Posted by Tim Plodinec
A couple of weeks ago my father, brother Michael, friend Phil and I went out to a village where Zebulun, a third-year student at Christ Seminary, lives.
We piled in the kombi (Volkswagen micro bus – the standard-issue mass-transportation vehicle of South Africa) and arrived at the home of Zeb’s pastor after a drive of about an hour and a half. Following a snack and a prayer, our entourage headed over to the church, where the service had already begun with worship singing. Anyone who has visited a village church knows what I mean when I speak of ten minute choruses accompanied by repetitious piano strains and lots of bass, although I must say that I was very impressed with Zeb’s church, who restrained the choruses to a mere few minutes and even threw in a couple of English songs for our benefit.
After praising God in song, my dad got up to preach. He did so from Romans 3, and preached the gospel. It seemed to go over quite well under the circumstances, as he had to speak through a translator (mainly for the older women in the audience), and as there are obvious cultural differences. As my dad says, Africans will always struggle more to grasp content from Americans, versus that from their own countrymen. But they definitely enjoy having us there to speak.
I had been asked the previous day to address the “youth” after the service, as my dad addressed the local church leadership. What I did not understand at the time was that “youth” means anyone from the legal driving age (18) to unmarried folks (the oldest I taught was about 35). Still, there’s quite a different approach to teaching “singles” as there is to the teaching I will do tomorrow in the 1-4 grade Sunday school class.
Despite my lack of preparation time, understanding of my audience, and the fact that my dad had already preached on my topic (the gospel), it went quite well. This is partly due to the fact that I took a more general approach to the gospel, first outlining man and sin and then describing physical and spiritual life, including the latter’s relation to Jesus’ work on the cross. However, I am more inclined to consider the talk a success because of the fun time we all had listening to Michael’s colorful anecdotes from our family’s life story.
After lunch with the church leadership, we crossed the dry Olifants (Elephants) River and went around to Zeb’s house to pick up his school supplies. His mother doesn’t speak much English, but we said ‘hi’ and ‘bye’ in the local language, and she was happy to meet us.
