Harrison News from Africa
Uniforms and Marathons
I don’t know what you do on your week-ends. We often feel we could liken our week-ends to marathons. Long visits with students. Long seminary events. Long choir performances. Long church services. Long, hot days.
The other word to describe our week-ends is “dress up.” The whole “wear a Hawaiian shirt in the pulpit” thing has not made it to our corner of Africa. People like to dress up, and dress up even more for special occasions.
With that little preface, let me tell you about our crammed packed week-end. On Saturday we had the wedding of one of the few women we have in the seminary master’s program, Odile Bailly. Held at her Assembly of God church, her wedding was lively, loud, fancy, fun and LOOONNNGGG. There were enough hats in view to make even the Queen Mother feel at home. When the pastors were invited to pray for the couple, Randy, wearing the embroidered African shirt he wore to Christy’s wedding, was the only one without a suit and tie. With an estimated 15 special numbers, several times of spontaneous dancing, and all the regular wedding processions, speeches, sermons, prayers, vows and presentations, Odile and Gabin definitely got their money’s worth. After the service, we filled up our car with FATEAC students and went to the reception, which promised to be another marathon. We finally went home after 7 hours of wedding celebrations.
Sunday we were up bright and early for another marathon, this time with the Harrist church. William Wade Harris was a Liberian evangelist and self-declared prophet who came through Cote d’Ivoire in the early 1900’s. One of the results was a group of African churches called Harrist churches. Considered a little on the fringe of orthodoxy, the Harrist churches are the descendants of the original converts of Harris’ evangelistic efforts. Someone heard that Randy and I were interested in reaching out to African Independent Churches and invited us to a special ordination service of two new Harrist church leaders. We met up with our new friend, Pascal, who is a Bible translator and leader in the Harrist churches. Together we drove out of Abidjan, over sandy, unpaved roads surrounded by towering palm trees and tangled jungle vines, to the village of Vitre where a crowd was already gathering to start the celebrations.
In the Harrist churches, everyone wears white on Sundays to represent their purity in Christ and their solidarity as the Body of Christ. Why didn’t someone warn us? It is bad enough standing out like sore white thumbs in the midst of a sea of African believers, but to be out of “uniform” was even worse. Never mind, there were some other “non-uniformed” visitors in the crowd. And everyone welcomed us like long-lost cousins and made every effort to help us feel at home.
The Prophet Harris wore a long white robe and carried a wooden staff made into a cross. In today’s Harrist churches, the ordained leaders wear the same outfit. We thought the white robes made more sense in the tropical heat that the Western suits so popular for pastors in the evangelical churches of Abidjan.
When we got to the church, we were lead between two rows of young girls who blessed us by throwing paper flower petals on us. The two new leaders were brought in with a police escort, including sirens. As we entered the church, believers would bow before a huge cross placed in front of the altar. There were candles and bells and other interesting additions that were different than what we were used to, but nothing that was offensive or shocking. The message was biblical, the music beautiful and the believers obviously sincere. The four hour service was followed by an hour long parade where we all marched through the streets of the village. That was followed by a wonderful feast. After the feast there was more dancing and then finally the long drive home. When we plopped into bed that evening, we felt like we had crossed another marathon finish line!
The amazing thing about our time with the Harrist folks is that we were able to have some excellent conversations. Some of the leaders freely admitted that their church was in need of strong Biblical teaching. They explained that they had no Bible schools or formal training of any kind. Traditionally, many of their leaders were illiterate and did the best they could with the understanding they had. But now there is a hunger for more. In fact, Randy is meeting with one of their preachers tomorrow to discuss future studies at the FATEAC seminary where we teach. Imagine if, rather than condemning these independent groups of their questionable practices, we could help them through training and discipleship to a more Biblical approach. What an exciting possibility!
Well, you may now think that reading our newsletters is like a marathon. But at least we don’t require you to get dressed up to read them.
Deanna and Randy
Serving with the Alliance in
Cote d’Ivoire, West Africa
PS If you’d like to read more about the Prophet Harris, you can go to http://www.dacb.org/stories/liberia/legacy_harris.html
PPS Since we’re talking uniforms, I thought I’d go ahead and stick in the latest picture we have of Christy and Peter from the Horn of Africa. Aren’t they cute?
