My First Swahili Church Service

The church filled up a few minutes after Sunday School. After all of the seats in the church are taken the extra room that is in the back of the church is filled with people standing. When the back of the church is filled up people began to stand outside by the windows and doors and within no time there is 30-50 people standing outside. The national, district, sectional leadersof the Tanzanian Assemblies of God (TAG) , and me (they forced me!!) sit up front on the platform. There are 19 in Dareda (including myself). Worship and prayer take place before church starts (no telling how early, people had been waiting about 15 hrs for Roger and company to arrive) and continue a few songs after the service starts. The building is concrete with concrete floors and a few poorly made, wobbling wood benches (with no back support) and some plastic chairs for the leaders. The sound system is one 2.5 ft x 1 ft busted speaker and what looks like a bus horn speaker powered by some kind of weird looking soundboard. A bass played like a lead guitar and a keyboard are the instruments with the drums being the built in drum kit in the keyboard. Everything is ghetto wired and probably every sound piece and wire has a short. The system acts up often but they continue as nothing happened. The church is decorated with baby blue, white, purple, and green sheets. It has several flowers and also ribbons hanging from the ceiling and is topped off with a blue neon light. No one stands still or is quiet during worship (no matter how bad they sing) and prayer. There is quite a bit of leading and repeating in singing, teaching, and praying. Everyone either dresses up or wears their African outfits. The back, middle aisle, and outside are full of people standing for the entire 6 hr service. The service started around 8 or 9 with worship and prayer beginning who knows how long before. The blueprint of the service is this:
Worship/Prayer

Sunday School - TAG General Secretary of CA's (Christ's Ambassadors) Msungu talked about the CA's and their upcoming goals

Offering

Preaching - TAG Assisstant National Director of CA's Sylvester Puta-Puta preached from Daniel 1:1-21 and said Daniel was a man of Kusudi (purpose), nabii (prophecy) and maono (vision). He preached about 10-15 minutes and just started saying, "Receive the Spirit!" Everyone lifted up their voice and prayed in tongues and Swahili. The Holy Ghost fell and everyone began walking around laying hands on everyone. This lasted about 10-15 minutes.

Leadership Training - Done by Roger

Preaching - National Director of CA's Mkoba preached for about 2 hours. I have no idea what about.

All of this was done straight-thru with no breaks in betweeen and there are people that stood the whole time. Most people had open Bibles and took notes the whole service.


Understand this was not a normal service but Roger and team were presenting the Miaka kumi ya Mavuno (Decade of Harvest) vision. The TAG plan to grow from 2 million AG believers and 2,000 churches to 10 million believers and 10,000 churches by the year 2018. The team was presenting the vision and explaining goals and strategies. This service was in Dareda, Tanzania, Africa.