Jon Tsen - Church visit #3

Church name: Mision Bautista Buen Pastor (Temple Baptist - Spanish Service)
Church address: 2801 Broadway, Fargo, ND 58102
Date attended: October 19, 2014
Church category: "different ethnic or racial demographic"

Describe the worship service you attended. How was it similar to or different from your regular context?
Temple Baptist is a building full of memory, each room like a chapter from a book and each pew a story. I grew up in this church building playing Pokemon and "paper wars" while the Fargo Moorhead Chinese Christian Church gathered to pray and study the Word. I made my first friends here. Their parents spoke a different language from mine and shared a similar culture. Yesterday I entered this building again and sat in those same pews for a service with a different language and different culture, but thankfully graced by the presence of a familiar friend. The congregation at this church was small. The Guajardo's, the pastor's family of three. The "honorary Latina" pianist. An elderly woman. And a family of four that I forget the names of. Like churches I've visited in the past I was cradled in the familiarity of hymn tunes, passionate thunderous preaching, and warm greetings of hands. But throughout the service I wandered through a somewhat benevolent fog of abstruseness, for every word uttered was not in English but in Spanish.

What did you find most interesting or appealing about the worship service? 
Loida, a friend since childhood, sits next to me and whispers translations under her breath while a five year old girl from the family of four chatters like a bird over Pastor Pablo's introductions. She says, "Pablo is asking Mrs. Guajardo for any special days to recognize." Mrs. Guajardo then lists birthdays from a worn white leather book and at the end of her list she speaks the name of the parakeet child who squeals a delightful reply. The girl is invited by Pablo to the front of the pews and each member of the congregation then goes up one by one to congratulate the five year old on her very special day. After the service I ask to see the white notebook, and Mrs. Guajardo gladly offers it. "Jon your name is in it too. We had Loida write it for us when she was little. See? She drew a smiley by it because you are her friend." She says that they pray for me (and nonchalantly adds especially when I get to see Loida) and have been praying for me throughout my lifetime. The smallness of the church allows for this intentional devotion to prayer of their congregation. Pastor Pablo before he begins his sermon always asks the audience if they have anything he can pray for right then and there. I like that. I like knowing that the service could pause to gift a children's bible to a chatterbox five year old and for the elderly woman's prayer requests and for a whole generation of children-now-young-adults like myself who even in the slightest have some importance to the congregation.

What did you find most disorienting or challenging about the worship service?
After we finish our mini-celebration for the parakeet, we stand together in our pews to sing a few Spanish hymns. Many of the tunes are familiar, an old hat. But adorned with a new language it feels uncomfortable in my head. Christ becomes Christo and heart becomes corazon. When we sing the doxology I feel a small void when the expected "host" doesn't rhyme with "ghost". Although, I do understand bits and pieces of the hymns. I know when we are singing of the Father's arms, or of his mercy and grace. But I don't grasp all of it. Gratefully, Loida translates large chunks of the sermon for me. Save for her translation, I'm not sure how much I can gather to take home. The mystery of church is magnified when human words lose their worth. Spanish, in this predominantly English speaking North Dakota, becomes symbolic of "safety" in the midst of a language of power and majority...where Spanish speakers hold little and are little. And for me to enter it, feels like I was challenging the safe space, or perhaps it is my comfort that is challenged.

What aspects of Scripture or theology did the worship service illuminate for you that you had not perceived as clearly in your regular context? 
Billings' The Word of God for the People of God argues that when we read "in the beginning was the Word" and know that Jesus, the Son, is the Word that enters in a culturally particular space the translation of the Word into many languages should be powerful because of the ways He speaks through culturally specific languages. As Loida whispers me translations, the "Word became flesh" acts its power in a way I hadn't understood before. Pablo preaches on the "man with a crippled hand" and how God uses our brokenness for his glory and heals us for his glory. I understand his southern-baptist stylized sermon only because of Loida's words, but I only know his words to be truth because of the spirit's movement. As I see the woman in front of me nod in agreement, I know that while I do not fully understand the sermon we both know what he says to be true. And for some reason as I sit there hearing hesitant English translations and booming Spanish gospel I understand a bit more how important it is the Word became flesh.