Türkiye (Turkey) #6: Worship – Fellowship – Witness
Worship – Fellowship – Witness
by Guy Griffith, Westminster Presbyterian Church, Nashville, TN
The Psalmist sings, “O come, let me worship and bow down, let me kneel before the Lord, our Maker! For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand” (Ps 95:6-7).
Worship has been a central part of our experience with our Persian friends. First, in Istanbul, the seminars were marked by joyful, heartfelt worship, filled with full-throated singing. A favorite memory was singing “O Lord our God” together in Farsi and English. But what surprised me most was coming to learn that part of the reason for the unbounded praise and willingness to make such a “joyful noise” is the reality that the “in-country” house churches must worship with muted voices lest neighbors overhear and report them. Our hosts showed us clips of house churches gathering with cell phones on coffee tables as together the gathered worshippers watched the recorded services with the volume nearly muted.
Yesterday, as we gathered for worship in Izmir with the Smyrna church, we noticed three cell phones mounted on the ceiling. They were recording the service – one for YouTube, another for Facebook, and a third for Instagram. The ministry of this church – filled with Persian refugees – nurtured the “in-country” house churches worshipping secretly. Not only does the Smyrna church, led by an amazing gifted woman pastor, serve as a worship center and discipling source for this Persian community in diaspora, but it is also the locus of evangelism moving from believers back “in-country.” They do so by producing Christian literature and programming that is beamed back home. It was clear that there is a strategy every bit as intentional as the Apostle Paul’s for growing the church in a place where the government is trying to silence it.
We met with members of the church in a rich fellowship time afterward. Many provided testimony of how they came to faith. I was especially touched by A’s story. A, the father of one of the worship leaders, is a sweet man with a servant’s heart. He told of being invited to a prayer meeting while he was Muslim but went only to find some Americans among the Persians. During the prayer, he felt hands on his shoulders and was angry to discover it was one of the Americans. He harbored such hatred in his heart toward Americans because of a war that had ravaged his country in which the United States participated covertly.
However, that night Jesus came to him in a dream inviting him to let go of his anger, and a spirit of forgiveness flooded his heart. He gave his anger over to the Lord immediately. We later talked of my deep friendships with men from his country while I was at University. We shared of our struggles over the years with the complicated and tragic relationships between our countries.
A’s sweet smile and spirit of servanthood will be the face I most remember from this visit. As we embraced before our team departed, the words from Psalm 133 came to me:
“How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity.”
