The Beauty of Protestant Church Oman

Protestant Church Oman (PCO) is an imperfect church.  It is filled with people who sin... daily.  It is even led by imperfect sinners.  And yet, I am also a sinner.

From my seat at the back running the computer, I can see all the various people and cultural styles.  It's hard to capture it in a photo, though.

If I were in the States, I probably wouldn't choose PCO.  It would be a mistake.  I wouldn't choose it mainly because it's not a Baptist church, and my beliefs do line up with Baptists.  I'm also not a fan of responsive readings.  I don't get it.  It doesn't add anything to my worship experience.  In fact, it occasionally detracts when I'm distracted by thinking about why I don't want to say, "I believe in the holy catholic Church."  And yet, PCO is where we choose to spend our Friday mornings.  I'm learning the flow of the service.  I appreciate the Bible readings and the designated intercessory prayer time (most of the time).

Church Timings

As I've mentioned before, most church services here are on Fridays.  There are some on Saturday, even a Thursday or Sunday service, but most have their service on Fridays.  So after making it through the school week, instead of sleeping in the next day, we get up just a little later at 7:30 (okay, that's quite a bit later than my normal 5:45).  Or, as today happened (thanks sun), I still woke up at 5:45.  The good news:  church day still translates to nap day in my head.  So here I am at 1:00, and I've gone to church, come home, had lunch, and napped.

Another timing note is that church services are shorter.  We are not going to a Sunday school class and a service.  All we have on Friday mornings is the service.  So the service starts at 9:00 and is done by 10:30.  In fact, last week's service went long, and they asked the parents to head out to get our kids from their classes during the last song.  This is why I can already have finished my nap at 1:00 in the afternoon.  I have so much day ahead of me!  The kids have already gotten bored and been taken to the pool.

As I've mentioned before, timing is everything.  The services need to run smoothly and on time.  Today they had two special announcements.  One was about the women's conference next weekend.  The other was about the new building they are planning on building.  It's already been approved, but they brought an update about where we are in obtaining the permits and having the required money.  So Pastor Chris, who was the one delivering the sermon today, probably had a little less time than normal.  Stephen mentioned afterward that he was surprised at how quickly he was getting to this final point.  As a former pastor of ours, Jackie, used to say, "There's no such thing as a bad, short sermon."

Church in Oman Part 2

A week has past since my last Friday church post.  Many things have changed.  I have met ladies.  We’ve been invited to many outings by these ladies.  I’m appreciating where we are living in town.  (It is very centrally located in Muscat.)

A glimpse inside PCO.

This week we went to Protestant Church Oman (PCO) at the Ghala church campus Friday morning.  They have many different services of different types at both their Ruwi and Ghala campus.  We went to the 9am Friday service which is their contemporary service.

It was indeed a more contemporary service.  The songs were probably 10 years old, but one of them was a favorite of mine, “Revelation Song.”  They did a great job with the song.  I inwardly giggled when one of the poor singers looked in panic every time they didn’t have the words up yet.  I also giggled when I saw the words on the back screen.  The projector is so close to the screen that the display was incredibly small.  I know of a few singers that would NOT be okay with that setup.  The song they sang for the offertory was an updated hymn.  I wish I could remember which one.  What I do remember was the very country notes that were hit after the first verse.  It tickled me so!  I had a hard time stopping my outward giggles then.

Church in Oman

This morning wasn’t great.  I woke up with an overwhelming feeling that we should have rented a house in a different part of town.  I got up and started researching that part of town to try to prove to myself that the grass wasn’t greener over there.  It failed.  That community has garden areas, beach access, restaurants, shops, a grocery store, a hair salon, a doctor’s office, a dentist, a gym, pools, and so much more.  But, it is rather far from the boys’ school, which is the real reason we didn’t look there too much.  I could have put them on a bus to school, but I didn’t want to force a new school and bus ride on my kids.  I opted for school convenience over living convenience for me.

Things will get better.  Eventually I will meet people.  Eventually I will have a car and can get to more than just the school, a grocery store, a handful of American fast food restaurants, and coffee shops.  Bad days happen. 

"Some days are like that.  Even in Australia."