Church in Accra

Legon Interdenominational Church

This is my Sunday experience in Accra:

• There are LOTS of children in church, perhaps as many as one child for every three adults.
• There are many young adults in church. They compose about a forth of the congregation. At least two Sundays a month, an engagement is announced, occasionally two the same Sunday.
• Our church has a well-attended Bible adult study before church just like the US adult Sunday School classes of my youth.
• 

  Covenant Family Church

  The church has a well-organized Sunday school program for kids.

• The church is over full every Sunday. There are people sitting outside listening even though they can’t see.
• Our church has a choir that performs every Sunday. The choir members all wear matching outfits made out of brightly colored African cloth. Correction, two choirs, each with different outfits.
• Our English-speaking congregations has part of the worship time in a Ghanaian language. People are really engaged during those times and the worship is vibrant.
• The sanctuary is full of ceiling fans blasting away. We look for a spot right under one.
• People dress up for church, and they dress up their kids too. The ladies are in dresses or skirts and blouses. Some men are wearing ties. The little girls have frilly dresses, black shoes and socks with lace and ribbon. They also all have earrings.
• During worship time, people wave their hands in the air, dance and twirl white handkerchiefs.
• The PA system is turned up way too loud!
• Instead of walls, the sides of the Church are a row of big doors that are opened to let in the breeze.
• There is a long prayer time. When elections are near, we are instructed to pray against voter intimidation, stuffing ballot boxes, voters who take bribes, and politicians who offer bribes.
• There is a LONG announcement time which includes lots of personal announcements – deaths, engagements, birthdays, etc.
• Visitors are asked to stand and introduce themselves. It appears that many visitors actually like being asked.
• The pastors wear clerical collars.

And that’s how I know I’m in church in Ghana.

Festooned with signs

Sign painting shop beside the road in city of Tamale

When we moved to Ghana in 2011, I started doing some reading about Ghana. An article on economics mentioned something new to me. It said that and important next step in Ghana’s economic development should be the naming of streets and giving houses and businesses numbers on those streets. Being able to identify the physical location of a person, or where a vehicle or other piece of property is kept, turns out to be an important for business, banking, and credit.

Before coming to Africa, I naively assumed that all places had street names and house numbers. In Burkina Faso, our first assignment, only a few main streets had names, I never saw numbers and I made my own map. Ghana has more – some streets with names, some lots with numbers, and there are several maps of the city for sale. See an earlier blog – The Rock that God Put – for a story of how I found someone in a good-sized town when I only knew the part of town he lived in.

Street corner in Adjiringanor, Accra

Businesses and churches want to be found. So they have solved the problem of lacking street names. The solution? Many roads wear a lively garland of signs. Intersections host a swathe of them, each vying for your eye so that you will see that their business, church or whatever is just down this street, if only you would turn here. The need for signage is an economic opportunity. Sign painting businesses proliferate along with the welders who make the bare signs for the imaginative painters.

Street corner near our place

The content of the signs is just plain fun. There is no other word for it. Not fun in the sense that they are to be made fun of, but fun in the sense that I don’t know what is coming next. Will it be the “Blessings come from God’s Great Covenant Beauty Salon?” Or perhaps the “Jehovah Lives Automatic Mechanic”, the “Out of Time Radiator Specialist” or the “Remember the Truth Photo and Video Studio”? I would love to have conversations with Ghanaian shop owners to find out how they chose the names for their shop, just like I did with a taxi driver to find out why he put Shame in his window.

Enjoy the signs, I sure do.

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God’s time is best

I was attracted to the bright colors of this roadside booth painted like a Ghana flag. I didn’t really notice the words painted on it until I was looking at my photos of the day at home.

Lottery booth in Accra, Ghana

Ghanaians express their religion and feelings about life in sayings they put on their businesses, taxi windows, and more. In this case, the owner has pressed his religious beliefs into a commercial use. You see, this is a private booth which sells tickets to the national lottery! It is obviously in the economic interests of the owner that the buyers “don’t give up yet” and that they keep hoping for “God’s time”, which would be when they will win the lottery, of course.

It is easy to criticize this commercialization of religious belief, and even some missionaries get stuck in critique mode.  In this case, if I am honest I have to admit that I tend to bend my beliefs to suit my needs and wants. It really is no small matter to let our beliefs frame our economic survival and not the other way around.

Besides, the statement “God’s time is best” almost surely expresses genuine sentiments, especially judging by the other businesses sporting the same words.

God's time is best grocery shop

God's time is best clothing boutique

Roseflower fashion shop - God's time is best

 

Fancy caskets

“This is the second most important event in my life after my funeral”, my Congolese friend told me at his graduation from seminary.

As surprising as this statement was, I should have expected it. Funerals are a big deal wherever we have worked in Africa. I saw Africans bumped from a once-a-week flight without complaining because it was to make room for a man and his wife going to his father’s funeral. Church leaders sometimes denounce the amount of money sometimes spent on lavish funerals.

It was in Accra, Ghana that I found the most colorful funeral accoutrements. There, a few casket makers specialize in caskets made in a form that reflects the profession of the deceased. Customers can pick from a selection of ready-made caskets in a variety of forms, or special order one in a form which will commemorate the deceased. And, yes, they do bury them.

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