Church

Still unbelievably sore after Aikido yesterday, I trekked out to church this morning. It was a bit nerve-wracking as I took the bus and the train by myself to get there. But I made it!

The Agape International Christian Fellowship meets in a small room in the Kuzuha Station building. There were maybe 50 chairs set up in the room, and by the time service started I think 35 or so people were there. We started by reciting the Apostle's Creed, which was really tricky speaking the English along with the Japanese. I decided to use English there because I think they like that, kind of like how I enjoy hearing others sing in their language back home at NCBC. Then we had praise and worship. It was fairly contemporary praise music. The pastor played guitar and sang, and there was a woman playing the flute, another man singing, and a man playing percussion on what was essentially a box he was sitting on. I knew two of the songs, and the rest were easy to get the hang of. It was really neat to sing in English while the majority of the room sang in Japanese.

After the praise time, we had a prayer and took communion. Since there weren't many people in the congregation there wasn't much time for reflection, but otherwise the communion was just the same as back home. Then there was the offering and then the pastor gave his sermon. Every aspect of the service was done both in English and Japanese, prayer, communion, the sermon, everything. The pastor would say a sentence or a fragment of a sentence in English and then immediately say the same thing in Japanese. It took a little while to get used to how this affected the pace of the service. It was a little more difficult to stay focused during the message, but it was a good sermon. The pastor talked about how we shouldn't compare ourselves to others.

After the sermon we had another prayer, repeated one of the songs, and then were released and expected to fellowship with one another. Before we were let go, the pastor pointed out those of us that were new--we were fairly easy to spot in such a small congregation. I was one of two gaijin there--I was quite surprised to turn around and see that a boy from my dorm had come as well. All in all it was a very nice experience and I appreciated the chance to worship the Lord with fellow believers.