Spiritual Trauma

I volunteered to go to the church, I will give you that... but after that moment my consent for what happened stopped and I thus became the victim. Joel and I attended a church that one of our friends invited us to. It sounded refreshing to go to a church where we could just sit in the congregation and enjoy the morning without needing to 'represent an organization.' The church is ran by a Korean Mission Group and thus had a Korean pastor. The message was first translated into English and then again into Swahili. It was quite a linguistic experience! Yet, one and half hours later, he was still preaching and not even close to being done...even though I'd say 90% of the congregation had already checked out.

When the service finally completed, they asked for the first timers to move to the back to be welcomed. I should have listened to the inner voice saying, 'now is your chance to escape...' but that would be rude, so I headed to the back, unaware of the trauma I was about to encounter. Our group of newcomers was split into several smaller groups and I was sent with the man with a mission, Pastor Lee. Pastor Lee is a 50+ year old Asian man with a hearing problem, broken English, and the eagerness to save souls. What was meant to be at the most a thirty minute, 'welcome to our church' schpeel, turned into a very harmful encounter with the Christian faith. Pastor Lee began by learning our names, of which I'm sure he doesn't remember, and then proceeded with his “mission” of bringing us to Jesus without any further inquiry into what we believed and why we were in Kenya, and it still wasn't enough to explain to him that we believe in Jesus. He diligently continued on taking us through many familiar scriptures of the Bible...the Roman Road, and the fall of man, etc... exerting his beliefs unto us like a criminal who can overpower his victims, refusing to read the obvious cues that he was offending us. Oh the anger and hurt that was welling up within me as he continued on and on, often times refusing us the opportunity to speak because 'he wasn't done yet.' To disagree with what he was saying would only lead to further abuse, so in time I simply succumb to the despair I felt and stopped fighting it.

What could have been a wonderful and engaging conversation quickly turned sour and ended in a direct abuse of power. To think that this may be a person's first experience with Christianity nearly brought tears to my eyes in the midst of him talking to us. Without any attempt to build even a casual relationship, this man forced us into a conversation that we were obviously resistant to having. Not to mention the fact that we expressed our belief in Christ from the very beginning.
An hour after the conversation began, he was still pursuing us and even had the nerve to express interest in seeing us again, which would be like an attacker asking his victim out to coffee after stripping away their dignity. With the tiny amount of strength (and yet restraint) we had left in us, we politely stood up, thanked him, and walked away. He followed, requesting our contact, and I ignored him. I have never felt so rude in my life, and yet I wish I would have walked away much sooner.

I felt demoralized spiritually on Sunday. The man may have had good and honest intentions, but I walked away deeply paining for people who have had similar encounters.

An invitation into the Christian faith should NEVER feel like this. There is no “3 step formula” that opens the eyes of people to see Jesus, it is His doing within our hearts. To think that we as humans have the ability to convince people into the faith is a disgrace. I apologize for the graphic metaphor, yet I can't think of a better way to explain the experience, which only reinforced to me the utmost importance of building relationships with people and sharing your faith out of love, not a formula.

Peace,
Mandy