Worship at the Eagles Christian Church-Arusha

This morning Daniel took me to his, church, the Eagles Christian Church-Arusha, a Pentecostal church. It has been gathered for about eight months and is part of Eagles Christian Church in Kenya, of which there are four in Nairobi. The founder and bishop is Dr. Stephen Mutua who happened to be at the church today preaching. I met the pastor of the church, Orestis, in July when I was here.

The church meets in a large conference room at a local hotel and I estimate that about 80 people were worshiping. Like all of the Pentecostal services I have attended, worship was lively. The singers led the congregation in song at the beginning of the service for a little under and hour. For one of the praise songs, the leader had the congregation do a line dance through the room. It truly was joyful.

There were some prayers in the beginning as well and after the singing there were some announcements. After the service people were invited to go to the hotel swimming pool where they were going to baptize a number of people.

Bishop Stephen then spoke for about ½ hour about the seven kind of people that you need in your life—encourager, dream maker, way maker, destiny connector, king maker, wealth maker, and successor. At the end he was really energized and said that was the “appetizer” and now he was going to preach the sermon on God’s favor from Proverbs 3:4. It was a very motivational and encouraging message. He spoke mostly in English but periodically would switch into Swahili. (The songs were a mixture of English and Swahili.). He preached for about 45 minutes.

 There was then an altar call and seven women and one man came forward and he prayed a fairly long prayer, which they repeated (it was in Swahili.) The last part of worship was celebrating the Eucharist. For me personally, I love to celebrate communion when I am traveling and realize that even though I am in a country far away from home, in a vastly different culture in a denomination that is significantly different from my own, we are one in Christ.

Part way through the service he had all the first time guests stand and give their names and where they were from. I was surprised by how many visitors there were. I would estimate that there were 10 to 15 guests from Tanzania and that in addition to me there were two other international guests, one from Italy and one from Japan. All in all the service lasted a little under 3 hours.

One interesting side note to the church service. Because Daniel was participating in the baptismal service at the pool after the main worship service was over, he asked a woman from the church, Adeline, if she would drive me back to my hotel (which wasn’t far away). We hadn’t gone far when a policeman pulled her to the side of the road, for no particular reason. He asked to see her driver’s license and she only had her old one. She had just gotten a new one and had forgotten to put it in her wallet. The officer from the get-go was looking for a bribe. This is the second time this has happened in a vehicle I was in in Tanzania. His English was good and he looked in and addressed me trying to make the case that his hands were tied. I told him that in the U.S. they let you go home and get your license. He was surprise by that and said he would let her do that but she would have to leave the car. Adeline and he talked back and forth in Swahili for a while and one more time he addressed me and I said I thought he should let her get her license. In the end he let her go and she didn’t pay the bribe. I felt happy that I was able to play a small role in helping her. But this happens all the time in East Africa at least in the three East African countries I have visited: Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania. In everyone I have been in vehicles stopped by police looking for bribes. In Kenya last year, I actually paid the bribe money.

This afternoon I am going to visit the family of the driver who is a friend of Daniels and a practicing Muslim. I always ask him about his family when I see him—he is married and I am not sure if he has 3 or 4 children because his English isn’t great and my Swahili is far worse. On the way from the airport to my hotel last night he mentioned he would like me to meet his family if possible and I said I would love to meet them, I just didn’t know what my schedule would be. So it turns out that I am free this afternoon and evening and will have the chance to meet them in about an hour.