The First Bahrain Baptist Church

I have been asked to write about the church I go to here in Bahrain.  I thought I’d mentioned it before now, but I guess I hadn’t.  Sorry about that.

Jeremy found the church on the Internet.   I don’t know what website he found it at.  So sorry I can’t point you in that direction.  As far as I know the church itself doesn’t have its own website.  But, Jeremy, if I’m wrong about any of this, please leave a comment correcting my information.  Just for fun, here’s the actual address of the church: Villa No. 4, Compound 103, Road 4103, Juffair 341, Kingdom of Bahrain.  Now you can come visit, hah, hah.  Yes, it’s in Juffair, the town we live in.  I know you all thought we lived inManama and we do, sort of.  It’s hard to describe.  It’s like the burroughs of New York, I think–Queens, the Bronx, all that.  Or maybe it’s just that a bunch of towns grew together until they were one big city.  I don’t know.  I just know that Juffair and Sitra and Hamad Town and other areas are considered separate towns but as far as I know they don’t have local government.  I really don’t know about that though.  And as far as I know the whole thing is known as Manama, too.  But Juffair is easy.  It’s on a peninsula.  The base is here, the Grand Mosque is here, our apartment is here, and so is the church.  There’s not much in the way of shopping or restaurants here, though.  There is “American Alley” which is right next to base and has a bunch of fast food restaurants on it (and where, due to the number of cars transiting the street too narrow for that number and the absense of adequate parking along the street, driving along that street is an adventure).

But I digress.  I was talking about the church, not Juffair or the driving or abysmal parking problem around here.  (Parking problem, what parking problem?  –This from the natives–they don’t think there is a problem, but there is, trust me.)

So the church is in a villa, which is a house–an independent dwelling–as opposed to a flat (apartment).  The bottom floor has a bathroom, the kitchen, the main room, which is used as the auditorium, and a separate room used as the translation room.  Upstairs you have the fellowship room, another bathroom, the children’s room, and two other rooms that aren’t used.  The main room downstairs would, of course, be the dining and living rooms if this were lived in by a family, and the children’s room and two unused rooms upstairs would be the bedrooms.  The fellowship room, which is open to the stairs would be an upstairs living room, something that is common with the villas around here.

There are about 20 to 30 people that come to the church.  Not everyone comes every week, of course.  Jeremy knows more about the history of the church than I do, so I’ll have to rely on him to correct any errors.  I believe the church was started a few years ago by some Americans.  At any rate, some Americans were heavily involved.  They’re supposed to be coming back for a visit sometime in May.  There was also a Lebanese guy involved who I believe was the pastor.  In fact, I think he’s still officially the pastor, but right now he’s in Lebanon pastoring his Lebanese church.

The man who does the pastoral duties, and whom I call the pastor (even though he says, “No, I am not the Pastor.”) is named Majdhi (uncertain of spelling) and is a doctor here in town.  He works at Salmaniya Hospital.  He is a general practictioner.  I was teasing him last night because he always brings one of those ear-examining devices that doctors have (don’t know what they’re called) because people tend to ask him medical device during the fellowship times after the services; he doesn’t seem to mind at all.  I teased him that he’d brought his favorite toy.  He laughed and said, “Yes, this is my favorite toy.”  Then he said I should see what he has at home.  And his wife looked at me, agreement in her eyes.  I just laughed.  So anyway, he is originally from Egypt.  He has two sons, Mark, 6, and Daniel, 2 (pronounced Dan-ee-yel).  His parents are here, living with him.  They don’t speak English, but they always smile at me.  Majdhi does the preaching and is generally in charge.  He’s the leader.  (If that’s not a pastor, what is?)

Then there is Abdullah, who told Jeremy to call him Yousef, but everyone at church calls him Abdullah.  He’s like Majdhi’s right-hand man.  He leads the Arabic singing.  He’s the one who took me and Jeremy out on the boat (yes, that “me” was correct English–hah!).  So if you look at the picture gallery, “Bahrain by boat,” you can see a picture of him.  He works in a bookstore at the Seef mall.  He’s also very good at working with his hands.  He built a boat out of fiberglass for this guy he knows, and he also fixed my bicycle.  He’s Bahraini.

There’s a few women who come.  There are two Hannahs.  One is also a doctor at Salmaniyah and is getting married in August.  Her fiance is Jordanian.  And that is where she is getting married.  So she probably won’t be around much afterwards.  That’s too bad.  She’s real nice and very pretty too.  The other Hannah (pronounced the Arabic way: Han-ah or Hun-ah) is Palestinian.  She’s very good at both Arabic and English.  I estimate she’s in her forties, so I kind of look up to her.  Another lady, I don’t know her name, comes every week very faithfully.  I’ve never seen her husband.  I don’t know her nationality, but her skin’s kind of light to be Bahraini.  (They have brown skin like Mexicans.  Other Middle Easterners, particularly those from the Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine area have white skin.)  She’s not very good at English.  She has two children, a boy who is probably about thirteen, named Cesar and a girl, 5, named Karen (pronounced Kahr-en).  Then there is the lady who translates the sermons whose name I don’t know, and another lady, whom I don’t know.

There’s also a lady named Fatima who comes sometimes.  She’s Bahraini, I think.  She’s very young and seems to be shy.  She has a little girl named Sarah (Sah-ra) who is less than two years old and who is a handful.  Her husband comes once in a great while.  She says he works all the time.  Two other families come sometimes.  I don’t know there names.  One has two small boys and the other has three children–a girl of about 8, a boy of about 4, and a little girl, named Sarah, who just turned 1.  Except for the baby, I don’t know any of their names.

So that’s it for the “Arabic contingent.”  Now for the “English contingent”:

There’s about 5 or 6 Philipino men who come.  I don’t know there names, but one of them leads the English singing.  And there are some Philipino women too–I don’t think any of them are married.  And some of these may be from other countries, too, like Thailand.  I know one woman is.  And there is a Malaysian couple that has come a few times.  There is an English man, named Peter.  He’s old enough to be a grandfather and probably is.  His wife, Noa (spelling? pronounced No-ay) is the woman from Thailand.  She’s real nice and has really befriended me.  I usually sit next to her in church.  Peter plays the piano when Jeremy isn’t there to do it.  But he much prefers Jeremy to do it, since it’s difficult for him to play and Jeremy is so much better.  I don’t think Jeremy minds either.  It’s actually not a piano, but one of those keyboard things some churches have.  It works, or at least it does now, ever since Jeremy fixed it by plugging the pedal into the right spot.  Jeremy and I are the only Americans in the church.

So you can see that the church is truly multi-national.  I think that’s cool.

Services are on Friday nights at 7:30 p.m.  Hope you all can come out (hah, hah, again).  They also have a prayer meeting on Sunday nights at the same time.  If you come on Sunday nights you get to hear people pray in Arabic and whatever other language they want to pray in.

So on Friday nights, here’s a typical service: They start with a welcome which is usually translated, and a prayer, which is usually in Arabic, and not translated.  Then they sing three Arabic songs, from the Arabic hymnal.  There is no musical accompaniment  and there are no notes written in the Arabic hymnal.  The people sing solely from memory.  Some of the songs have the same tunes as some of our hymns, but others are totally different.  During this the “English contingent” sits there quietly.  After this we sing two English hymns. We have hymnbooks, just like churches use in the States, that some church donated (as in their old hymnals–you can see the church stamp in the front of someof the hymnals).  The hymnals are kind of falling apartish but they work.  I really like being able to sing the songs I grew up with and am familiar with.  I often feel that the others aren’t as familiar with them as sometimes the singing is quiet and falters, especially when there’s no piano playing, which, with Jeremy gone, is often the case.  But everybody does the best they can.

After this if there is a special number (usually a group of men or women sing a song out of the hymnbook–and they call it a quartet, no matter how many are actually participating–mainly, I think, because it starts out a quartet and sometimes grows when participants try to get their friends to go up there with them–that’s happened to me) it is done here.

After this is the preaching.  The preaching is in Arabic.  But not to worry if you don’t speak Arabic.  The preaching is translated into English.  So what you do is you go to the back of the room, to the back row of chairs, where there is headphones on the chairs.  Actually, the “English contingent” being familiar with this, sit in the back already.  So around here, if you’re a “back row Baptist” that just means you don’t speak Arabic.  You put on the headphones and listen to the English translation of the sermon.  If there’s not enough headphones to go around (there’s eight, but I think one doesn’t work) you can go into the translation room and sit on the couch or chairs in there and listen to the sermon that way.  So in this church, someone getting up during the service and walking out doesn’t mean that he or she is offended.  It just means that his or her headphones weren’t working and he or she is going into the translation room in order to hear better.  Since it is a woman who does the translations (and I think she does a good job, considering it’s real-time translation), it was strange and took some getting used to hearing a woman’s voice speaking the sermon.

After the sermon, there is a prayer in Arabic, which is not translated.  After this there is usually a song or two.  The people come out of the translation room for this.  If one song, it’s in Arabic.  If two songs, one of each.  And this is the end of the service.

After the service everyone goes upstairs to the fellowship room.  The children are “released” fromt the children’s room and everyone mingles together and eats the snacks brought by the women and drinks coffee (they used to have Arabic coffee, but not anymore) and talks.  The service is over around 9:00 p.m. and the fellowship usually lasts to around 9:45 p.m.  For some reason I always hang around to the end; I never want to leave early.  So I usually make it home around 10:00 p.m. or a little later on days I don’t leave until around 10:00 p.m.

There’s a couple customs I didn’t mention that I thought strange when I first started coming.  (I still think it strange, but it’s part of the culture here, I guess.)  One is that women sit on one side of the church and men on the other.  And the other is that most of the women (and then mainly it’s the Arabic-speaking women) put a covering over their head during the service.  They look like triangular pieces of lace, most of them blue.  They keep them in a drawer in a cabinet on the wall.  So, no, it’s not like the scarves and such that the Muslim women wear.  And they only wear it during the actual service, not all the time like Muslim women.

Last night we got to hear a sermon in English.  All the Arabic speakers had to go to the back of the room (or to the translation room).  The man who spoke is from India.  He had one of his daughters with him who sang.  She’s also very beautiful.  He also had a man with him from South Africa (who was white, in case you were wondering).  They are both organizing a ten-day period of prayer for the nations by the church literally all over the world starting on the Day of Ascencion (sp?) and ending on the Day of Pentacost.  They had a huge map with them–9 ft tall by 13 ft long–which costs $150.00.  They hope to provide 1000 of these to churches around the world.  The maps are for if people want to pray for a specific nation and be able to place their hands on it while they’re praying for it.  Basically it’s a visual for people when they pray, if they want it.  It was very impressive.  When you looked and found Bahrain and saw how small it was in comparison to the rest of the world, you felt very insignificant indeed.  The only thing better for making you feel how small you are in comparison to the ginormousness of the world is a trans-ocean or trans-world trip, by ship or plane.

I think it’s awesome how people from all around the world, from so many different nations, are all believers, are all family, are all members of the body of Christ.  You could see the joy of Jesus in the faces of these brothers from India and South Africa.  And even though I’d never met them before (or anyone from South Africa) the fellowship with them was sweet.  I was able to talk with the man from South Africa afterwards (his name is Gary) and he was an encouragment to me.  I really needed to hear what he had to say.  It’s so neat how God puts people in your path right when you need them.  And how they can be people from the other side of the world, people from a different culture and country, people you would have never met save for your common bond in Christ.  There is truly a world-wide universal church, and it’s so neat to be a part of it.  And it’s here in Bahrain, too.  And not just at my church.  There are other churches in Bahrain.  Perhaps the biggest is the Catholic Church (no surprise there), but there are other like-minded (to mine) churches too.  I didn’t catch the name, but Gary is presently living here in Bahrain and goes to one such church.

I don’t know how many churches there are in Bahrain.  I do know that our church doesn’t have official status.  When the church leaders went to apply for it they were told, “You already have fifty churches [or was it forty?  I forget].  What do you need another one for?”  But there are way more than fifty mosques, and they are building new ones all the time.  But it would be very unpolitic and unwise to point this out and say, “Why do you need another mosque?”  On the other hand, for the Middle East, Bahrain does have religious freedom, and we can be thankful for that.  So far the only harrassment we’ve had is about parking.  The people who live in the other two villas in the compound like to call the landlord and complain about us parking too many cars in the compound.  We always make sure we leave them room to get to their villas, but they still like to complain.  They would prefer us to all park out on the street, I think.  So I always do park out on the street, even though it’s a little scary out there since the compound’s not in a very nice area of town.  It’s in a Shiite neighborhood.  Shiites have been historically oppressed in Bahrain and even today they are in a lower socio-economic status than the Sunnis (as in they’re poor).  So this is a poor neighborhood and just like poor neighborhoods in the States the people can be very distrustful of outsiders and even rough.  But so far I’ve been safe every time I’ve come to church.  And nothing has happened to my car, either.  So don’t worry about me.  I think as long as I continue to lock my doors and be aware of my surroundings, I’ll be fine.  And remember, God is a better protector than a bodyguard or gun or whatever could ever be.

So that’s everything about my church I can think of for right now.  Any questions, please feel free to ask.