My topic for today is church and the reasons for going to church. To praise God you will immediately say.

We got into a discussion yesterday about going to church in this country. For me, I’m an irregular church goer as you know. I don’t feel the need to go sit in the front row of the church for all and sundry to know I’m a believer. I don’t claim to know the bible but I know the passages I go to when I am going through something. Sometimes I feel that maybe life has been going awry and sometimes I just feel that I need to go, so I do, but I go because I want to go and not because I am expected to go. Not because I am being rebellious or anything, that’s just the way it has been for a long time, ever since my mother stopped forcing me to get up and go to church on a Sunday morning.
Now back in the day when I had to go to church every Sunday we had a strict dress code growing up, no jeans or trousers and certainly no trainers or any type of casual wear. As we grew older we were allowed to at least wear trousers, but still had to be smartly dressed. This I knew was a Ghanaian thing, my obroni friends who I met in church came in their jeans and t-shirt, for them, they were coming to church, it was part of their Sunday routine so no need to dress up like they were going to a wedding. My mum always used to tell me “in Ghana, you dare ware such casual attire, you would be beaten”. I always wondered why there was this difference in the cultures, I always thought it was a mark of respect, but coming here, I actually don’t know.

My French lady said something which made sense yesterday, in slavery times you can understand why people would want to dress up on a Sunday after wearing rags the whole week, you could understand that this tradition has continued but now people are taking the dressing to church personal. I remember when I used to come here on holidays, I was encouraged to wear kabba and slit to church, in recent times people have become modern and wear dresses but still rare to see a lady wearing trousers. I never had a problem with that as I like dressing up, I also love the uniqueness of the kaba and slit especially nowadays where a good seamstress can cut a lovely style, but at the same time I feel that wear what is comfortable on your skin. Please yourself and God, not Mrs Sarpong the choir mistress.

Now, you go to church and you check the dressing of some ladies and you wonder whether it is Saturday night and you have wondered into a night club. Honestly, sometimes you look around and your eyes sting. The shortness of some ladies dresses, if they were to be taken away by the holy spirit, everything would be on display for God and the congregation to see. Tight fitted clothing with boobs popping out, you really wonder what it is they plan to put in the offering. On the flip side a person may miss a Sunday, not because they are ill, or just not feeling it, that one I could respect, but because you have nothing to wear. Is that a good excuse for not going to church?

It appears for some, church is not for praising the Lord, it is for social networking. Ladies looking for husbands. People looking for business contacts. Others just looking for friends. In my catholic church back in the UK, once church is done, within 10 minutes the car park is empty and the courtyard is scattered. Ok that’s the life we lived, everything is set to time, the roast is on slow cook in the oven so their is no time to chat in case the chicken burns. But we know ourselves too and on a Sunday which is when we usually had time for family and friends they would gather at ones house, church is purely for worship. I’m not saying its a bad thing to network at church but I do wonder about the motives of the lady wearing an outfit so short and so tight that parts of the body is popping out.

But in the end, each to their own, I don’t judge you for you motives for going to church and you don’t judge me for not going to church regularly. It’s all good.