Evangelicals in Umtata

Evangelicals in Mthatha (Umtata)

We sat right on the front row, stage left, just a few feet from the slightly elevated stage on which the minister stood and the choir sat in folding chairs. All of us sat in folding chairs, as a matter of fact, hundreds of chairs arranged in long rows with an aisle up the middle toward the stage. No fancy sanctuary, this. From the outside you could tell that it was a big box warehouse. Inside was scarcely better. Some partial walls blocked off an office area, the children’s play area, and a kitchen. The rest of the enormous space was filled with those hundreds of folding chairs, all of them filled on this particular Sunday.

Margaret, my host, was sitting next to me and had steered me to this front row seat, where as one of maybe four white faces in the whole assembly I stuck out like a sore thumb. Perhaps that’s what Margaret intended. For the benefit of those further back, huge electronic billboards flashed the words to the songs, a la Mitch Miller and his sing-a-longs on long ago TV. Except Mitch only printed the English words, whereas at this evangelical church in Umtata, South Africa (soon to be changed to the more native spelling Mthatha) the words were in both English and Zulu, which is close enough to Xhosa to be understood by both groups.

There was a great deal of background recorded music, managed by a DJ high above in a skybox. The preacher, a handsome, trim young back man, probably in his 30’s, gave the sermon, leaving it to the associate pastor, a less handsome, less trim, older black man to handle the welcome and announcements, of which there were many, all pronounced in Xhosa, or Zulu—my ear couldn’t distinguish the two. The pastor, though spoke in English, although I couldn’t tell you a word he said, I was so busy sneaking looks to the side and behind to observe the various members of the congregation.

Most off the worshippers appeared to be poor, based on their drab clothes, although they were dressed Western-style—the men in open-necked shirts and coats, the women in skirts.

The choir. The choir. You have never seen such a choir. Only about 10-12 people, one of whom was an albino black girl with orange hair and huge glasses and a very big voice. I hardly noticed the rest of the singers, I was so mesmerized by her. No choir robes, just regular dress. They usually sang one verse of a hymn (not one of them familiar to me) and then the congregation joined in for several verses, guided by the giant tele-prompters overhead. The sound was overwhelming when everyone joined in. So much so that several people felt called to come forward to the front of the stage and contort their bodies and faces and cry out in tongues. Many were apparently habitual repeaters at this stage of the program as the audience members seemed to recognize them and would call out encouragement to them.

It got pretty hot in this un-air-conditioned warehouse, despite the giant fans blowing air around, and I began to sweat, even though I wasn’t joining in with the tongue-talking and the raising of arms toward heaven. I felt a little guilty as we filed out, as I had viewed the happening as an interested observer, and they had poured their hearts and souls out to God.