I said, “You know, it’s just like a patient person can cook a stone until he eats his soup from it…” And there was a roar of appreciation. The congregation was “eating-up” the European folk tale of Stone Soup as I related it to one of their traditional proverbs and the need for us to USE WHAT WE HAVE in our service of God. I was glad that the congregation was so receptive. I knew if there wasn’t some good Spirit-moving and story-telling, there could be quite a let-down. Can you imagine listening to this quiet-spoken, cool-headed European share after the congregation had been impassioned by more than an hour of every group in the church singing their own specific genres of hymns and choruses? (see video below)
In mid-November I had the privilege of preaching in a nearby town for the biggest service of the year, the Thanksgiving service. The congregation’s hope for this Thanksgiving service was to have enough money from special offerings to finish building a big enough church to hold all 200+ members.
An impromptu thanksgiving chorus.
I preached on using what’s in your hand, like Moses and his staff, instead of complaining that you aren’t able to do anything (a fitting message for a CHE trainer). And I was proud (too proud) that I got finished in reasonable time, around 12:00 so that the service wouldn’t be too much longer than people were used to. But next came the giving of the special thanksgiving offering. That section of the service ended at 3pm. So that meant a 6 hour service, plus we had a 1.5 hour drive each way. Our kids were great troopers to keep up good attitudes through the whole thing!
Among all the great festivities, the thing that caught my attention the most was when they started auctioning off the pastor as a slave. While they were waiting for the offering to be counted up, someone came in and said that they heard there wasn’t enough money to reach their goal, so they were offering $10 to buy the pastor unless someone could match that much money to ransom him. This started a bidding war between the two local sub-tribes who are allowed to tease each other over who is the servant of whom. Hilarity ensued as people brought out even more money and pounded it down on the pulpit with bombastic reasons for supporting of one side or the other. Another $100 was raised and in the end the losing side said someone had switched the piles of money so it should just all be combined and given to the new building… I would have liked to see the pastor in a dunk tank instead, but I guess this was more culturally appropriate!
Children's group lining up to give their
thanksgiving offerings at our church.
--El Padre
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