Church & Ministry

Republished, with permission, from Voice magazine, Mar/Apr 2013.

Most greetings are mundane and meaningless. “How are you” is the standard icebreaker in the U.S. That inquiry is normally answered by an equally empty: “fine.” The greeter normally doesn’t really care how you are doing and the responder normally isn’t all that “fine.” But this perfunctory greeting moves us to further conversation. So we continue to do it.

Greetings in Africa are totally different. The normal Zulu greeting is “sawubona.” It literally means “I see you.” It is a kind and gracious way to acknowledge the worth of an individual. It acknowledges the presence and importance of the other person. It means my life stops to focus on yours.

African greetings can be long. It is not unusual to engage in an extended line of questions about the condition of your home, children, wife, goats, farm, garden and work. Greetings can go on for several minutes.

As a Westerner, it seems like a waste of time to spend five minutes saying hello. But in a relational culture, there is serious interest in the other person as an individual. Relationships are important in an African culture. So greetings take a while. It just isn’t polite to launch into a conversation without an appropriate greeting.

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Within every church, members tend to form circles around common interests. I have suggested that this phenomenon is not necessarily bad. In fact, it can be helpful in the process of building community. In general, pastors should encourage this tendency, but they should also oversee it.

Some circles may revolve around explicitly religious interests. A church may develop groups of people who are particularly interested in biblical prophecy or poetry. People may form circles around a special burden for witness or missions (or even a particular missionary). In one congregation I know of, some women formed a group to pray especially for the church’s day school.

Other commonalities may not be specifically religious but are still suitable bases for fellowship. Most churches today have some form of specialized children’s ministry, youth ministry, women’s ministry, men’s ministry, and ministry for the aged. Since both age and gender are aspects of calling, and since one’s Christianity must be worked out within one’s calling, these groups are not necessarily inappropriate. Nevertheless, they do pose the danger that the group might become a sub-congregation that practically detaches itself from the body.

Circles of interest, whether formal or informal, may develop around other aspects of vocation. Builders will talk to builders about building, programmers to programmers about programming, and so forth. Homemakers with small children will find each other, and they will also look for older women who have reared children and can offer counsel. These circles of interest present wonderful opportunities for Christians to help one another in working out their own salvation.