Calvary Chapel Entebbe

This morning Andrew and I visited Calvary Chapel Entebbe. Our home church is Calvary Chapel Olympia (WA), I used to attend and we're supported by Calvary Chapel Langley (BC), Andrew used to attend Crossroads, a Calvary Chapel in Vancouver, WA, and once while on vacation with my parents, we visited a Calvary Chapel in Stone Mountain, GA. But this was our first time at a Calvary in Africa! I was quite curious how it'd be different than the others, although since it was also my first visit to a Ugandan church, it's maybe a little tricky to know exactly what things are different just because they are Ugandan.

The whole service was totally bilingual in English and Luganda. The songs were a mixture, often with one verse of the English songs translated into Luganda, and sometimes a whole song was Luganda or English. Everything spoken at the front of the church, from announcements to prayers to the sermon, was translated from English into Luganda. Most of the audience laughed more at jokes after they were translated, which indicated to me that even if some of the Ugandans didn't know Luganda and needed the English, most of them did. The usual pastor is American, but he was away today, so the Ugandan assistant pastor preached.

Overall, the church felt WAY more western/American than any church I've ever attended in Tanzanian. For example, the kids were out having Sunday School during the sermon part of the service. In Tanzania, they are in with the adults, and if there is Sunday School, it's during adult Sunday School time, not during the main sermon. Also, there were guitars, a drum set, and a keyboard played by someone who actually knew how to play a keyboard. However, I appreciated that there were also two Ugandan drums. But I've sure never seen a guitar or a "normal" drum set before in a Tanzanian church. I'm not sure if they are due to the American influence in the church or if that's more common in Uganda, but it was new for me in Africa, at least. It was kind of a comfortable mix of western and East African, in that the music sounded Ugandan, but they were songs I knew in English, just sang with Ugandan English pronunciation, and some fun Luganda songs mixed in. There were words projected onto the wall, a computer running things in the back, and little paper bulletins. Again, maybe other Ugandan churches have these things, but for me they were a nice reminder of some positive aspects of western churches. It's really handy to have words up on the front wall during worship!

A great little variation from other Calvarys was the Bibles they offered for people to borrow during the service. They were New Living Translation!!! Take that, you King James Version Calvarys of North America, Uganda is showing you up. The pastor taught from the New International Version, but distributed to all the congregants who needed one for the was the NLT, my personal favorite English translation. :-) Way to go, Calvary Chapel Entebbe!

My favorite part was seeing the dove painted on the wall. After all, what's a Calvary Chapel without a giant dove swooping down, looking like it's divebombing the pastor? This one was a bit more moderate in size than some other Calvary's doves, but it was holding it's own up there.

So, today we got church in English (and Luganda). The last time I heard a sermon in English was, well, hmmm... one week ago when I listened to a MP3 of Calvary Chapel Olympia, which I think was a sermon from like three years ago, but hey, the Word of the Lord is the same yesterday, today, and forever, right?