Touching Down & Getting to Know Folks

 Sabbatical time began March 2 as the sun set on Oslo. Oslo is a large cosmopolitan city not very different from many other great European cities. Due to waves of immigration from refugees fleeing war, hunger, and strife around the world (especially in the last 30 years) it has a diverse population. When I say that I mean this: in Oslo you will see a decent representation of people from around the world, there is a quickly growing Muslim population. That being said, minority communities do not make up such significant swaths of the population as they do in America’s great cities. Oslo is diverse, but it’s diversity is not its majority.

Many have speculated that if the Norwegian Church (either in its official form, the Church of Norway- or in its free church forms such as the United Methodist Church) is to have a future it will be found through these immigrant populations. Persons coming from Kenya, Ethiopia, Syria, Iraq, etc. hold a cultural reference in which faith makes sense to them. Therefore they are open to belief in God, and certainly more so than the average ancestral Norwegian.

Most people whose DNA is rooted in Norway have woken up in a society and world in which faith makes little sense and is hardly necessary. Material needs are met, social needs can be met outside the church (often in ways that feel more authentic to younger generations). Do Norwegians need God?

The consensus seems to be no. Don’t be mistaken, Norwegians still seem to have a fairly strong cultural attachment to Christendom. Most Norwegians are still baptized into the Christian faith as infants and most Norwegians observe a Christian funeral and burial. Outside of that and Christmas, however, the day to day lives of most Norwegians are far less marked by religious observance than the average American, just by the numbers, and far far less than the average Kenyan, for example, a culture which is less secularized than our own.

One of the central places we have been introduced to this culture and to learnings about it has been Metodiskirken pä Grünerløkka, a United Methodist Church in the heart of Oslo. Grünerløkka is a trendy hipster friendly neighborhood in which our apartment is located less than a block from the church.

Rev. Terje Nilson leads two congregations from this location. One is a Norwegian congregation which worships Sunday morning in a pretty traditional Norwegian way, though they do use a United Methodist hymnal. The other congregation, IMCO, worships Sunday afternoons in English and is comprised of a vibrant and diverse collection of persons who came from Africa, Asia, and elsewhere. Folks here have been terrifically friendly. They’ve invited me to preach March 27, and it will be an honor to do so. God has done big things in this little church! They have actually seen 3 persons called to full time ministry in the last few years. That’s a big deal anywhere in the world!

An enormous opportunity for the family as we have worshipped here has been Rev. Nilsen’s relationship with the Oslo Lutheran Seminary (which UMC pastors are trained at as well) and also another more Evangelical school. He serves as mentors to students from those locations and currently the students have been preaching. So, this means that my family spends most of its week interacting not only with Norwegians but also having a fair amount of interaction with and listening to African siblings preach. The diversity of the Church and the UMC is an amazing gift!

As I mentioned in our video blog, Rev. Terje quickly was kind enough to offer a key to the church in the event our family even needed more space to do homework or spread out a bit. He also has been good enough to introduce me to others.

Last week he took some of the international students and myself to a gathering of the UMC clergy in Oslo at Oslo Centralkirken. Rev. Ola Westad and Pastor Marianne Münz were gracious hosts and we engaged in a conversation about ministry in a secular context across at least 3 cultural contexts (Norway, Kenya, and USA) for more than 2 hours. It was a fascinating conversation which I am still processing. Here’s a picture. Of the students, all are from Kenya though only Charles and Moses are Methodists.

Front Row: Joe de Bravo, Rev. Terje Nilsen, Eric, Moses Muthoni

Second Row: Glenn Knepp, Rev. Ola Westad

Third Row: Pastor Marianne Münz, Charles Juma, Rev. Steinar Hjerpseth.