Reentering Worship During Home Assignment

by Brad Hill

“How can we sing the Lord’s Song in a strange land?” This plaintive question was asked by Israel in exile. Gone were the familiar rites and temple, chants and incense, offerings and sacrifices. Where is the “strange land”?

“How can we sing the Lord’s Song in a strange land?” This plaintive question was asked by Israel in exile. Gone were the familiar rites and temple, chants and incense, offerings and sacrifices. Where is the “strange land”?

When I went first went to Congo in 1973, I found the worship to be very strange. It involved percussion and an odd five-note scale and sometimes even the blowing of buffalo horns. It sounded to me like trumpeting elephants…that were being poached! Worship consisted of long sermons, hard benches (rounded side up!), indecipherable languages and bodies closely packed together. That was the ambiance of worship. I yearned for my home church. As I sat on the bamboo pole, I fantasized about the wonderful music, the cool air, the English, the wonderful three-point, to-the-point, alliterated sermons.

But over the ensuing years, relationships were formed, the language was mastered and an appreciation for the down-to-earth messages deepened. Suffering people were healed. There was honest unfeigned adoration and ecstatic celebration of joy in the Lord.

People gave sacrificially. Nobody watched the clock. We lived and worked and worshiped with the same people. We shared our lives, both joys and miseries. We sat at the deaths of loved ones and feasted at the newborns-coming-out-of-the-house celebrations.

Then we came home and began home assignment and itineration (or deputation). After the initial blush of the welcome home emotional overload, they began to ask, “When are you going back?” I sat in the padded pew and listened to the twenty-minute sermon and looked around at the passive faces. The entire congregation stood up, sat down, all on queue. We prayed “prayers of confession” instead of genuine confession. We sang four verses of the hymn and sat down. At the end people fled to their cars and to their homes. We would not see them again until the next Sunday. Soon we felt starved for a real encounter with God during worship.

Then it got worse. I visited twenty churches in nine months. I learned to patiently endure the “preliminaries” until it was my turn to speak. On “Missions Sunday” they all sing the same hymns, “Go Tell It on the Mountain” or “We’ve a Story to Sing to the Nations.” They sing them once a year when the missionary comes. The Great Commission is read once. An offering for “world missions” is taken. And it is time to move on with the show. I see the new cars and the million-dollar-plus building and know about the “fellowship” outing to see a play and have dinner, hear about the vacation to Hawaii, then I gladly take the $200 “for honorarium and travel.”

My wife attended the same church week after week, but the initial promise of relationships never seemed to materialize. Sure, they brought some clothes for the kids, but intentional caring—that deep massage which kneads the knots of anxiety and spiritual dryness and even dread—so rarely happened. Nobody knows what to say or what to ask. Soon, encounters were avoided just to side-step the awkwardness. One packs and prepares for the return. The “strange land” is now what used to be “home.”

The missionary-back-home may soon view the West and the Western church as complacent, calloused and under-challenged. Nobody is persecuted yet nobody seems to witness at work or school. You discover that the missionary enterprise is even held in some skepticism by many in the church. “Have you read The Poisonwood Bible?”

Soon the return is upon you. You have not raised enough support, but in faith you believe the rest will come in, or you can do with less. You had arrived home exhausted and dry, you return exhausted and dry. That well of living water that springs eternal just gave a few squirts. Worshiping the Lord in spirit and truth with all that we are and all that we have still seems like only a far off promised land. And in truth, you can’t wait to get back to sing the Lord’s songs in the new land and find replenishment of soul.

Is this a bit overstated? Or are there parts that describe your journey back and forth? Now that you are home and ready to embark on home assignment and itineration, how can you avoid some of the stagnation and spiritual dehydration that the above story describes? I offer the following counsel.

1. View your time at home much as you would in your field of service. My mistake was asking the church and people to minister to me. After all, I felt that I was the one now in need. However, the simple truth is that we were still missionaries. We are fed as we still seek to minister.

2. View the home assignment anthropologically, just as you did your field of service. Who are these people? Why do they act like this? What are the meanings of these strange modes in which I used to take part? What do they need, and how can I help meet that need? Just as you would not be judgmental of the people in your place of service, don’t be overly critical of the people in your home country.

3. Remember that nothing need prevent you from worshiping. All too often I made unfavorable comparisons to worship in the Congo and so deprived myself of what was being offered. Just as I was able to worship to a drum there, I can worship to an organ or guitar here.

4. Make the worship dialogical. Again, all too often I would analyze this or that, critique the sermon instead of engage it. To the extent I could enter in, ask questions, make responses, write down notes, think of implications and above all apply what I learned, I could actually worship!

5. Worship is enhanced by the relationships around us. This is the hard part of home assignment. Just as worship in the Congo gained power the more I knew the people and shared in their lives, the same is true in the United States.

Since we are citizens of another kingdom, all lands are strange. We can, nevertheless, sing the Lord’s songs wherever we are.

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Brad Hill, former missionary in the Congo, holds a D.Min. in Missions and now serves as senior pastor of Glenview Covenant Church in Illinois.

EMQ, Vol. 41, No. 2, pp. 144-146. Copyright © 2005 Evangelism and Missions Information Service (EMIS). All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced or copied in any form without written permission from EMIS.

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