Finding a Christian worship service in Turkey can be a little bit challenging given that while there are a fair number of Christian churches which show up on the map, many of those are now only museums and don’t actually hold any worship activities. While it is a secular nation with freedom of religion, the number of Turks who are Christian has decreased over the past century or so, after being either directed or encouraged to leave. But a small minority of Christians do remain.
One of the reasons that we chose Fethiye for our longer stay here was the presence of an active Christian congregation with an English language service. It is in a busy area of a city driven by summer vacationers from other parts of Turkey as well as foreigners (we hear a lot of UK accents here). The congregation holds two services each week, one in Turkish and the other in English. They are currently being led by expat pastors and evangelists, but are working to raise up some of the Turkish members into leadership roles, making it more truly a local congregation.
Since it is the high season for tourism, the streets of the town are quite busy, even on a Sunday morning, which can make parking difficult, but there is at least one parking lot not too far away. As we walked along the narrow street up a hill to the building on our first Sunday here, I noticed a young woman standing near the door with a smile on her face. She greeted us as we got closer and asked if we were there for the church service. We said yes and she directed us up the stairs and into a room with people seated in chairs set up in rows. They were just getting started. Trevis and I had both expected a small gathering of maybe half a dozen people, but the room was full with maybe as many as thirty people in attendance. Pastor David began with prayers for a member whose family in Ukraine was fearful of the war there. Then there were some hymns, Bible readings, and another man came up to deliver the message. This was followed by the Lord’s Supper, another hymn, the Lord’s Prayer and a closing benediction with an offer to come to the front after service to talk with the pastor about any prayer requests.
Although the service was a bit different from what I am used to in Lutheran congregations, it was good, after several weeks of temples and mosques, to be among other Christians and worship, sing and pray together.
