05010
January 6, 2005

Riders on the storm

Sudanese congregation shows moderator
Southern hospitality, glimpse of the future

by Evan Silverstein

       But the tall Presbyterian, who two decades ago at the age of 16 fled civil war and famine in Sudan’s ravaged Christian south, wasn’t just idly standing around. And he wasn’t alone for long, either.

       Yat, now in his early 30s, was in the parking lot of the Sudanese Presbyterian Church  in Gallatin, where he was waiting to greet Rick Ufford-Chase, moderator of the 216^th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA).

Moderator Rick Ufford-Chase, right, shares a laugh with Gatluak Ter Thack, Clerk of Session at he Sudanese Presbyterian Church, as elder simon T. Nguthdell looks on. Photos by Evan Silverstein

       Ufford-Chase’s visit on Dec. 12 was celebrated as a historic day by the 100-member Sudanese congregation. The denomination’s highest-ranking elected official was treated to a fill-up-your-senses worship service of Sudanese singing, dancing, music and praise.

      “Yes, it’s a big deal to us because the way we live here, we live like refugees, and we are being helped by the Presbyterian Church,” said Yat, a lay pastor at the church and native of Nasir, Sudan.

         “If the big person or the one who leads the Presbyterian Church chooses to come here, we are very excited to see him and talk to him about the issues we face here in our church,” Yat said in English. “Because our church is still under development and we have a lot of things to do, we need encouragement in the name of Jesus Christ.”

       Inside the church a traditional Sudanese dinner was served as about 75 members and guests welcomed the moderator with wide smiles and warm handshakes, sharing stories with him about their lives in Sudan and their transition to American society.

       Ufford-Chase said he visited here to learn more about Sudanese culture, religious life, and the political turmoil threatening Christians in Africa’s largest nation.

       The visit also allowed him to gaze into the possible future of the PC(USA), a mostly white denomination striving to make its membership rolls more inclusive.

       “A lot of Presbyterians just don’t know that this is part of our church,” Ufford-Chase said of the Sudanese congregation as a barrage of singing echoed in the background in the parishioners’ native Nuer language. “They don’t have the foggiest idea. That was part of why I wanted to come. We have to know about this. This is a big part of who we’re going to be in the future. I think it’s really, really exciting.”

       The moderator, who is now elected every two years, presides over the meeting of the PC(USA)’s General Assembly and serves as chief spokesperson and goodwill ambassador of the denomination until the next Assembly.

       The church is makeshift, a simple metal shell that was once home to a machine welding shop. Men sit on one side of the sanctuary and women on the other, a tradition in Sudan.

      “We didn’t have a lot of money (when we moved in), but we did have a lot of faith,” said the Rev. Ernest Newsom, a native Tennessean who is the church’s pastor.

       Otherwise the church resembles most others. The walls are decorated with colorful tapestries with messages of hope and faith, and a choir dressed in red robes belt out songs and hymns.

       “As far as the spirit of God, it’s full and overflowing,” Ufford-Chase said of the church.

       Since the congregation moved into the square-shaped tan building three years ago, the facility has been transformed into more than just a place of worship. It has emerged as a symbol of personal and religious deliverance to the Sudanese membership, many of whom made extraordinary journeys across Africa and the Atlantic to land in this small Tennessee town about 35 miles north of Nashville.

       Those journeys were often marked by religious persecution and remarkable stories of survival in the wake of brutal oppression by the northern-based Muslim government of Sudan, which has been attempting to impose Islamic law on Sudan’s Christian and animist south.

       “Christians have a lot of problems at home,” said Sarah Dol, who has worshipped at the Gallatin congregation since 1999, when she arrived in the United States from southern Sudan’s Upper Nile region. “(The Muslim government’s) people, they want to destroy Christianity in our home. They want the country to become a Muslim country. That’s why we came to the United States. To fight for our religion.”

       Some 2 million people have died and more than 4 million have been displaced in Sudan’s civil war, which began in 1983. However, since the moderator’s visit last month, both sides have signed a peace settlement that could end three decades of fighting.

       “In our country back there a lot of people die for food, for medicine,” said church member Bol Puk, 30, a Nashville resident who is also originally from Nasir. “They have no clothes, no place to sleep. This building is better than where they are right now. They don’t have food at all. So if we have peace, we will thank God for that.”

       Most members of the church are from southern Sudan. The first arrived in the Gallatin area in the late 1980s, thanks to a refugee resettlement agency, Newsom said.

     Addressing the congregation, Ufford-Chase described the parishioners as modern-day riders of the storm, comparing their exodus to the United States with Christ and his disciples sailing across a stormy sea to reach the land of the Gentiles.

       “And that’s where we come to your story, isn’t it?” Ufford-Chase asked, reading from the same passage from Mark that he used when he ran for moderator last summer. “This is the story of an immigrant people. People who through no real choice of their own are forced to leave everything behind and to trust Jesus. To get in the boat and to go out in the world to a place they’ve never experienced before.”

 Family lineage at the church dates back three generations, he said, but the congregation is primarily a young one with an average age of about 24.

      Addressing the congregation, Ufford-Chase described the parishioners as modern-day riders of the storm, comparing their exodus to the United States with Christ and his disciples sailing across a stormy sea to reach the land of the Gentiles.

       “And that’s where we come to your story, isn’t it?” Ufford-Chase asked, reading from the same passage from Mark that he used when he ran for moderator last summer. “This is the story of an immigrant people. People who through no real choice of their own are forced to leave everything behind and to trust Jesus. To get in the boat and to go out in the world to a place they’ve never experienced before.”

          Ufford-Chase, an elder at Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson, AZ, who works with immigrants from Mexico and throughout Central America as a mission co-worker, discussed the challenges refugees often face as newcomers to another country.

       Problems range from language to cultural and economic barriers that weigh heavily on those struggling to support their families, often with low-wage jobs — a difficult juggling act the moderator is used to seeing south of the U.S.–Mexico border.

       “Some days, don’t we feel that God has abandoned us?” Ufford-Chase asked. “Jesus seems to be asleep and ignoring our situation. Our situation, where we are trying to raise families in another culture, with a different language, or there’s the storm of trying to find a job when we are from a different place.”

       He urged congregants to keep the faith, weathering the storm even during the most difficult times.

       “My friends, what I want to say to you tonight is that I understand what it’s like to live in the storm,” Ufford-Chase said. “I have so much respect for all of you who have left behind everything you know and have come and made this place your home. I believe that God is at work in your journey to us.”

       Newsom, who played “Silent Night” on a soprano saxophone during the event, said many church members are employed at a local meat processing plant, as housekeepers at area hotels, or as security guards at other businesses.

       By contrast, Ufford-Chase confessed that growing up in a “church of privilege” contributed to his inability to see “people who were different from me” until he was 18 or 20 years old.

       “It hurts me that my church, our church here, your church and mine in the United States, is mostly like me,” Ufford-Chase said. “Too many people in our Presbyterian Church today do not see you. They never had the blinders moved off their eyes so that they could see people who are different from them.

       “Too many of us in our Presbyterian Church are afraid ourselves to get in the boat with Jesus and go out into the world, even if it’s only down the block.”

       He called the congregation’s diversity a “gift to the church,” promising to work to make others around the denomination more aware of those who are different by lifting up the Sudanese congregation’s story.

       “We need you because we know that in the Bible we’re told over and over again that God’s Holy Spirit is most at work on the margins in our world today,” Ufford-Chase said. “It’s at work where people are the most desperate and struggling the hardest to survive.”

       Despite some hardships, including a lack of necessary teaching facilities for the young and ample worship space, members said their small Tennessee church provides a place of solace, an oasis of godly values, a stage for spirited worship, an organism of relationships, and all the bountiful benefits Christians enjoy, free from government persecution like they left behind in Sudan. 

       As hands clapped, people danced in the pews, and the sound of beating drums rattled the sanctuary walls, Ufford-Chase once again pointed out why he had to visit.

       “You can hear it, right?” he asked, raising his voice so it could be heard above the energetic singing in the background. “You can hear it all around us. There is life here.”

       “Tell me the last time you were in an Anglo-American or a European-American church where they went all day?” Ufford-Chase said to the Presbyterian News Service later. “These folks were here from 11 o’clock this morning until 6:30 tonight. And when we quit for the evening they immediately went back to singing. We have something to learn from these people.”       

    Newsom and others at the church estimated that at least 6,400 refugees from Sudan now live in Middle Tennessee, including Nashville and Gallatin. But, they added, the number is really probably closer to 8,000 since many have had children since arriving.

      Chartered in 1997, the congregation attracts Sudanese residents from Nashville and surrounding communities, averaging nearly 75 worshippers every Sunday. It is the only Sudanese chartered congregation in the state. However, according to Newsom, there are at least three Sudanese fellowships worshipping at other churches throughout the region.

       The Sudanese congregation dedicated its current 5,000-square-foot building on Nov. 4, 2001, following six years of nesting in five different area churches.

       Now, the moderator said, those worshipping here may be celebrating, not just their own future, but that of the entire PC(USA).

       “It’s going to look like Pentecost,” said Ufford-Chase, speculating about the future church. “Stuff breaking out all over that can’t be contained, like this music.”