Church Worship in Cordoba

One of the first things I did upon arrival in Cordoba was attend a service of worship on Sunday evening. It was at the church which my hostess attends. She was so excited when she learned a pastor was staying in her home. She also has a young woman studying and preparing to become a missionary from this church to Mozambique, once she learned English, French, and raises the funds for her mission. Anyway, it was an excellent opportunity to experience worship in Argentina since I would have someone to go with and would not have to walk in alone, as a total stranger. As it turned out Luli, my hostess, had to visit a friend in the hospital and did not make it to church (which started at 5:30 p.m., the first service for Sunday, the second started at 8:00 p.m.) but Fanny, the young woman preparing for a mission and the Japanese student studying Spanish at the University and staying here, accompanied me to their church.

The Church is called Iglesia de Centro Christian and was founded 16 years ago by an Assembly of God missionary from the United States. Since that time this church, which is not huge (but did appear to have more attendance than Christ Congregational) has sent out 40 missionaries into the world. This night had a mission focus. It was led by their Director of Missions and the preacher was a guest missionary who is Argentinian but has a mission to Italy. He shared photos on his experience the past 8 years and he preached a message which I think (it was all in Spanish) was on the gospel story of the young man challenged by Jesus to give up all and follow him. The message seemed to be about the difficulty of following Jesus, especially in mission work, but that the ultimate reward was worth it. Again, I am not sure of the finer points.

The worship was very much like Assembly of God worship in the US. They had a Praise Team that led a lot of singing, several songs I recognized, though of course they were in Spanish. There were several pauses for prayer, for personal testimonies, and for special mission appeals. The entire worship lasted 2 hours and I was tired after, primarily because it was very hard work to follow in Spanish and try to stay focused. Again, I have a deeper appreciation for those who have limited English capacity and try to follow our worship, even for only one hour. If you want to see some pictures of the worship leadership team, follow this link to the Kodak Gallery album I have created: http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=6d2p4u6.29ljy8sa&x=0&y=-dmmvjb&localeid=en_US