Here is the first installment of what will hopefully become a semi-regular feature. I’ve mentioned before that our church’s lead guitarist—Philip Keiser—currently splits his time between Texas and Kenya, Africa. He is currently serving the Kenyan government in the direction of HIV/AIDS research, and has had great opportunity for both ministry and worship while sojourning there. I’ve asked him to give us periodic reports on his time there, specifically focusing on his worship experiences with the Kenyan people.
Jambo from Kenya,
Things have been very busy here and I have been traveling quite a bit. The bad news is that I have not had much time to attend to things such as email. The good news is that I have been able to visit a lot of places and a lot of churches around the country. So I am beginning to get a good perspective regarding worship is this part of Africa.
Yesterday, I was at the African Inland Church at Kijabe Mission Station. Kijabe is one the the largest mission stations in the world. The station consists of Kijabe Mission Hospital; Moffat Bible College, which provides training for future African Inland Church pastors; and Rift Valley Academy, which is an American style boarding school for the children of missionaries. There are over 100 missionary families in Kijabe plus children who are going to school there.
Culturally, the station is a diverse mixture. There are Kikuyu (the largest tribal group in Kenya), members of other tribes that work at the station, and whites from around the world. This diversity provides many challenges for the church there. The AIC church has two services: one in English, which is the smaller service, and one in Swahili.
I have been to church there three times and there has been a marked evolution of the worship service over the last several months. African worship is characterized by spontaneity. The leader will often break out into a song that is typically a call in response. The congregation will join in, following the leader on the melody. When everybody knows the song, it works well; when everybody doesn’t, well…you can guess what happens.
Africans like traditional music, but they also like modern praise music and know all of the popular songs that we sing in church in the U.S. They also LOVE country music, which was a big shock to me. The church at AIC was trying to incorporate modern Western music with the traditional music, but on my first visit, it was not working well. For example, the song leader would start to sing a song that the congregation did know well in a key that the band couldn’t play.
Enter Kevin and Linda Pashalek. Kevin was a pastor in Houston for many year and plays guitar. Linda is quite musical and is a vocalist and has picked up many instruments. She is now learning to play bass. They have worked with the musical program at the church and have focused on things like singing together in harmony, waiting for the intro from the band, and sticking to the key.
This week’s service was delightful. There was a band and a praise team that sang a collection of worship songs in both English in Swahili. There were then several songs from a youth choir and an adult choir that included several Swahili hymns and traditional Kenyan drumming with dancing (more on that in a later email).
The last song was the offertory which was “We Will Understand It Better By and By.” This song was done in a very authentic country gospel boom-chakka style (the leaders are from Texas). The pastor liked it so much, he asked the band to play it again and have the congregation join in, singing enthusiastically and clapping. During this time, I had a flashback to Aubrey as we have done this song at New Hope where the congregation got to their feet and clapped (no dancing though).
I then had to suppress my laughter as I had a vision:
Kenyans and cowboys,
singing and clapping to country music,
worshiping the Lord.
We’d better get used to it. That’s the way it will be in heaven.
Hope all is well. I am missing everyone and miss playing on Sunday. Next Sunday I will sit in the the band in Kijabe. I have a Mexican Tele with me and my Roland MicroCube to plug it into the board.
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