Page 205 - Aesthetic Formations Media, religion, and the Sense

190 Marleen de Witte

filled with “praise and worship,” led by the praise and worship song team
on stage with backing of the church band. The stirring beat of the first
few songs lifts up the people and invokes the Holy Spirit in the audito-
rium. The crowd claps, dances, and sings along with the song texts pro-
jected on the screen. During the slower songs people lift up their hands
in surrender to the Lord, singing along, praying aloud, or crying. A few
up-beat songs then get people ready for the Word of God and for giving
a large “seed” to the church. The main “act” of the service—and the only
part that features in the church’s media broadcast—is the one-hour ser-
mon by Mensa Otabil. He appears on stage in an elegant and elaborate
African lace gown and delivers the Word of God as an experienced lec-
turer and entertainer. He commands respect and attention with his deep
fatherly voice and dignified authority, but also evokes laughter and
applause with good jokes and stories, making use of theatrical body
movements and storytelling techniques. The audience listens carefully
and takes notes of the Bible references and the key points of the sermon,
helped by a Power Point projection of the sermon outline. Otabil keeps
his audience active by having them look up passages in the Bible, repeat
words or phrases after him, or say things to each other. After the sermon,
Otabil makes an “altar call,” inviting forward all who have not yet given
their lives to Christ and want to do so now. He calls upon the congrega-
tion to join him in prayer for the new converts. Before closing, Otabil
asks everyone to stand up and hold hands while he speaks his benedic-
tion over the congregation.
Although the rather “rational” and controlled performance of the
Sunday service present a striking contrast to the dramatic bodily perfor-
mance of the church’s (never broadcast) healing and prophecy meetings,
during the sermon too, it is a specific bodily way of listening that facilitates
the flow of spiritual power. A particular straight up, active, not sprawling
way of sitting and paying attention, reacting at the right moment in the
right way and for the appropriate lengths of time with clapping, laughter,
turning to one’s neighbor, lifting up one’s hand, or interjecting amens and
hallelujahs are all part of a learned, bodily discipline of listening to the
Word of God. In order to be fully part of the social and spiritual commu-

nity of believers and to take part in the blessings bestowed upon this com-
munity by God through the pastor, an individual has to participate in the
interaction with the man of God according to this gradually embodied
format of charismatic mannerisms. The mass character of a church service
and the communal participation in such ritual behavior surrounded by the
amplified voice of the pastor also generates a feeling of being intimately
connected to each other. This experience of community, however, is very
momentary and elusive and hardly lasts beyond the temporal and spatial