From experience, I planned to be ready to leave at around 10:30 AM. Our actual time of departure was close to 3:30 PM.
In another service, we lost electricity. Even so, we were able to continue with worship without missing a beat. I was reminded of the praise song Heart of Worship. The lyrics talk about getting away from our dependence on so much “stuff” (good music, projectors, a high tech sound system, etc) and just worshiping from the heart. It was a good reminder to me that most of what I worry about during a church service is trivial to God.
This past Sunday, I found myself playing guitar with the worship team (mostly without the lyrics or the chords for the music), helping to run the sound, running the PowerPoint for the lyrics, and (this is the best part) actually typing out the lyrics of some of the songs as we were singing them for the PowerPoint. All of these were occurring simultaneously, so as you can imagine, the worship was not as smooth as it could have been.
But even with all of the differences, we have a lot that we can learn from the Kenyan culture, and I feel very fortunate for the knowledge and perspective I am gaining from my experience here in Kenya. ~ Jeremy