Every flavor

When we were little, my sister went through a period when she had to try the chicken fingers in every restaurant in our hometown. No matter where we went out to eat, she would order chicken fingers. Eventually, she didn't even bother looking at the menu. It was her personal city-wide survey, and even today, she could probably tell you which of the restaurants in our hometown had the best, the crispiest, or the juiciest chicken fingers. This period lasted about 3 years.

When some people travel, they have to try the local beer. For some people, it's hiking trails. For others, the nightlife. For my sister, it was chicken fingers. For me, it's churches.

My church in Stavanger ran a notice in the bulletin last week that in lieu of a normal church service this week, there would be Gospel Church at 6 pm. Hm, Norwegians singing gospel music, I thought, I have to see this.

There were Gospel Church services at my church in Bremerhaven, Germany, when I lived there. Every 8 weeks or so would be a special evening service with an emphasis on worship music. I thought it weird that all the music was in English, and even weirder that white Germans would try to sing gospel music. Gospel for me has always been a Baptist-note-belting-African-American-in-the-southeastern-United-States thing, not meant for white northern Europeans.

The Europeans love it, though! In both Bremerhaven and Stavanger, they turn out in droves. I have never seen the church so full!

I talked my Lithuanian housemate into coming with me tonight, and when we arrived, I expected something quite similar to what I had experienced in Germany - a local, amateur, predominately caucasian choir singing their hearts out but trying desperately not to look stiff. As soon as the band started, though, I knew there would be no comparison. The choir was all white, but they moved around naturally as they sang. After two songs, an African-American soloist from Chicago joined them. Oh, man. This, my friends, was gospel.

By the end of the night, I had a hard time figuring out where I was. After belting out the lyrics to Sunday School classics like "This little light of mine" and "Our God is an awesome God," I thought maybe I was a kid back in Michigan. Singing "Oh happy day" reminded me of a fantastic woman named LaQuita that I had met on a mission trip in Tennessee. Then all of a sudden, my housemate nudged my arm to ask a question, and I snapped back to reality. Oh yeah, I'm in Norway. At Gospel Church. With a Lithuanian.

It was definitely a cultural experience, but I tell you what, gospel music rocks. I think the best part for me was realizing that a genre of music which had been developed by African-Americans in the southeastern United States had made its way to northern Europe and was now a powerful vehicle for getting Europeans into churches. What a crazy, wonderful, dynamic, criss-crossed and backwards world we live in.

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