One of the requirements that we have of our staff and students is that they become active participants in a church that teaches from the Bible and will help them to grow in their faith. As Christ followers we all need community that will encourage and challenge us to pursue and serve Jesus in our everyday lives. Many of us take this for granted and do not realize the blessing we have in our churches.
First let me explain that finding a thriving Bible based church that really stives to grow its members can be a challenge no matter where you live! We are blessed to have a wonderful vibrant church that we know and trust to speak TRUTH and give our students opportunities to grow their personal relationships with Jesus through Bible Studies, service opportunities and tools they need to become godly young men.
Today I want to give you a little glimpse of what church in Ghana may be like. Most churches are very small, members sit on wooden benches or maybe some plastic chairs, there is no air conditioning, and they walk to get to church. Our student do attend a church that is much more like what we are familiar with here in America and are blessed to be able to take trotro (public transport) to get there, they still have to travel far and they have to wake early to get there some traveling for over an hour. Trotros are vans similar to a 12 passenger here. They are usually jammed with about 20 people and have no air conditioning. The trotros do not run on any type of schedule where you can plan when to get there, you are at the mercy of how quickly the cars fill or if they are a already full when they get to your stop you have to wait till the correct car comes again that has space. They usually have at least 2 different cars they will have to transition to before they get close to their destination. From the "bus stop" they then will walk from there to the church, in the heat and through the dirty streets. There is often a lot of waiting and unpredictability as they try to get to church on time. Most dress nice for church there, long dress trousers and long sleeved dress shirts with nice dress shoes that they walk for long distances in and arrive hot and sweaty. Our students sacrifice time, money, and energy so that they can worship the living God! What did it take for you to get to church this Sunday? Many of us complained about loosing an hour of sleep this last week and having to get up for church! Next time you are running late or it is just a bad morning trying to get your family to church I pray God will remind you of just how blessed we are here and that maybe it will prompt you to pray for our students and others around the world that are enduring many different things just to get to church!
Finally I want to leave you with the joy and passion that is in a typical worship service. There is singing, dancing, shouting, and it is full of life and excitement as well as intense moments of confession, and intervention in prayer. Many churches there worship for several hours. The people there have joy that comes from Christ and the life He brings even in the midst of difficult lives and struggles to have the basic essentials in life. Their is an overflow of gratefulness for the simplest things and that is contagious. It is beautiful to worship in other cultures and see how the God of every tribe and tongue is praised differently yet also all the same!
Trotro
Akolgo, Yaw and Ernest at church
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