Paper Sunday at the Assembly of God Church

We went to a traditional Malawian church service at the Assembly of God church. It was a very busy day and I was excited to see what this service would be like. It was what I thought it would be in terms of a lot of singing and dancing (which I gotta say I loved). After a long period of worship, there was an offering basket. This was followed by two different baskets, then a woman with her chitinje which she placed on the floor and people came up and threw kwacha ($$) in the air so that it fell slowly onto the chitinje (fabric used as skirt or shawl). I was like WOW that’s a lot of different offerings, then there was a group of 8 people that came up representing different church organizations for donation/tithing. Following was another woman with her chitinje. I am not kidding, there were like 15 different donation/tithing. Rather than the normal general tithe, there was a collection for each different group- youth, men’s, women’s, missionary, and the different areas in the Lilongwe. I felt like this was overkill. Also when there are new people at the service they make them introduce themselves to the congregation especially if you are white. Guess who they handed the microphone first?!!? Haha yep me. I was like “why are you coming over here with a microphone…..wait what was it you asked me to tell the congregation??”. Lol it was hilarious!! They were all really nice but as a white person you always feel very on display. Its an interesting thing to be in the minority now. Anyway, the service lasted about 3.5 hrs and it wasn’t until after church when we were heading to lunch that we found out we had attended the “paper Sunday”. Paper Sunday happens once a month which is a day that the people of the church come prepared to church to give to certain organizations in the church. The reason they throw it up in the air and let it slowly come to the ground is so that others see how much they are donating. This is done in the hopes that someone else will want to match that amount of beat it. It’s a very interesting concept to tithe for specific things.