Believers on public transport on Sunday morning

Sunday morning, the 7:20 train from Oeiras to Lisbon. It's not very crowded, and I get a seat in the first carriage, one of those two-abreast seats, where I take the opportunity to sit quietly by the window, preferably to read. Ahead of me, in those four-seat seats, two facing each other, are two African women. I'd say they're Angolan, but I'm not sure. They must be in their sixties. They're chatting animatedly.

At a certain point, one of them gets up and goes to call someone she saw in the second carriage. She returns with a man in his forties, Portuguese, white, ordinary like me. Just by the mix, I suspect they're evangelicals. Sunday mornings, public transportation, people of different races coming together—they must be believers, my 47-year-old instinct tells me (and "believer" is the term evangelicals use to distinguish who's part of the group). It's confirmed. Within seconds, they're talking about pastors, bishops, and the services they attend.

In Portugal, the word "cult" is scary. It shouldn't be, but it's typical of a country that has been locked into a single religion for centuries. Cult implies worshipping, implies cultivating. Only those who pay little attention to words and perhaps even less to people will associate worship with the occult. But I believe this is the negative association most Portuguese people have. Evangelicals don't have masses, they have services—and they're not ashamed of it. It's these same services that bring together such diverse people in worship of the same God. An ordinary 40-year-old Portuguese man in animated conversation with two African women in their sixties happens because of the service.

Those three on the train discussed pastoral transfers, preferred meeting times, future plans for the church. They spoke with emotion, laughed, and couldn't hide their excitement for the approaching hour when they would pray together, sing together, read together, listen together, and probably cry together. I wanted to interrupt them and tell them I was a Baptist pastor on my way to the service too. But I stayed, captivated by the vibrancy of their voices. It was as if the service had already begun there, in the train carriage, and I was joining in, albeit silently.

And that's exactly it. In that mobile center in Lisbon, driven on rails, the service had already begun, bringing together those who usually travel separately. A small group of three, Portuguese-Angolan, white and black, made up of one man and two women, certainly popular, is the seed of something future while also being an antidote to the worst of the present. I live to be a part of it.