Surprises

Sawubona! (that's the standard Zulu greeting, and the first word in my Zulu vocabulary)

It's amazing to think that little over a week ago I was getting ready to go to Heathrow for my flight to Durban. I think 10 months will both go quickly and yet feel like it has been stuffed full of experiences.

I've had a few already, of all kinds. On Friday I went to a birthday party which was really a lot more like a church service in celebration of the birthday girl. The couple involved are friends of Hope Church as fellow church plant leaders in the Durban area (from NCMI - New Covenant Ministries International), and so I tagged along with the few who could tear themselves away from the England Vs SA rugby match on the same evening.

Where the party/service was was one of the surprises I've had since being here. We were in a large hall, not unlike a medium sized school assembly hall, in a township in Chesterville near where I live. You might be thinking, "How does a township with it's makeshift housing go together with a large meeting hall that's solid and well equipped?" I wondered the same thing! Apparently goverment iniative has decided to equip townships with some facilities to make them more amenable, but didn't think it better to give people proper houses! I'm sure it's not as simple as that (e.g. if you can't build everyone a new house then it's going to be pretty unfair; building something new and of decent size will probably mean tearing down neighbouring shacks; where to put people while new things are being built; the need to put in serious infrastructure like water and electricity before building), but it was a big surprise to see a large and modern facility laid out with posh tables and chairs and china, etc, in a typical poor township. These townships have been part of the landscape for so long now that their presence has become pretty accepted (there are road signs to the areas, for example, and then there are things like these permanent government built community facilities) even though they must have changed lots over the decades.

Anyway, back to the party. I was told to expect a massive culture shock and was more surprised by the lack of it really! There were not the numbers of people expected (we could easily have had double the number), and a large number of white people turned up too so it was probably about 50% white. Talking about it today, Drew, the leader of Hope Church, said that in his experience it was pretty common for Zulu people to behave a lot more in line with the white people when it is so mixed, and this was certainly the case. There was little of the lively Zulu party spirit I had been told to expect even though all the worship, led by Drew, was Zulu and Sesotho songs (he's got an amazing ability to sing these songs with perfect accent without being a great speaker of the languages). There were a troupe of Zulu dancers from another church however. These 20 or so teenagers were amazing in their display of coordination, volume, and flexibility (Zulu dancing involves lots of high kicks where people's thighs seem to touch their shoulders and stamping of the foot on the way back down). A couple of the girls led a call and response with the rest of the group, and when they shouted out the call it was incredible to hear this unamplified voice fill this large hall without sounding at all strained! This was certianly not dainty, but definitely full of grace and elegance. Mostly I couldn't understand anything, but at one point they sang a chorus with broad harmonies, and typical african drums and instruments, and what they were singing was clear enough even in Zulu - "Jesus died for me!" Wow! What a powerful thing to see - a totally different culture employing all its means to respond in worship to the same God I worship. It was amazing to see the gospel taken root fully in another culture and to see that the gospel truly is transferable to all cultures of the world. Wherever you take it, it will take root! The heart cannot but soar when it sees other people who are so different nevertheless come to the exact same truth by such obviously distinct means. What joy must God have as he sees the worship of all the nations at once! Yet, as Drew's T-Shirt said today, "Panta te ethnos!" - To all nations! This joy is not yet full either in the heart of God or in the heart of the unreached, or partially unreached, nations of this world. Let's get to work!

More surprises from the party: an apparently famous preacher was brought in to speak and his message was disturbing, i) because of its content, ii) because of how familiar this content is. The main focus in this rambling preach was that God's glory rising upon us (as in Isa 60) means that we should all be getting seriously rich and gaining authority and running the world - for God's glory of course! When hearing about it afterwards Gary Welsh said, "See? This is why Newfrontiers is needing to plant churches in Southern Africa - this is everywhere!" Anyway, among the more outrageous remarks was the one that said, "Poverty is a sin"! Why? Because if you're poor you can't do what God calls you to do, e.g. care for the poor, or go to other nations, etc. I hope that idea is so patently false that I don't need to offer any biblical refute, but it's amazing how so many people lap up this kind of talk that promises that God will make you a millionaire in a year. I would put it down to the desperate need of many here, but the same is going on in the UK all the time, which is, as I said, distressing. It seems like the gospel isn't the only thing to cross cultures - false gospels do too!

Sunday I went with Gary to Mtubatuba (so wasn't at Hope Church, where I'm based, and so haven't met them yet!) where he was preaching. We set off at 6:15am for a two hour drive up the coast, passing masses of timber plantations with their perfect rows of trees. Mtubatuba is a small town largely based around the sugar industry. I'm not quite sure of the ecomonic factors involved, but the town used to be predominantly white, with labourers presumably coming in from neighbouring villages. However in the last decade or so most of the white people have left and the town is predominantly black. Looking at the church though this is not the case! It would seem that they established themselves when the white population was present, and then it becamse a shrinking bastion of the white presence in the town. The new leader, Anthony, has been working hard to effect change, and has seen some success with the church now being about as mixed as Beulah (so probably about 1/3 black).

The church meets in a large hall, but doesn't have more than about 70 people. A number of local kids from the school that the church runs were sitting on small chairs towards the back for some unknown reason. It was lovely to be among believers though - to worship, to sit under the Word being preached, and so on. But I was surprised again. When I came away I said, "That was all too much like England!" Things like Hillsong have a worldwide influence as well as a lot of American worship leaders. Most of the songs we sung could have been lifted right out of an English context - even the CD music played in intervals. The mix of people was again more like England, as was the general atmosphere of the place (quite sombre and reserved). Spooky stuff. It's beginning to seem that a lot of work needs to be done to create truly African church across the board in SA (though of course SA is now a huge multiracial mix, not solely native Africans).

So that's been the first of a few surprises. I've yet to attend Hope Church (being away in Mtubatuba last week) so I'll be very keen to see what that's like. May it yield a pleasant surprise and a great opportunity to work in an entirely new context, to the multi-coloured praise of God!