Last Weekend

I had a busy couple of days last week, and I realized that the things which were occupying my time had not been properly represented on this blog. So, in an effort to keep you, my dear reader, abreast of my current activities, I shall give you the basic itinerary of my newfound responsibilities.

Thursday, 3:00pm – Worship Team Practice

A few weeks ago, I had a brief meeting with our dear pastor Emmanuel Ndikumana to discuss my future involvement with the worship team at PTI, our church. Motivated by our looming departure, he extended an invitation to take over the worship team for the remainder of our stay here in Bujumbura. In his words, his intention is to “squeeze me for all I’m worth.” What experience and knowledge I have accumulated from my years of leadership in music and worship, he wants the church to absorb and apply. Now, I was hesitant to agree, because it had been almost a year and a half since I had last led worship, and I was hesitant to impose my cultural tendencies onto this community. But this was during a week where Karri and I were asking God to reveal if He had work for us to do here for the next four months. This seemed to be an answer. And with Emmanuel’s assurances that my cultural tendencies were welcome, I agreed.

So last Thursday, I went in early to practice to meet with some members of the team and finish selecting our pieces for the gathering on Sunday. I then spent the afternoon hopping around like a lunatic, banging on the piano and waving my hands in the air. Let me tell you, it’s not easy leading a group of musicians through a language barrier. And when it comes time for you to rehearse the song with a Congolese beat and a Kirundi lyric while shouting directions in French, your brain tends to feel like it is being drawn and quartered. But I love these musicians. They’re eager to try new things. And as I always said back at FMC to my other beloved group of musicians, I’ll take a musician who’s willing to try something new and blow it over a musician who won’t try something new at all any day.

Friday, 8:00am – World Relief Devotions

On Thursday morning, I was approached by David, my colleague in Church Mobilization at World Relief. I had a feeling of what was coming. “Good morning, Jim. Are you ready for to bring us the preaching tomorrow?” The answer to that question, of course, was “No. Was I on the schedule?” Yes, I was. No one thought it prudent to inform me of this fact, however, and now I had an afternoon to assemble a teaching for the next morning. I cobbled together some thoughts from a lesson I shared with our youth group students a few days earlier about the Kingdom of God, about what it looks like and what it means to be priests of this Kingdom. The next morning, I arrived a bit late (because you can never really predict Bujumbura traffic.) No sooner had I found a chair on which to place my coffee cup than Sophonie, my supervisor, smiled and said, “Jim, are you ready to share with us?” I guess I had to be! “Good morning, and sorry to be late. Let’s open to Mark 1.”

At the end of my talk, (which included teaching the staff the Hebrew word T’shuvah, a word which was repeated to Karri and I for the rest of the day, regardless of context) Ngaira, the country director of World Relief and my other supervisor, gave the benediction. Included in that benediction was the announcement, prefaced by “I haven’t discussed this with Jim, but I’m sure it will be alright,” that I would be expanding this teaching as the main speaker of the four day retreat scheduled in two weeks. I guess I’ve got some more preparation to do.

Friday, 4:00pm - Music Workshop

I had been thinking for a while how to handle the increasing requests for music lessons I was receiving. My ideas came together in a music workshop, hosted by our church, PTI, and made available to any and all who would be interested in coming. I announced the class to the World Relief staff and our church family, and invited them to bring any and all who would be interested in learning more about music. I held an organizational meeting on the Friday previous, and I had twenty people there, eager to learn. This last Friday was the first class, all about music theory. I printed thirty worksheets and ran out quickly. I have no idea where many of these people came from. But they are hungry to learn. Well, maybe they aren’t so hungry to learn what the A major scale is as much as how to play the A major scale like Jimi Hendrix. But enthusiasm is enthusiasm, and I’m excited to teach what I can.

The experience ranges from complete beginner to experienced musician, but even the experienced musician has little to no knowledge of why music works the way it does. These people have tremendous ears, and can replicate many things, but they have no idea why what they are playing makes any sense. To see the lights turn on for someone is one of the more satisfying sensations you can have as a teacher, and I saw lots of lights turning on last Friday.

Sunday, 8:00am - Sermon at PTI

Not only did I get to lead the team in worship on Sunday morning, but I was also scheduled to give what is known to PTI as the exposition. What this meant was I stood in front of a mic singing for the first thirty minutes of the gathering, and then a different mic preaching for the next forty-five. I expressed my distaste for this to Emmanuel, but he simply laughed and told me not to worry about it. So I got myself good and sweaty playing guitar and piano in that frenetic way that you FMCers know so well, had a brief moment to compose myself, then took the pulpit.

We’re working through the book of Mark, and my text was where Jesus calls Peter and Andrew to be fishers of men. I walked through the relationship between a Rabbi and a disciple and gave the historic context to the story as best I could. I finished the talk with an invitation to be a disciple of Jesus and change the world. What’s great about PTI, though, is that once the sermon is through, the congregation is invited to ask the speaker any questions the talk may have raised right there on the spot. So once I had finished and Emmanuel had prayed a blessing, the mic went around the congregation and I fielded a few questions about the historical setting of the text. I’m realizing that this kind of understanding of the Bible is quite novel to most Christians here, and they are hungry for more. Emmanuel assured me that I would be back to teach again soon.

So, friends, if you've read this far, you can percieve that God has been bringing new opportunities to us in the last few days. We'll write a post about the sum of our prayers and conversations regarding our return date soon, but you can see that God is clearly continuing to demand our time and energy here. Hopefully that doesn't mean I'll have many more weekends like this one.