I’ve been serving the Lord here in Huánuco, Perú, for over a year now and have been praying if there was anything God wanted me to do in regards to connecting our two churches, and specifically our worship teams. I’ve been blessed while serving the Lord on both teams, and have seen how they are both striving to worship the Lord with excellent music across generations.
Here in Peru, we cross a few cultural boundaries as well as generational ones in our worship services. Last week for example, we sang several popular praise chorus written by Marcos Witt, the Latin Chris Tomlin. Then we transitioned into a traditional hymn brought here by missionaries over 70 years ago. To finish the service we sang a string of three connected Quechua praise choruses which are written to flow in and out of each other. This church crosses generational, cultural and ethnic boundaries every Sunday! While it can be a struggle to integrate different preferences and cultures in a worship service, God is blessing our efforts as He does those of my worship teams in the States!
My favorite element of our worship team is a new one. Pastor Jesús (what a good name for a pastor!) has implemented a 2 hour devotions and prayer meeting on top of our weekly practice. This means all of us as a worship team get together, even if we’re not playing that week, and spend time together in the Word and praying as a group, for each other, our church, and the world. It’s a big time commitment, but it’s been worth it to see the connections God is making in our group as we seek him together.
Huánuco is a town that is off the beaten path. (Photo: That’s our church building on the right-hand side of the street.) While we are the largest city within a day’s travel, we don’t have a tourist industry and rarely get the help promised by the government. Unemployment is extremely high, and many have to go to the capital,
Even without many resources, our worship team keeps striving for better and better quality of musicianship and sound. We recently purchased several new microphones by raising money through making and selling lunches after church. Everyone enjoyed buying a papa rellena (stuffed potato) for 1 sol (about 30 cents) and knowing it was going to a good cause. After that project was completed, we had another series of lunches to purchase nice outfits, so we could all have something dressy to wear when we lead worship. (Not everyone owns Sunday "up-front" clothes.) The current most urgent need is for stage monitors, to feed the sound back to the worship team so we can stay on pitch and in rhythm with each other. Our church can seats 500 people and is very large. But it is made entirely of cement which absorbs sound and doesn’t have a full roof. Most of the sound we make never makes it back to the front of the room and the musicians and singers cannot hear each other or themselves. We have had a sound technician consultant confirm that what is lacking are the monitors for the musicians on the stage. On a special Sunday last fall, a visiting music team from
Over the past year, I’ve gotten to know our Pastor Juan, Associate Pastor Jesús, and the worship team. They’ve proven themselves to be trustworthy and responsible. During this time I've been wondering if there was any particular project I could help with. When we realized as a group that our greatest need were monitors, I realized this could be the chance to partner across my churches and across worship teams! Most Peruvians have a hard time coming up with $20. Just last week, I heard that one of my friends was having a hard time coming up for the cost of a church weekend leadership retreat, the equivalent of 5 dollars. Knowing the need as well as the situation here, I’ve wondered how we could help.
Would my friends and family be interested in partnering with us in this project? I call it "Project Alliance", a 1 month campaign to raise $700 for the purchase of 2 monitors for the stage and the console that controls them. That is the average cost in Peru to provide stage monitors to a church of this size. I've researched the possibilities here in Huánuco and am coordinating with a sound technician that works for my mission agency in Lima. If we are able to purchase them for less, any funds raised in addition to the actual cost will be used towards the next project this worship team is working on.
My Wycliffe coworkers who have attended this church for over 20 years agree this is a worthy project and a good way to partner with the Peruvian church here in Huánuco. Our associate pastor, Jesús, is grateful for the initiative. Please go to the top of this blog for information on how to give. Thank you for considering partnering with us in this project!
