Church Life in Cameroon

Please, take time and look at our child sponsorship page www.gmmafricachild.org and other GMM work at www.gmmafrica.org.

(Singing at Jinkfuin, 2011)

Today is 24^th of April 2011. The time is 11:51 am just as I have started writing. I can hear drumming at Belo Baptist church. It is a little above my office. Maybe it is drumming for offering collection. It should be just after the sermon had been preached. Today is also Easter Sunday, one of the most important days in the life of the church in Cameroon, especially the Baptist church. Christians commemorate the resurrection of Christ from the death, one of the main things that make Christianity different from other religions. They can’t point to the tomb of their founder because their Lord rose from the dead.

 The local church I pastor is Jinkfuin Baptist church. Founded in 1967, several pastors have come and gone. I came there 14 December 2002 and have been there since. For all these years this is how we have been celebrating Easter:

      At 3 am in the night the church goes to a hill, spend all the time singing, dancing and then a sermon. The essence of going to a hill commemorates how the women went early Sunday morning to the tomb to anoint the dead body of Jesus but a living Jesus was given them. As the women ran home rejoicing, so the church marches home dancing round the village and into the church. We have followed this routine year after year.

     Church service today has been wonderful About 631 Christians attended the service. The sermon focused on the importance of the resurrection of Christ to the church. It was simply funny when some thought they could gainsay the truth of the resurrection as found in Matthew 28:12-15. The soldiers said that when they were asleep His disciples came and stole the body. This was a lie not well lied. It needed only a fool to believe it. How can people be asleep and see the disciples of Jesus move a body away? Does it mean they were asleep and awake at the same time to see? If they had seen, were they really asleep? If they were not really asleep, they could they have allowed the disciples make away with the body?

     The fact is that Jesus rose from the dead and because He lives, we too shall live.

Church service here is always characterized by serious singing. We have the vernacular choir, the English choir, the children’s choir and a singing group called Salvation Star Singers. All these grace the church service every Sunday plus the general songs we sing. There is also serious drumming here and people dance freely, very like King David when the Ark of God was a-returning to Jerusalem.

To know more about life in the Cameroon church, contact info@gmmafrica.org.