By Charlotte Hill
In July 2005 a mission team from
First United Methodist Church of Keller, Texas, went to Slovakia to join their
partner church in Trnava for a music ministry throughout the country. In nine
days the Slovak-American team performed fourteen times in churches, town
squares, and culture halls. This is part of their story.
“Here I am to worship; Here I am to bow down; Here I am to say that you’re my
God.”
Our mission team went to Slovakia to join musicians from our partner church in
Trnava. Together we would travel to almost all the Methodist churches in
Slovakia sharing our music ministry with those small congregations. Our plan was
to encourage the churches, make them more visible in their communities, and help
them evangelize. We accomplished all these things - and more. It was the “and
more” that we will not forget.
In almost every church the sanctuary was completely filled. As our Slovak team
members sang in English and Americans sang in Slovak we could see the excitement
running through the crowd. People stood up, sang with us, clapped and raised
hands and expressed their joy in this experience of Christian unity. We sang
praise songs, American spirituals, Wesleyan hymns. All were sung in Slovak and
English as we discovered that Christian music united us.
Older pastors with tears
streaming down their faces, told about long years when this sharing would not
have been allowed. The joy for them was especially sweet. People who heard us
one day would drive to the next town the following day to join again in the
experience. At our last presentation in Jenkovce, one of three Slovak Methodist
churches to survive Communism, the people could not all fit in the sanctuary so
some stood outside at the open windows to be part of the worship.
As John Wesley said, “The best of all is, God is with us”. We came to Slovakia
with a plan of encouraging Methodist congregations and instead we worshipped
with them. We praised God by joining voices with our brothers and sisters,
joyfully exulting in our common faith, and we felt the Holy Spirit in our midst.
At team meetings at the end of
the day we shared our amazement over these worship experiences. After a few days
of spirit-filled worship we began to be less surprised at this outpouring of
God’s love, but we never lost the joy of being a part of it. Each day was a
Pentecost Day as we praised God in our own language and understood each other.
A mission trip is almost always an unexplainable experience. If you have been on
a mission team you know that when you are asked “how was the trip?”, you can
never give an answer that expresses the full experience. This music mission trip
may be harder to describe than others. We did not build a building. There was
nothing visible we could point to and say “that was accomplished”. We built
relationships, but it was more than relationships. We worshiped together all
over the country. We sang, they sang, and we shared the experience of the Holy
Spirit. Day after day God was with us.
Posted 28 October 2005
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