My Culture Shock Experience Exploring Nigerian Churches
In 2020, one of the blessings the pandemic and lockdown gave me was the opportunity to listen to other pastors and attend other church services online. As one who derives joy from observing people, lived experiences, and my environment, I took it upon myself to explore these churches once COVID-19 gave us all a breathing space to be outside. It was also an opportunity to find another church community close to my mom's church, as I had to drop and pick her up every Sunday morning. In case you ask why, she’s blind and seems to have trust issues when taking Uber alone. I had a church I belonged to. I loved the little community we had and shared, but it was far from her church.
As an introvert, my choice of church has often aligned with my personality. The music has to be soft, not loud, and the sermon has to be brief and understanding. The service needs to end at exactly the time it's supposed to end. The people have to be conservative with a ton of crazy.
WELL, I’VE LOVED MOST OF IT, BUT LIFE HAS A WAY OF WANTING YOU TO EXPLORE, AND I FOUND MYSELF AT A PROTESTANT CHURCH. OR WHAT WE CALL THE NEW GENERATION CHURCHES.
One of which caught my attention was a predominantly youth church five minutes from my house and 15 minutes from my mom’s church. It was a good compromise. So far, I have enjoyed the sermon and the high-tempo worship sessions. Sometimes, it feels like a great place to burn calories for people like me who visit the gym once every six months, but the culture... it’s so different. I’m struggling to shout glory a thousand times in one minute. Heck, I get exhausted after the second or third shout of glory. The young people there always seem excited, as they are often led to shout or scream.
I don’t see the importance of repeating what the pastor just said to my neighbor. Except he/she is deaf, they sure heard the first time.
The church members derive joy from calling God "Daddy,” and for someone who never grew up using that word or having absent or deadbeat dads, it doesn’t sit well in my stomach. I haven’t been able to bring myself to say, Daddy, as an endearing way to call God. I thought I was the only one struggling with it until I got to speak with other people with Daddy issues, and we still struggle to call God Daddy, maybe Abba, but not Dad.
For someone who’s often used to being a member of more than one group in a church in my former church. I could not find a group that I want to serve in yet, and it makes me feel like I’m doing something wrong, but God has healed me from seeking out work; focus on knowing Him, and the works can follow.
At another church, I struggled with the pastor’s tactics. First, he was a Yoruba man who never shied away from letting us know in his sermons. His sermons were 60% Yoruba without translation and 40% English. He had a queer method of chastising people in church. One time, he asked a lady to leave the church because she was sleeping while he was preaching. Unbeknownst to him, that was her first time attending church, and a church member invited her. She was a live-in maid and had not had enough sleep the day before. He later apologized for his actions, but it left me scarred on her behalf. Another Sunday came, and it was impactful. The spirit of God was powerful in service. Suddenly, the pastor went from pew to pew as people ran towards him for them to touch his hands, or he placed his hands on their heads while they kneeled in total submission. Either to the man or to God is a different conversation.
I’m grateful for the 30-plus community I found in one of the churches I attended. It was a break from the norm. Just people in their 30s willing to celebrate aging backward. After the worship, prayer, and word, that community is motivated to stay. But I left. There are a lot of people speaking in tongues without speaking the word correctly.
I couldn’t get over the idea of people celebrating the leader more than I heard them celebrate Jesus. You would hear words like, “I appreciate the set man of this house. Your father, my father (adds name), for this opportunity to stand in his stead, or I want to appreciate the lead facilitator for this opportunity. I do not take it for granted.” I understand the importance of honoring the men before you, but when it becomes a daily trend, it begs me to ask. What happened to celebrating Jesus for salvation and freedom?
As a born orthodox, water baptism in adulthood is at the core of what I believe. However, when I hear people say baptism and communion is an old practice after reading for it to be done in remembrance, my orthodox culture cannot stomach this new doctrine.
There seems to be a subtle idolatry of marriage. At every gathering, I’m often asked to introduce myself as either single, in a relationship, or married. What happened to asking me to share my salvation story as an introduction to who I am? We seem to place the works of Jesus over the real relationship with Jesus. The downside to this is that we become idols of the works of God, forsaking our relationship with God, which was His essence in dying for us.
