Sunday Morning Worship

(Hymn book at Areeparambo Baptist Church)

Sunday morning in Kerala india, half of our group went back to the Precious Children’s Ministries for their worship, the rest of us, myself included went to services at (say it slowly) Areepparambu Baptist Church.  It was a wonderful service led by the local clergy with the help of our two professors, Dr. Stephen Brachlow and Dr. Caleb Oladipo.

                I was interested in seeing what Baptist worship would be like here in India and was able to see many similarities to church back home.  There were songs sung by the congregation like “Holy, holy, holy!” “Old Rugged Cross” and “the Doxology”.  The people were led in prayer and given a sermon on the love of Christ.  In many ways I felt as if I could have been in Randomtown, America at any Baptist church.  There were however several differences as well.

                From the beginning we noticed that the congregation was separated by gender.  It perhaps would not have been so obvious if it had not been for our initial seat choice.  We all sat together as a small group, four guys and two girls.  The ladies asked Dr. Oladipo if it would be more proper for them to sit in the other section with all of the women.  They decided that it would.  The seond the girls left the section, the room was filed with the noise of the local men moving up closer to the pulpit.  Not only did they choose not to sit on the same row as the girls, but they left two rows completely empty between them until they moved.

                The other big difference was the energy felt in worship, not that there is no energy in American churches.  But it felt as if people wanted to be there, where as in America, it seems to be more like an obligation.  For this service however, many of the people walked to get there, most of them a mile or more.  Sure, it wasn’t constant throughout the entire service, but it was there, you could feel it, and especially hear it as they sang the hymns.  It was wonderful to be a part of worship today and I hope that everyone reading this from home feels the same way about their worship service.