Such a shift is noticeable when we gathered at Mid-City this Christmas. We gathered as an English-speaking congregation on Christmas eve and Christmas Day joyfully in worship. The Samoans had previously met and our sanctuary was a beautiful fusion of South Pacific and Northern European cultures. What moved me, though, was the openly visible joy at Christmas from the Kiswahili congregation and the Haitian congregation. Whereas many of the English-speaking congregation had traveled, the numbers of the Haitian and Kiswahili were up in celebration of the festival of the nativity. Kiswahili has no indigenous term for "Christmas"-- they take the French term, Noel, and add the Kiswahili "blessed" or "happy" 'nzuri' to say, "Noel nzuri'.

For many of our French speaking congregation, this was their first Christmas since they had been released from the detention center in the United States. On Christmas eve, the congregation met in worship and celebration past midnight. When I arrived, a family had arrived and were preparing food in the fellowship hall. On Christmas morning, the congregation again gathered for worship -- their joy was palpable. The congregation met again, this time for gifts for the congregation at the end of the celebration--gifts as mentioned in my previous blog, from the Cambodian congregation. The vitality of their faith and the centrality of the church for their celebration of Christmas stands in such a contrast to the complementary nature of the church for much of the celebration of Christmas by members of the United States of Northern European traditions. Again, remember for many congregations of Northern European extraction, it was a real issue whether to gather for worship on Christmas morning -- and many didn't. What a contrast that highlights the reason behind the data that the Pew Forum discovered.

This Christmas vitality of the French-speaking congregation (not just from Haiti, but some Africans still as well) witnesses to us all. It is interesting that Benedict XVI spoke of the same dynamics to the Roman Curia in his Christmas address exhorting to the new evangelism: "The essence of the crisis of the Church in Europe is the crisis of faith. If we find no answer to this, if faith does not take on new life, deep conviction and real strength from the encounter with Jesus Christ, then all other reforms will remain ineffective.

On this point, the encounter with Africa's joyful passion for faith brought great encouragement. None of the faith fatigue that is so prevalent here, none of the oft-encountered sense of having had enough of Christianity was detectable there. Amid all the problems, sufferings and trials that Africa clearly experiences, one could still sense the people's joy in being Christian, buoyed up by inner happiness at knowing Christ and belonging to his Church. From this joy comes also the strength to serve Christ in hard-pressed situations of human suffering, the strength to put oneself at his disposal, without looking round for one's own advantage. Encountering this faith that is so ready to sacrifice and so full of happiness is a powerful remedy against fatigue with Christianity such as we are experiencing in Europe today."

Perhaps God can use such steady witnesses outside the European Renaissance and early Modern centers of the life of the church to renew the church in the United States and Europe. Yet Benedict is correct: "Amid all the problems, sufferings and trials that Africa [and Haiti] clearly experiences, one could still sense the people's joy in being Christian, buoyed up by inner happiness at knowing Christ and belonging to his Church. From this joy comes also the strength to serve Christ in hard-pressed situations of human suffering, the strength to put oneself at his disposal, without looking round for one's own advantage. Encountering this faith that is so ready to sacrifice and so full of happiness is a powerful remedy against fatigue with Christianity such as we are experiencing in Europe today."