What Kind of Christian are you?

The church in Rwanda that I have attended most is the Pentecostal church. In training my host family was Pentecostal and in Mulindi the Pentecostal church is closest to my house, other teachers I work with go there and I really enjoy he songs and watching them dance. Also when I go to church I get time to think and I take a notebook with me to write it down.

When I tell people I am a Christian, Rwandan or American, a lot of people ask the same question. What kind? I hate this question. I realize that they don’t mean anything offensive by it though. The Rwandans, I feel, just want to find something in common with me. But the imagery that is associated with Christianity is too strong not to automatically group them into a stereotype.

My church at home is called Northway Christian Community. I guess one would group it into the non-denominational category. If I were to respond to that question with nondenominational the image that comes to mind for me is of rebellion. The people who go that kind of church must not be able to fit in at any other church so they gotta start their own. Jesus wants us to rebel the flesh not the church. Northway is also a mega church, and I went to branch campus where show a recording from the night before. So you can picture me in a crowd of people watching church on a projector screen, and where it was filmed 2000+ people are watching it live. They do still have a live worship and a resident pastor though. I really like it there.

All I care about is being the kind of Christian that is in the New Testament. And when I read what Jesus, Paul, Peter, James, and John say about being a Christian all of the divisions of the Church seem so insignificant.

I am not Pentecostal. Even though I was raised full gospel, I don’t think that I will ever be comfortable praying in tongues or even hearing it even. When they do it here I can’t even really tell that they are doing so because it could just be Kinyarwanda, I don’t know.

I have also been to the Catholic Church on the top of the mountain, but I am not Catholic. I know that the Catholic Church does many great things and I have known Catholics who are a lot better Christians than I am, but Catholicism is too religious for me with the Vatican and all the saints. Therefore by default I am Protestant.

Of the Christian literature I have read my favorite authors were Anglican and Lutheran, but I have never met anyone who has told me they are either of these. I honestly don’t even know the difference between most denominations and I am not very interested either.

What I am interested in is learning about is Islam. I wish there was a mosque in my village and I could ask the Muslims questions about Islam.

My answer to that question (What kind of Christian are you?) is the same every time. “None of them, I’m just a Christian.” I know that I am not really answering their question, but their question really doesn’t have any thought behind it and they will get all kinds of images in their head depending on my answer not that they don’t already because I told them that I am a Christian. I think the other English teacher at my school said it best when he responded to my response with “It’s all the same God.”

Yesterday was the first of I hope many Bible Studies in Kigali. I led it on Philippians chapter 1. It was great. There weren’t a lot of us and I was the only guy there, but I loved it. I don’t want it to be exclusive so if you are still reading this blog post at this point and you want to come to Kigali once a month to study the Bible let me know by sending me an email at dserwon@gmail.com. The only stipulation is you need to be able to speak English and even though we are all capable of teaching English this is not an invitation to free English lessons. This may be unnecessary to say since it is in English, but it seems like a good idea.

These cranes are the most exotic animals I have seen here so far.

Heinz sent me a box of Ketchup.

The garden we started with the help of the grounds keeper where Devin works looks pretty sweet.

This is a drum I saw on the bus that is made out of an old can of powdered milk and animal skins.