Ian Smith - Church Visit #2

Church name: Jehovah Jireh Asembleas de Dios

Church address: La Florida, El Paraiso, Honduras

Date attended: March 14, 2015

Church category: Different socioeconomic status

Describe the worship service you attended. How was it similar to or different from your regular context?

I attended an outdoor evangelistic event that was put on by the pastor of the local Assemblies of God church in La Florida, a rural village in the mountains of southeastern Honduras on the Nicaraguan border. Because the community of La Florida is small and isolated (about 50 families spread out across a few mountains) the majority of the village was able to attend. 

Because my regular church context is in a different language and country, there were some obvious superficial differences between Church of the Resurrection and this Honduran service - everything was done in Spanish, and much of the message called the audience to action on behalf of the Honduran people. There was no liturgy of any kind, other than the presence of both message and music (although this may have been different on a Sunday morning - I'm not familiar enough with the Assemblies to compare its denominational traditions to my own). 

I noticed that the audience did not participate and was not invited to participate at any point in the service, except to sing. In most services that I have attended in the United States, especially more informal services like this, audience participation is a central part, especially the sharing of testimonies or during times of group prayer.   

What did you find most interesting or appealing about the worship service?

It was interesting that the service was seen as community event, an excuse to come together and catch up. There are plenty of men and women in La Florida who are outspokenly uninterested in religion, yet most of them came and stood silent in the back, watching and listening. Families came from miles away on foot with small children, others came by horse. They were not given an explicit opportunity to interact with each other during the service, but many did regardless, talking quietly to each other throughout the evening. Many of them, especially the younger people, hung around the site of the event for an hour or two after the meeting ended.

What did you find most disorienting or challenging about the worship service?

There sometimes seemed to be a difference in the pastor's desire for the service and what the people who came actually wanted from it, how they perceived the purpose of the event. This was most clear during times of music - not many people in the audience sang along, even when the lyrics were familiar - as well as when the pastor made an "altar call"/asked for recommittment to Christ, and no one responded.

I wonder how much the presence of our American group altered the service. What do these kinds of events usually look like in rural Central America? Was the event itself accommodating us to an extent that actually excluded regular worshipers? Did an unusual number of nonbelievers gather because of the novelty of us being present? Were people uncomfortable doing worship as usual while hosting a fairly substantial team from another country? The biggest challenge was probably this kind of Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, not being sure how closely that specific night reflected the typical corporate worship experience of Asembleas.

What aspects of Scripture or theology did the worship service illuminate for you that you had not perceived as clearly in your regular context?

On Saturday night, the pastor gave a rousing sermon on Jesus as "the way, the truth, and the life" that ended with an altar call. He didn't frame salvation in the way evangelists typically do in the United States, though. There was very little talk about deliverance from personal sin, or the hope of Heaven. 

Instead, the pastor began his sermon by describing the rampant violence in Honduras, which is generally considered to be the most dangerous country in the world. The solution to "our sons and daughters lying dead in the streets," he said, was not primarily political reform, which is always made impossible by unchangeably corrupt systems, but rather the salvation of individuals. Individuals, families, and communities needed to turn away from patterns of violence toward patterns of grace and forgiveness, he said, before we could hope for any lasting change.

This expectation that Christ could be the solution to entrenched systems of homicide, poverty and corruption gives Jesus' statement "I am the way" a richer meaning for me. Jesus is not merely a decision we make; the life of Christ is a road we take that leads us into grace, into love - thus into fellowship with the Father, which is opposed to the forms of degradation that are rampant in Honduras, the United States, and everywhere else.