Pentecostal Services, Generally

Before I go any further into my adventures in Liberia, I think its important to give a brief (hah!) outline of how a Pentecostal service usually goes, since I’ll be referring to it so often. It usually begins with lots of praying, which is not the Western/mainline church-style kneel, bow your head and be silent type of prayer. Prayer in Liberia means people are pacing back and forth, yelling at the top of their lungs, speaking in tongues, pumping their fists, jumping up and down, crying…its very vocal, to say the least. Before any service, you will have prayed for a good hour. (that said, people trickle in gradually, so that from the beginning of the praying to the beginning of the sermon, the number of people will have doubled or tripled). This praying is exhausting. I’m mentally and spiritually unable to pray for more than a few minutes, so I’ve started doing a number of things (speaking out loud, of course) in order to ‘fit in’. I’ll bow my head, hold my hands in the air, and to make sure I’m adding the speaking outloud element, I usually begin by naming all of the United States in alphabetical order (thanks to grade school for teaching me that ridiculous song), then I’ll say the pledge of allegiance, a few nursery rhymes, maybe go through a few David Bowie, Rolling Stones or Aerosmith songs, and if I’m feeling really energetic, I’ll talk through some of my thesis ideas. Its actually pretty constructive, at times. Anyhow, after praying is ‘praise and worship’, which is about 2 hours of singing, dancing and intermittent praying. The music is usually fantastic…not least because of the drum set, keyboard, 2 electric guitars, sometimes horns, tambourines and always these massive ‘maracas’ which surely have a name but I don’t know it. Usually there is a large choir who sing incredibly well, and sometimes there will be solos which are as good as any professional gospel singer. Its all very good fun, and I am getting better at dancing ‘African style’ according to the pastors and other church members. So after that are always a few testimonials, in which members will come to the front and tell everyone what God has done for them. These range from very general accounts: ‘Thank you Jesus for blessing me and for my church’ or ‘thank you for my job promotion’, to extremely detailed stories about specific events: ‘Thank you Jesus for healing me of my blindness, which I had since I was 10 years old and went to every doctor and they said I’d never be healed but I prayed and fasted and…..’ on and on for 10-20 minutes sometimes. Then are the announcements, which are very long-winded and they go on for ages because of the sheer volume of Christian activity to announce. Then, ‘It’s offering time!!!!’ The first offering, that is. Offerings are also usually called ‘seeds’. The theology here is that if you give an offering to the church, you are planting a ‘seed’ which, in time, will grow and grow so that you will reap ‘100-fold’ of what you’ve given. ‘The more you give, the more blessings you will receive’ and so on. This theology was imported from the US; it’s also called ‘health and wealth gospel’ or ‘prosperity gospel’. Its controversial, to say the least, and a huge part of my thesis, but I’ll leave it at that for now. So we hold our ‘seeds’ in the air, ask for blessings in return, and we start the offering procession to the basket (there might be up to 5 baskets, depending on the number of people at the service). The procession is very fun, you walk through the entire church, dancing to an upbeat song, and you drop your ‘seed’ into a basket. In a large service, this process can take 15 minutes. In a huge service, as in Winners Chapel, there are 6 individual processions, to save time. After ‘offering time’ is ‘The Word of God’; in other words, the sermon. The pastor/preacher/whomever is speaking goes to the podium, microphone in hand, and leads the congregation in a prayer; then everyone is seated and the sermon will go on for anywhere from an hour to two hours. These pastors can SPEAK, I’m telling you. Its hard not to get excited by them and jump up out of your seat periodically and shout ‘Speak to me!’. Well, I don’t do that, but many people do. Often the pastors are interrupted by standing ovations, massive cheering or people walking/running to the front to throw money at the pastor’s feet. Occasionally, someone will faint or fall on the ground twitching. But seriously, the pastors I’ve seen here have more charisma than anybody I’ve ever seen speaking in public. They are absolute masters. Sermon topics vary widely, so I won’t go into that, but everyone listens very intently, always with their Bibles out to follow along, and often with a notebook/pen to take notes. After the sermon is another offering. Then sometimes an extra offering for something else, for example, ‘The pastor is building his house but he’s having trouble getting enough paint, please let us have an offering for this’. Then comes a period of intense prayer and, in some cases, depending on the church and the type of service being held, a mass-deliverance session for everyone in attendance (often deliverance is done with just the ‘victim’ of demonic attack, the pastor, and a few prayer warriors and intercessors). In this deliverance session, the pastor will go through a few prayers, repeated by the congregation, and then perhaps a period of controlled breathing (breath out the name of Jesus). The build-up to the casting out of demons is phenomenal – prayers get faster and louder, drums start beating, and then the pastor will start ‘fighting’ the demon by speaking in tongues very loudly; then a few people will start expelling the demons, often first manifest in blood-curdling screams or people just thrashing around so that a general commotion occurs. This adds to the whole mood inside the church; once the first ‘expelation’ occurs more and more begin; sometimes there are not enough prayer warriors and intercessors to go around, so other members of the congregation need to catch falling individuals or pin their arms and legs to the ground to keep them from hurting themselves or someone else. If there is an idle prayer warrior or intercessor, he or she will approach an individual who looks ‘close’ to expelling a demon, and will being to shout in the person’s ear and lay hands on them, usually on their head and they will shake it a little bit. (See the previous entry about the prison revival to find out more about deliverance). After 10-15 minutes of this, the pastor will begin a prayer of thanks for the deliverance. Usually there are still people thrashing about on the floor, screaming, fainting, etc. but they are being taken care of by prayer warriors. Everyone opens their eyes and look a little dazed. After this is the benediction, and a song or two, and everyone dances out of the church.
So, now that I’ve gone through all that, VERY briefly (I’m telling you, what I just condensed will take up a good 100 pages of my thesis), my future blog entries will make a lot more sense.