Ghana…

Ghana is warm and humid, busy, and full of life. Street vendors come to you while you’re stuck in traffic and quiet towns rest in the tropical sun. Ghana is color, tins roofs, skyscrapers, a country emerging out of a colony, and everywhere is a fertile green.

Six hours out by air from Amsterdam and you arrive in Accra, the capital. More than a million souls live in and about this city and like every city it has gleaming high rise buildings, government offices, streets swirling with traffic, monuments, and slums. There’s an unfinished look because people build as they have money, each story rising when the funds are there and resting incomplete when they’re not. As in the villages a raw capitalist energy flows where everything can be purchased right on the street and all prices are subject to debate. When you arrive you can feel the place is ready to become something extraordinary, a city of the world in its adolescence.

It’s a deeply spiritual place as well, this Ghana. Put away the idea of some sort of pagan Africa from the past. Everywhere there are churches large and small. In some places its hard to find a tree or a billboard without a poster for a revival, church service, or an “apostle” promising spiritual renewal. Cabs and businesses overtly proclaim the faith of the owner and the radio stations are filled with religious broadcasting. Like the street markets where vendors vie for your business the spiritual market here is full, crowded, and full of variety. Jehovah’s Witnesses are here. Latter Day Saints have contructed a magnificent temple not far from the President’s home in Accra. Every street seems to have a church of one kind or another and if not a church a mosque.

In this place the Orthodox Church is relatively young, a matter of decades and not centuries. Like other Orthodox communities in Africa it was the product not so much of colonial missionaries but of the Africans evangelizing themselves in a search for the roots of Christian Faith. There are people still living who were part of that original group of searchers and their descendants have entered the spiritual world of Ghana with the vigor and challenges of a new community of Faith. Everywhere, like the rest of the country, there is something to build, something to grow, and dreams for the future. Everything is needed from nuts and bolts to seminary training. Everything is in the process of being built. Everything is new like a bird stepping from the nest and learning to fly.

Yet there is also remarkable seriousness and maturity about the Church in Ghana. They’ve weathered some challenging times. They’ve created beauty from scratch and are tuned in to the people they seek to serve. There is a wisdom in this place and a depth of faith formed in the crucible of facing and overcoming obstacles that few in our world of convenience could, or would, ever understand. It’s a young church of old souls with an intentionality about being the Church that reflects the very best of our ancient Faith.

And, if somewhere along the line you choose to travel to this place, this Ghana, it will become your school. You may think your work is to travel to teach and explain but the larger truth is that you will be taught and you will learn. You may ponder the romance of serving abroad but you will discover that the faithful of this country will make you crushingly aware of how much needs to be done right around your own home. Ghana will teach you the Faith. Ghana will teach you humility. Ghana will teach you joy. Sit in the silence of the Holy Transfiguration Cathedral in Accra and you will begin to understand.