Steve Plodinec, a teacher at Christ Seminary in Polokwane, South Africa, spent the weekend at the church of his student, Martin. This is Part 2 of his account.

On Saturday afternoon, Martin had arranged for me to be on a Christian talk radio program for about an hour. We arrived at the radio station just as the program was starting. I was rushed into the studio, the hostess plugged in an advertisement, Martin introduced us and then left the building.

The hostess introduced me to the radio audience and said “Our topic for today is submission in the home.” I thought, “Bingo! Ephesians 5, 1 Peter 3 – plenty of material there for an hour. This will be easy.” The hostess then said, “Since our topic is submission in the home, let’s turn to Matthew chapter 6.” I thought, “What? Matthew 6? Submission?” As I turned to the passage my mind was racing, scouring every corner of my brain for anything in Matthew 6 that had anything remotely to do with submission in the home. She said, “Look at verse 9. Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.” Then she looked at me. “So, pastor Steve, how can we apply this in our families in the home?” I said something about how the idea behind this verse is giving honor and glory to God and one way we can do that is by submitting to His ordained leadership structure in the home, which is talked about in Ephesians 5 and 1 Peter 3, let’s turn there. Whew. Talk about dodging a bullet.

For a moment she tried to tie Matthew 6:9 to submission in the home, but that was going down in flames, so she asked about Ephesians 5. I turned there and talked through the passage. We had a few calls, then the hour was up.

I am not trying to be cruel, nor am I poking fun at her when I say that she probably had no idea that those two chapters specifically address submission in the home. In general, the church here in Africa uses the Bible as a grab-bag of verses into which they reach and clutch onto some passage with some words in it that they think has something to do with their topic. The concept of a verse gaining meaning from its context is pretty much unknown to most Christians here.

After the radio show, Martin took me to a meeting with the local pastors. Many of them had listened to the radio show and they had a number of questions. They also asked about church leadership, specifically about women as pastors.

I should mention that none of the pastors there, except for Martin, have had any training or schooling at all. In general, they don’t know what the Bible has to say on most subjects and some of them even get the gospel wrong. This is why I am here. Martin was just like the rest of these guys when he came to seminary three years ago. At the seminary, we can make a big impact on students like Martin.

On Sunday morning, we arrived with Martin and his family about fifteen minutes before church was due to begin. The time to start came and went and, besides Martin’s family and myself with two of my kids, there were only two other people at church. People started to make their way in, and the church was finally full about half an hour after the service was supposed to start.

We all sat there for a moment and then, it seemed to me, the congregation spontaneously began to sing. There was no song leader, but different people would start a song whenever they felt like it. All the singing was in the Sotho language but many of the tunes were familiar. It was mainly responsive singing with one person singing a line and then the congregation echoing the line back. The volume increased with each song until everyone up and down the dirt street could hear us clearly.

The rhythm also increased and, as the singing got louder and the service wore on, each group of people took their turn jumping, swaying and marching up and down the short aisle. The old grey-haired women (the “mothers of the church”) came first shuffling and bouncing to the rhythm of the songs. Then the middle-aged and young women came forward, knelt in a circle, threw back their heads, sang, shouted loudly and shook themselves as they swayed in and out of the circle.

After one song, they withdrew to their seats and the little kids jumped around for a minute. Then the young men came forward and jumped and shouted and shook and clapped and sang. When I got up to preach I had a big wet spot on my shoulder from where Michael had been crying.

My text was Romans 1:16 and I preached through an interpreter. You can never really get going when you have to wait for an interpreter. But even if I was fluent in the language, I will never be as effective a preacher as one of their own. This is why I teach Martin at the seminary instead of trying to plant a church in some village. The students will always be far more effective in reaching their culture and preaching to their own people than I or any other outsider. We have around 65 full-time students at the seminary from numerous African countries.

Though I don’t think I preached that well, everyone was kind after the sermon and said I did a good job, and someone asked if he could have my notes. I knew they were all being kind and I thought of the proverb, “to the hungry even what is bitter tastes sweet.”

After lunch on Sunday, Martin and I went on visitation. Martin loves visiting people in their homes, and he is very good at it. He said it is his favorite part of the ministry. We visited mainly elderly ladies who could not come to church that morning for one reason or another. Apparently, my discussion of submission in the home on the radio on Saturday was well received because Martin and I were asked to be on the radio again on Sunday evening and to speak on Christian submission. The host was a local pastor who had his own radio show and he had been at the pastor’s meeting I spoke at the day before. His show is three hours long and he gave us free reign for all three hours. The time flew.

The show ended at 8 pm and Martin and I went back to his house and went to bed soon after. It had been a busy two days of ministry … so far.

[Go to Part 3]