Tanzanian communion

Posted by Ali

I went to church today, but in hindsight I'm not sure that was the best use of my time. This week was communion at the university church and Max and I were the only people from our campus who went to church. And we sat there for close to four hours! Yeah, that was just for the church service, not including the Sabbath School lesson (which we thankfully didn't make it in time for). At this church announcements are very important and take up a good 20-30 minutes at the start of the service. Included in this is telling who will be doing what for the service (since there are no bulletins) and sometimes we even get a preview of who will do what for the following Sabbath, too. After the announcements, opening songs, prayers, and the offering there was a rather lengthy sermon (all of this, except for the songs, included translating) and then there were more announcements about the foot washing and communion.

Finally communion time started and the men all filed outside and the women stayed inside and the deaconnesses started clearing a whole bunch of the plastic chairs that we use to sit on (we don't have pews) and then the ones left out had to be put into neat rows. Only then could the deaconnesses start to pour the water into basins. And the deaconnesses brought each pair of foot-washers their basin, also a lengthy process. But it was interesting to watch. Since I was the only white person in the church (after Max went outside with the men) and didn't know anyone else I just sat in my second-row chair and waited to see if someone would come talk to me. And a lady did. She had just been singing in a group for a special music after the sermon and while the men left the church. Her name was Sophie (or maybe Sophia, I was never quite sure) and she was very friendly. After the foot washing we left the basin at the end of the row of chairs for the deaconnesses to collect and then went outside to wash our hands (washing hands is a big thing here, apparently) with soap and water. Then we went back inside and sang hymns in Swahili until the everyone had finished the foot washing and the men came back inside. Sophie had a hymnal with her (most people don't and just know all the songs by memory) and she shared that with me so I would be able to sing along in Swahili instead of just trying to sing in English by memory.

During this time two pieces of paper were going around the room, one for the men and another for the women. We all had to print our names and our home church on the paper. Max told me later that it was so the pastors could see who had attended the service and which members hadn't been there and they would go visit the people who weren't there to make sure everything was OK (spiritually, I guess) with those members. An interesting approach, I thought. Then the pastors did a few more little speeches standing behind the communion table which had to be translated, of course, and then they finally had the prayer for the emblems and the deacons started passing them out (after more public washing of hands up front so everyone could see that the hands were all clean). Then while the deacons passed out the bread and wine the pastors called for testimonies and so several people went up front to talk and that had to be translated, too. Then once everyone had their bread and wine the pastor talked more about how it was such a special occasion and if anyone knew of people who weren't at church and needed to be at this service then to let them know afterward and the pastors would arrange house visits. I was a bit uncomfortable with this idea as it seemed a bit too close to a more Catholic way of looking at communion. Anyway, after much reading of Bible verses we were finally allowed to eat the bread and drink the wine (which wasn't grape juice but either guava or pear juice...pretty interesting concept but makes sense when you realize that not many grapes are grown in this area of the continent and grape juice is very expensive compared with many other types of fruit juices). Then, after one more testimony and a few more words by the pastors (and an announcement about a watch that was found during the foot washing), church was finally over - it just after 2:30 p.m. by this point and we had left for church at 10:30 in the morning! So LOTS of sitting in my plastic chair except for when I washed Sophie's feet and then washed my hands outside afterward. It was quite a long experience, but interesting as well to watch how communion happened in Africa. It was different, too, than when I had communion in India. Although it can be fun to see how the same custom is slightly different around the world, I was quite happy for that service to be over.