Malua Old Chapel

If you want to visit Malua College, you need to fly to New Zealand and then fly a further 1,500 miles to the north east across the Pacific Ocean. After finding Samoa and touching down at Apia airport, take the only road on offer and after an hour driving along the coast you will find the college beside the sea. At its core, it is the theological college of the Congregational Christian Church of Samoa (CCCS) and the second oldest college of any denomination in the whole Pacific region.

As Malua College also hosts major church gatherings of the CCCS, the largest Christian community in Samoa, it was decided to build a large enough church to accommodate a thousand worshippers. Several years and £5m later, it now stands majestically on the edge of the college campus alongside the main road, with the cross on its spire a new prominent landmark.

Splendid though this may be, there was a snag familiar to many chapelgoers in Britain. The college values its heritage from the British missionaries and the new church needed the site of the historic college chapel, which many people were very reluctant to lose. The solution was to dismantle the old chapel and re-erect it on the other side of the campus.

What is now the Old Chapel was built to mark the Jubilee of the college’s foundation in 1844 and was finished in 1897. It largely relies on timber construction with the roof an upturned echo of the ocean-going canoes which the missionary John Williams used to bring the Gospel to Samoa in 1830. The College Principal has a special pew with a desk to assist with noting comments on student preachers. A memorial stone commemorates the pioneer missionaries that Malua sent across the Pacific to Papua New Guinea as early as 1883.

The College worships in the chapel every morning. Much of the worship structure and style would sound very familiar to British chapelgoers. The music might make a greater impression. Many of the hymn tunes are imported from Britain, although others come from the Caribbean or North America, and the Samoan words are often translations of English ones. The Samoan people seem naturally musical and almost all the college students and their wives are in the choir. This produces a massed choir of over a hundred for major services, who generate a remarkable sound in many parts. Like a Welsh male voice choir, they know the power of singing evocative words slowly.

The musical life of the Old Chapel starts before the services however. There is no bell to summon the community to chapel. Instead, just outside the Old Chapel there is a raised platform under a roof for shade, where two hollowed out logs of different sizes rest. Ten minutes before a service is due to begin a trio of drummers in the official College uniform start to play these and produce a sonorous and compelling call to worship audible across the campus. About three minutes before the service, they stop for a short organ voluntary inside the chapel. Then immediately before the preacher stands up, the drummers resume with a dramatic drum roll. All is ready.

John Ellis