Fi and I were up here in Byron on Sunday so we thought we’d go to church. We had no idea what, where, or when that would be until Fi saw a sign on the local notice board for a church in Byron that had a service at 10am (10am was a good time for us because we were sleeping in…) and seeing as these guys had a notice and we knew their service time we thought we’d give them a shot…
But I must admit that the location gave me some hesitations…
This church wasn’t located in the main centre of Byron but in the industrial estate on the outskirts of town. Now, geographical position doesn’t always tell you much about a church but to my mind the industrial park is a melting pot for everything that’s weird and wacky in the Christian church… Just think about some of the churches you know that are located in industrial estates… Yeah.
So I was tentative about what we mind find…
I don’t mind trying something different for church but we really weren’t up for anything too out there… you know, like wild prophesies, tongues, and a 2 hour sermon…
We probably should’ve made a different choice.
When we arrived we found it was quite small… Smallness is fine. Nothing wrong with a small church, but it does mean it’s harder to escape un-noticed if you need to bail.
They were quite welcoming, but when we walked through the door it felt like people just stared at us in a way as if to say “What the Hell are new people doing here? We don’t have new people?” That just felt kinda awkward…
Then we sat down to begin the service. The opening line went something like:
“Wow. Awesome. Great to see so many people here this morning… must be for my birthday (?). OK. So umm, we were hoping to have a prophetess speak to us this morning but she can’t make it – caught up in a revival somewhere – so if you came to see her sorry about that. We got some other guy instead…” Not an exact quote… but something like that.
At this stage I was, let’s say… ‘curious’ about what was to come. We sang some songs that I knew and that was comforting. We sang a 20 minute version of “How Great is our God” and I was cool with that. People started shouting out “Jesus Hallelujah!” and I was cool with that. Then people started chanting “Jesus Jesus Jesus! Hallelujah Jesus Jesus!” and I was cool with that (basically people just replaced the word “um” with “Jesus” when they spoke…). Then the dude in front of me kinda had some spasm and started laughing in short loud bursts… I was kinda cool with that but a bit freaked.
We did communion after singing. It seemed kinda spontaneous because someone just volunteered to do it out of the blue, and I was cool with that. The format was casual and pretty normal. Good quiet contemplation and reflection.
Now it was time for the sermon.
Cue sermon introduction: “Good morning folks. I forgot my guitar and I forgot my notes.” Good intro.
The “speaker” borrowed a guitar and burst into a song. His wife came up and joined in. They finished by speaking in tongues and then encouraged everyone to join in. Most peoples “tongue” sounded alot like Hebrew or Arabic. I don’t speak in tongues, so I just watched… The tongues bit went on for a while. Some of it was interpreted and some wasn’t. The crazy thing is that people would speak loudly in a tongue for a bit and then interpret themselves (for our benefit I guess), but it did make me wonder why they wouldn’t just skip the tongues bit and just give us the interpretation bit? There’s no benefit for me to hear their tongue when I can’t understand it. (cf. 1 Corinthians 14)
I thought the songs and the tongues might be the sermon seeing as the speaker forgot his notes, but… I was wrong.
Instead the speaker’s wife got up and gave a 30 minute talk followed by the “speaker’s” 30 minute talk without notes… I say 30 minutes but we actually left before he finished and he’d already been going for 35 minutes without any indication of finishing anytime soon.
It was kind of awkward walking out in full view of everyone and we smiled and said goodbye and thankyou and then took off.
