A cross-cultural experience

DAVE VOTAW

RTI teacher on field work assignment

I’ve known about this preaching assignment for a few months now. In our team meetings last winter, we decided that before Easter we would preach from the Gospel of John, and then after the Easter weekend, we would begin a series from the book of Ephesians.

Although Sam and Samson were assigned most of the preaching dates, since it is part of their academic work, all of us men on the team got a chance to preach at least once. It was decided that Dave Hayden and I would each preach on our first Saturday in country. You can read about Dave’s preaching experience at this link; mine was last night.

Since we have passed Easter, we’ve started the Ephesians series. Sam preached last week on the first half of Ephesians 1, and I watched the video. He did a great job! Here’s a link to it, if you want to see it. So, my assignment was the second half of Ephesians 1, specifically verses 15-23.

I’ve heard sermons on the first half of Ephesians 1, and lots of sermons on Ephesians 2, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard one on this passage. I’d done my research in Salem before we left and began working on turning it into a talk this week.

My time limit was 20 minutes. I wrote up a manuscript and read it to the guys on Thursday morning. Time: 17 minutes. Of course, they had several helpful suggestions, things like “You could slow it down a bit, bro,” and “what’s your main point?” so I had some additional work to do.

I made some adjustments, added a main point (seriously, I already had a main point, but I didn’t say “here’s my main point” effectively), and some practical tips for the closing. I also decided to try preaching from notes, instead of a manuscript. So I went downstairs, stood in the pulpit (it’s handy, living in the church building), and gave it a try. Time: 28 minutes. And I floundered a bit through the notes.

OK, back to the manuscript. Cut out a few paragraphs and make further adjustments. That should do it.

“So I went downstairs, stood in the pulpit (it’s handy, living in the church building), and gave it a try.”

Sam invited me to sing with him as he is leading worship music, so I joined him and Laurean (who played the drum) for a rehearsal. That was fun – I hadn’t helped lead worship music for a long time.

People started coming in, and Sam opened the service. After the worship music (which went pretty well, I thought) there was a time for prayer. Sam invited people to pray out in any language. I think I heard prayers in Chinese, Russian, and Kurdish – this is truly an international church.

Then after a blessing and dismissal of the children it was my time to speak. I think some folks were listening; at least I got a few laughs where I had planned for them, and then we sang the closing song. I got timed at 22 minutes.

They had a lot of food laid out on a table in the back and everyone was munching, so I went back, had some cake, and got to meet people. They have some great folks here. It was really interesting to hear what everyone is doing in this city.

The tradition is to go out to eat after worship, and two friends from this city (I’ll call them Abe and Benny) came with Samson, Sam, Karen, and me. We took two taxis, assigning one local person to each (it saves money on the taxi fare), and splurged on a fancy restaurant.

It was so fancy, they had two security guys who frisked us at the door. We were greeted in perfect English by a tuxedo-clad headwaiter who guided us to our table. We sat on fancy couches and embroidered chairs.

There were two beautiful crystal chandeliers, and pictures on the walls. Elegant furniture all over the room, and animal heads with curved horns above the fireplace. Hookahs were scattered through the room, with puffs of smoke emerging from various tables.

The food was not really very expensive. I think the average entrée was about 20,000 dinar ($16-17). Almost everyone at our table ordered lamb, in one form or another. Karen and I ordered lamb shish-kebab and we split a Greek salad. When the salad came it was so large that we shared it with the whole table.

But then the difficulties began; after about 10 minutes, the waiter returned, once for each of us (except me and Karen) with about 5 minutes between visits. Each person at the table was told (with many apologies) that their order was not available. Each of them chose substitutes. Pretty soon the food began to arrive – except for our lamb shish. Everyone got through their whole meal – still no food for me and Karen. Dessert was served (Samson got a milkshake!). We were assured that our food was coming. I shared that confidence, because I knew that they knew they wouldn’t get paid unless we got our food.

After nearly an hour, our lamb shish-kebabs arrived, with profuse apologies from the headwaiter, the promise of a reduction on the bill, and free fruit dessert plate for the table. The lamb tasted great, and the fruit dessert plate was beautiful. We were happy.

It was great having Abe and Benny with us. Time spent waiting for our food was filled with conversation between us. We had some good discussions and made plans to get together with them again.

From our Blog

Pastor Joseph

We spent a morning talking with Pastor Joseph, who is from the capital city of this country. We learned some surprising things!

First Impressions

Super Heroes

Bazar