Following today's Sunday morning service, a visiting Canadian pastor asked me, "Are services here always 2&1/2 hours long?" In reality, the service had "only" been 2 hours and fifteen minutes long. :) Vietnamese and Africans in attendance (there are normally 5 to 10 Nigerians present) are accustomed to services of this length. But for many of us from the West, anything past 75 minutes is beyond our comfort zone. Fortunately, the wooden pews are uncomfortable enough to keep anyone from falling asleep!
Today's service did run extra long. Our services normally last for between 90 minutes to 2 hours. As usual today we had two church choirs each sing one hymn each. However a wonderful visiting Korean choir also sang two hymns for us. We don't know what they sang, but they sounded superb. We also celebrated Communion today.
In this church, there is an invitation to receive Christ as Saviour given after the sermon each Sunday. It appears that people have decided before attending (due to friendship or church evangelism) that this is the day they will come forward. A Christian friend comes forward with them, and they are asked to kneel. An associate pastor leads a prayer of commitment and then follows with a prayer for these new believers. Each week we rejoice to see at least one person (sometimes 5 or 6) come forward.
The highlight of the service today was hearing, for the first time, the Senior Pastor preach the morning sermon. Since before we arrived he has been too weakened from chemo treatments to preach. Every week he has led in prayer, and has summoned the strength to lead in Communion. However due to his ongoing battle with cancer, he has not preached. We felt that he was a warm and gifted communicator and today's sermon demonstrated this.
We understand that he chose a few weeks ago, to suspend any further treatments. This has allowed him to regain some strength. We are praying, along with this important congregation of more than 1000 Vietnamese Christians, that God will give Pastor Sang good health and many more years of ministry.
Today's service did run extra long. Our services normally last for between 90 minutes to 2 hours. As usual today we had two church choirs each sing one hymn each. However a wonderful visiting Korean choir also sang two hymns for us. We don't know what they sang, but they sounded superb. We also celebrated Communion today.
In this church, there is an invitation to receive Christ as Saviour given after the sermon each Sunday. It appears that people have decided before attending (due to friendship or church evangelism) that this is the day they will come forward. A Christian friend comes forward with them, and they are asked to kneel. An associate pastor leads a prayer of commitment and then follows with a prayer for these new believers. Each week we rejoice to see at least one person (sometimes 5 or 6) come forward.
The highlight of the service today was hearing, for the first time, the Senior Pastor preach the morning sermon. Since before we arrived he has been too weakened from chemo treatments to preach. Every week he has led in prayer, and has summoned the strength to lead in Communion. However due to his ongoing battle with cancer, he has not preached. We felt that he was a warm and gifted communicator and today's sermon demonstrated this.
We understand that he chose a few weeks ago, to suspend any further treatments. This has allowed him to regain some strength. We are praying, along with this important congregation of more than 1000 Vietnamese Christians, that God will give Pastor Sang good health and many more years of ministry.
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