Sunday morning – Ouagadougou style!
Even I can understand the point of church starting at 8am when it gets as warm as it does here – 400 people crammed together at 11am just wouldn’t work.
This morning we visited the Assemblies of God church in Ouagadougou with a colleague from the centre here. It was everything you would expect from a large, active, African church. Brightly coloured outfits on men and women, hardly a grey suit in sight, with lots of singing, clapping and swaying. The choir made a great sound, but then so did the congregation – how they managed to decide who should be in and who should stay out is beyond me… maybe they just take it in turns.
I guess the service was what I was expecting, passionate, musical and full. What I didn’t expect was the band – no African drums here, it was full on 1970’s guitar rock, with drums and a keyboard; the PA system – loud enough to annoy members of any British church; and the split of men to one side and women to the other. Apparently, the church was quite progressive by allowing one column of pews for men and women to sit together in the middle.
There was no PowerPoint or overhead projection, but most people seemed to know the words of the song off by heart. What was familiar was the notices ‘thou shalt have no service without them’ and the sermon, the minister had three points.
The service was in French, so Eddie translated the sermon for me from Mark 9. He preached on,
- Having faith in God
- Faith results in prayer
- And also leads to fasting
We had permission from the pastor to do some filming and take some photographs, so that’s all going to appear at some point, I’ll just need to do an editing job first.
