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- Herausgeber: IVP
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Serie: The IVP Signature Collection
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
Christianity Today's Book of the Year Award of Merit What happens when a diverse church glorifies the global God? We live in a time of unprecedented intercultural exchange, where our communities welcome people from around the world. Music and media from every culture are easily accessible, and our worship is infused with a rich variety of musical and liturgical influences. But leading worship in multicultural contexts can be a crosscultural experience for everybody. How do we help our congregations navigate the journey? Innovative worship leader Sandra Maria Van Opstal is known for crafting worship that embodies the global, multiethnic body of Christ. Likening diverse worship to a sumptuous banquet, she shows how worship leaders can set the table and welcome worshipers from every tribe and tongue. Van Opstal provides biblical foundations for multiethnic worship, with practical tools and resources for planning services that reflect God's invitation for all peoples to praise him. When multiethnic worship is done well, the church models reconciliation and prophetic justice, heralding God's good news for the world. Enter into the praise of our king, and let the nations rejoice!
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Contents
FOREWORD
Mark Labberton
Everything turns on worship. Living in the light of the love of the triune God is supposed to be our human vocation. Our very life is made for this purpose, and all our energies are best discovered and unleashed when we see them in this context and for this purpose. A full vision of worship encompasses every dimension of life: our family, our jobs, our friendships, our questions, our suffering, our sin, our recreation, our imagination, our play, and our dying and death.
Worship actively places us before the true and living God and calls us to respond with every dimension of who we are. Faithful worship unlocks and opens, calls and guides us in our life as faithful exiles. As we live lives of worship, we bear witness to the grace of God that enlarges our hearts and minds and extends our capacities to love and serve. We are a people called to a peculiar life.
All of this means worship should be fundamentally disruptive. If our experiences of worship, particularly corporate worship, are doing their work, they will draw us toward our God of forgiving, transforming love, even as they draw us away from lives of absorbing self-interest and preoccupation. As those who know we are to “seek first the kingdom of God,” we gradually abandon the kingdom of self. The evidence of this transformative process is that our neighbor—no “mere” mortal, as C. S. Lewis says—becomes ever more vividly and consequentially present and urgent in our lives. So it would be impossible to say we “love God” and “not love our neighbor.” Faithful worship inevitably leads us to this and makes this dual reality plain.
What Sandra Van Opstal does so importantly here is to help make the arc of this worship transformation clear and practicable. Out of her life experience and rich ministry background, Sandra does for us here what she has done over the years for many of those she has led as worship teams and as worshipers. This book is a vital gift for a changing church that needs to reflect the God of all the nations.
As our neighbors change, our worship needs to change. If our worship does not include or embody our love for our real neighbors, then it does not adequately reflect the God we worship. Now, and in the coming decades, the worship we offer will be done amidst a world of teeming variation of people and places. This multicultural worship is not about politically correct decorative variation, but about profound incarnational faith.
To this end, Sandra has written as a wise, experienced and nuanced practitioner. She knows what she is writing about and she is convinced—as am I—that multicultural worship is critical for our theology, and for our mission. Sandra is pointing to what is compelling and urgent because it is worship that draws us toward God and toward our neighbor. This is not easy. It has always been, however, the call of the church that is to be a reflection of the heart of God who “so loved the world that he gave us his only begotten son.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Our thoughts and practices are developed in community! This work is as much a work of the dozens of teams of musicians, pastors and students that I have collaborated with as it is mine. Thank you, InterVarsity staff and students, for allowing me to spend almost two decades experimenting. I especially appreciate the partnership of the Urbana 03, 09 and 12 teams. Thank you, Melissa Vallejo, Andy Kim, Ryan Cook and Erna Hackett, for the stimulating conversations about worship, culture, leadership and food. Thanks to mentors who have championed me: Brenda Salter McNeil, Rick Richardson, Peter Cha, Mark Labberton, Steve Roy and Orlando Crespo. Thanks to John Witvliet of the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship and Robin Harris of the International Council of Ethnodoxologists for allowing me to test my ideas and for the invaluable resources and feedback.
Special thanks to my family. To my parents, Miguel and Olga, and my siblings, Erica, Sofia, Omar, Libby, Alan and Beth, for supporting me and helping me to keep it real. To my church, Grace and Peace, for giving me space, encouragement and prayer to finally finish. To my husband, Karl, for participating at just about every worship session, transcribing the many café conversations I had with leaders and pastors, and editing every version of this book that existed. You forced me to finish this book, reminding me along the way that I can always blog new material and thoughts by chanting “We must have closure!”
I dedicate this book to my son, Justo Alejandro Ostroski, who embodies in his name the reality of the future of the church and the call for us to live justly!
INTRODUCTION
What does worship look like for a college student movement seeking to reach out to the campus in all of its ethnic diversity? What might it look like on their campuses, at their leadership training camps or when they gather thousands of students to mobilize them for global mission? To get an idea, let’s first take a look back.
At InterVarsity’s earliest Urbana Student Missions Conferences in the 1940s and 50s, worship reflected both the student population at the gathering as well as the churches they attended: organ, piano and choir. As the years passed, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship USA and InterVarsity Canada, the hosting organizations of Urbana, saw the opportunity and embraced the challenge of adapting the worship to reflect the changes in our North American context. Historically, music had been led with a piano on one corner of the platform, organ on the other and the worship leader at the middle. Music at Urbana was sung from a hymnal; primary hymns, and later black spirituals and short choruses were sung.
A shift occurred in 1970, when the worship leadership moved from being a white male to an African Canadian, who led until 1987. Then in 1990 a band was introduced, which was composed of a multiethnic team, but led by a white male. There were many stakeholders in this transition, and change is always hard. As Alison Siewert, performing arts director for Urbana 15, reflected on that era she said, “It was messy, incomplete, and fraught—it was funny to think back about how many swamps we had to wade through and to be grateful again that Jesus got us through them.”1
Urbana 93 brought a significant change with the introduction of shared leadership. Using ethnically diverse leadership of both women and men allowed each to fully utilize his or her gifts. One leader was gifted at pastoral direction for congregations, another excelled in arranging music and a third was passionate about developing leaders on the team. In 1996 these same leaders were able to put processes and structures in place that set the foundation for worship teams that followed. They also expanded the selection of global music, using a few foreign-language songs, but the default was the dominant culture. They also recorded a live CD to be used as a training tool for the movement. Every decade brought significant transition that affected both the conference and InterVarsity’s worship culture across the movement.
Dr. Monique Ingalls, an ethnomusicologist and professor at Baylor University, describes Urbana as “earthly rehearsals for the heavenly choir” in her study on how our worship shapes our understanding of what is to come.
On the opening night of the triennial Urbana (Missions) conference on December 27, 2006, I sit in the midst of an excited crowd of an estimated 23,000 college students gathered in St. Louis’ Edward Jones Dome. Attendees stream into the stadium, filling the sloping bleachers on three sides of the dome which face a wide front stage. The gathered participants cheer loudly when the twelve members of the Urbana Worship Team ascend the left side of the stage. . . . After leading the gathered congregation in two upbeat gospel-inflected and rock style songs, the team begins to play an energetic, jazz-inflected instrumental introduction, with two trumpets playing close harmonies over a chord riff established by the band’s guitarists. The excited crowd begins clapping on the offbeats as the worship band vocalists sing in unison a prayer for the strength “to exalt and to extend Jesus’ name globally.” The vocalists break into three-part, gospel-inflected harmonies to express the chorus’s petition: “Cover the earth with Your glory/Cover the earth with the sound of heaven.” The second verse of the song continues the theme of the first: a prayer that the “sound of heaven” be used to extend God’s kingdom on earth. . . . In the Urbana participants’ singing of “Cover the Earth,” a song that juxtaposes eschatological imagery from various biblical sources, the dominion of God’s kingdom covering the earth is represented by sound. The chorus’s repeated prayer (“Cover the earth with your glory!”) asks for God to bring God’s kingdom to earth, represented sonically by a “new sound” being released from heaven—a sound that is then extended to earth through the agency of singers serving as God’s “instruments.” Speech, song, and shouting—the joyful sounds of the faithful—are all sonic agents in preparing the way for God’s kingdom to come to earth.2
Worship in the context of InterVarsity’s campus fellowships was dramatically changing too. John, a student from a university in Wisconsin, was seeing more African American and Hmong students in his fellowship.3 He, like many other student leaders, needed to expand his worship practices, evangelism and leadership to adapt to the increasing diversity. John connected with the newer students, local leaders and worship leaders within InterVarsity who had been leading in a multicultural context. In local fellowships, college students and campus ministers were also attempting to explore what glorifying God looked like in diverse settings.
In each season of the journey for InterVarsity the question asked was not, What do we prefer in worship? or even What do students prefer in worship? As a movement they had to reimagine worship for a changing student generation. Today, many of our churches and worshiping communities are wrestling with these same questions. Our denominations and parachurch organizations are feeling the same growing pains and maybe even encountering the same messiness. It is no longer a question of whether we like or want diversity. The church is diverse. And congregational worship should reflect the diversity of God’s people, even if a local congregation itself is not diverse.
I was one of the InterVarsity student worship leaders during the seasons of change, so I know it wasn’t just about being ahead of the curve. I was heavily involved leading a small group, a worship team and a gospel choir. I attended camps and conferences. I remember Urbana 96 as a volunteer staff, and I stood on the stage with fear and trembling as we led students in worship during Urbana 03. Questions about worship and culture shaped me. I have leaned into these questions as I’ve collaborated with worship leaders across the country for events such as Christian Community Development Association gatherings and Evangelical Immigration Table prayer summits. And I have collaborated with colleagues to imagine worship for the changing church as I’ve led worship and facilitated seminars for the Willow Creek Association and Calvin Symposium on Worship. These opportunities and challenges so deeply affected me that as a seminary student I took them into my classes on church history, theology, preaching and worship. We have explored this messy way forward in the Evangelical Covenant Church and the Christian Reformed Church (CRC), with whom I’ve consulted and had fellowship.These burning questions drive people to my seminars on multiethnic worship and reconciliation. Sitting with these questions, creating new paradigms in community and exploring opportunities to shape people’s imagination in diverse worship for almost two decades has led me to deep values and principles that I want to share with everyone.
I wish I could offer “Multicultural Worship in a Box,” but it doesn’t exist. I offer only stories of roads walked, painful blisters and things learned along the journey: a breadth of application based on principles and values. This book describes a range of options and contexts. I have had the honor of working with worship leaders from varied ethnic, racial and socioeconomic backgrounds. They too have walked, blistered and learned with me. I write this book to honor them and the work we have done to develop resources for the church. I’m writing now because this is the right moment.
Because this is a topic with a variety of opinions, it feels like a huge risk to write about it. But I think the time has come to explore this together. As you read, I hope you will think of your own stories and examples. None of us has the answers—it’s not one-size-fits-all—but collectively we can imagine new ways.
Expressions of worship help capture the imagination of congregants. And through worship we experience the now-but-not-yet of God’s kingdom: unity, freedom and justice now—but not yet. Therefore we must create worship services that enable prophetic imagination in which people can see the future reality of God’s kingdom breaking into the present. Justo González says, “Christian worship is, among other things, the place where we catch a glimpse of ‘the future Reign from which and toward which God calls us’—a glimpse that both supports us in our pilgrimage and judges us in our attempts to be too settled.”4
Worship is the communal gathering of God’s people in which we glorify God for his person and actions. When I use the word worship I will be speaking of the congregational aspect, not of the holistic definition, which includes every aspect of our lifestyle. This definition has been shaped by time spent in the Scriptures, in community, with mentors and other authors on worship. The following are two other definitions of worship that have influenced me.
Worship refers to the self-expression of a particular church community in a public celebration of its faith. It has both vertical and horizontal dimensions: one’s relation to God and one’s relationships with fellow worshipers. It is an expression of adoration and praise to God in community.5
To worship is to know, to feel, to experience the resurrected Christ in the midst of the gathered community. It is breaking into the Shekinah (glory) of God, or better yet, being invaded by the Shekinah (glory) of God.6
Multiethnic worship acknowledges and honors the diversity of people in the local and global church, and teaches congregations to understand and honor that same diversity. Through the expressions and themes of congregational worship the call to unity is taken seriously. Ron Man, director of Worship Resources International, describes diverse worship as “the mixing of historic, traditional, contemporary, and global expressions of worship into a diverse mosaic of praise with the goal of glorifying God by encouraging the united participation of believers across demographic and generational lines.”7
I am excited to explore approaches, forms and styles of multicultural worship that will launch us into the next season of the church. My passion is to share how people have been creating spaces and places of worship which can serve as models that will inspire us to future thinking. If anyone can learn from the trial and error of my generation, this book will have been a success.
We need the Holy Spirit to empower us for the work of calling all the nations to worship God together. It takes power beyond our skills, ability and proposed models. When we consider what it takes to call people to self-emptying, risk and change in the church, we should proceed only with a healthy dose of fear and trembling. For this reason each chapter will end with a few questions for personal reflection and prayer.
My journey as a worshiper, worship leader and pastor has been centered around the table: an image that communicates friendship, commitment and intimacy. Through this image I hope to show how our worship can foster reconciliation—inviting and including each other, sharing leadership and allowing for all God’s people to worship together regardless of our various backgrounds. This book is a product of my path of learning how to lead worship in a multiethnic world where culture, ethnicity and history intersect for God’s people around the world and on the block.
How do we lead worship in communities that are growing increasingly diverse? How do I get my congregation onboard with multiethnic worship? Is it even necessary? It’s my hope that with the Lord’s Table as our guiding image, we can foster in the church a place where everyone can come to worship together.
- one -
TENSION AT THE TABLE
Challenges and Opportunities in Diverse Worship
Why are you forcing me to sing in other languages? That’s not at all helpful to my personal worship. We should have worship in a way everyone can participate.” These words came from a twenty-something Asian American college student. His question was sincere—he really wanted to worship God in a meaningful way. His statement was also ridiculous, but to understand why, the backstory is necessary.
DINNER BELL IN SWAZILAND
A few years back I had the honor of visiting Swaziland, Africa. In my time there I was able to connect with a couple of local women with whom I am still in contact today. As we visited sites of Christian caregivers for HIV victims, we had time for walking, talking and singing. In one of the experiences I had the opportunity to sit with some young women (ages 14-18). It was hard to communicate with Naky, Boledi, Fikile and Kayise given that they did not speak English and I did not speak Kiswati. We made lots of gestures, smiled and laughed a lot. I told them (through a translator) that I was a worship leader and would love to hear some of their worship songs. “Could they teach me one?” I asked the interpreter. “Yes, we can teach you one,” she said. (She too was a worship leader.) They shared with me the meaning and melody of the song. As they taught it to me, the women in nearby homes began to sing with them—stirring soup and singing, hanging laundry and singing, caring for a neighbor and singing “Siyabonga Jesu (We thank you, Jesus), Wahamba Nathi, Siyabonga (You walked with us; Lord, we thank you).”
We spent the rest of the evening singing to and learning from one another. It was an amazing experience I will never forget. An evening of worship with four young Swazi women in a rural community, sitting together at the table singing. It was a glimpse—a foretaste of God’s kingdom in Revelation 4 and 7 where those “from every nation, tribe, people and language” stand before the throne and worship God together along with the living creatures around the throne who “day and night . . . never stop saying, ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty,’ who was, and is, and is to come.” Imagine catching a glimpse of what is written in Revelation 7:9-12:
After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice:
“Salvation belongs to our God,
who sits on the throne,
and to the Lamb.”
All the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They fell down on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying:
“Amen!
Praise and glory
and wisdom and thanks and honor
and power and strength
be to our God for ever and ever.
Amen!”
Months later, I was directing worship at Urbana 12, in which tens of thousands of college students had gathered, to invite them to consider God’s heart for global mission. The worship is planned to expose students to the global church in all of its beauty. One of the evenings we celebrated the work and lives of those caregivers I had met in Swaziland. We partnered with their work by assembling the medical care kits that the workers use as a part of the worship time. It was an evening of testimonies, videos, musical worship, prayer and action. As hosts, we knew that the reality of the situation in Swaziland would make the worship participants sad, and though lament is important, I wanted to also share the strength and hope of these caregivers who often sang in worship on their long walks to serve others. What feels sad to us is simply life for them, and the last thing we wanted was for people to walk away thinking, How sad for these poor Africans. Let’s pray for them and help them because they need us. Instead we hoped the experience would be one of mutual exchange. We were being invited by the caregivers to be partners, yet we had something to receive from them as well. Through their strength and hope we learned what it means to follow God and to live mission in the midst of struggle. We joined their lament and hope, singing: “Siyabonga Jesu (We thank you, Jesus), Wahamba Nathi, Siyabonga (You walked with us, Lord, we thank you).”
The musical worship, prayers and videos played a huge role in creating an atmosphere of celebration, power and party. We sang, we confessed, we lamented the injustice and pain, and we responded with cries and hope. During times of congregational worship I introduced the songs I had learned from my friends. I did not have the time to share all that my heart was feeling, but I could teach them that diverse worship is not about singing a cool African song I once heard. Multicultural worship is not entertainment. It is an act of solidarity with communities we may never meet. It is connecting our story to their story, through which the Holy Spirit brings communion. That night I brought thousands of students to a table outside a house in rural Swaziland to sing with my four young friends.
However, not everyone wanted to come to that table. The young student I mentioned earlier was very frustrated. During a seminar explaining diverse worship he shared his desire for “normal” worship. Even though thousands of students at the conference came from different cultures and backgrounds, his preference was English, rock, contemporary Christian music (CCM). He assumed this was the form or style everyone could relate to. The conclusion was also rooted in his value for individual worship, which was interesting given the fact that he was responding to our corporate worship. This is what instigated his question: “Why are you forcing me to sing in other languages? That’s not at all helpful to my personal worship. We should have worship in a way everyone can participate.”
When I heard this, I experienced the most odd and powerful filling of the Holy Spirit, and began to address his question. I stood up and the words echoing Revelation 4 came out of my mouth.
The picture at the end is of the nations before the throne singing and yelling “Holy, holy, holy.” People from every tongue, nation, tribe and language giving glory to God in all of their splendor. Day and night they’ll yell, and they won’t stop, “Holy, holy, holy.” The practice of worship here on earth is to reflect, point to and practice that ultimate worship experience. We come together as a community for corporate worship so that we are not solely focused on our own personal worship. If you don’t want to be distracted by other forms of music or languages you don’t prefer, stay at home and press play on your iPod. Sorry if it feels inauthentic to you, it will be the authentic way of the kingdom!1
There was silence and barely a dry eye in the room. I’ve been preaching, speaking and facilitating for a couple decades, and I had never experienced that sensation before. It was as if through his Word in me God’s Spirit was compelling these young folks to look beyond what they were comfortable with to the new and more real reality that will come! That particular man came to me afterwards and thanked me for my exhortation. God invites us to come to his table in unity. That has always and will continue to cause tension, given the diverse nature of his people. This is particularly pronounced in worship, where people desire authentic spaces to express themselves.
Perhaps you may have these same questions about worship. Maybe you’re thinking, Diverse worship is great for a missions conference but not for my local congregation. Or perhaps you like multiethnic worship but don’t have a framework for why the church should do it. Perhaps others have approached you with these same questions, which is why you’ve picked up this book. Many communities do multiethnic worship, but they don’t know why they are doing it. It may be for pragmatic reasons: their congregation is changing. It may be because they want more _________ [insert a group here] in their church. Many feel the pressure to stay current with worship trends. The primary reasons we should pursue multicultural worship, however, are neither pragmatic nor trends, but biblical community and mission.
AWKWARD DINNER PARTY
Sandrita, venga a comer! Growing up, I heard my mom shout out the window for us to “come and eat” more times than I can remember. This call told us that the time had come for us to gather as a family. We’d not only eat a great meal of arroz con pollo (a Colombian rice-and-chicken dish) but we’d also be forced to share about the best and worst part of our day, our highs and our lows. This was our family tradition.
Christians also have a table at the center of our family tradition. Many scriptural images talk about table fellowship. In the Old Testament, sharing a meal with someone was a sign of friendship and esteem. An invitation to a banquet table was a huge honor and showed that the person was valued and trusted by the host. In the New Testament, Jesus spent much time eating and teaching at tables (Matthew 26:7; Luke 5:29-32; 7:36-50; 14:1-24). Jesus was also breaking rules that had been added to the table by sharing the space with women and tax collectors.2 Even in Jesus’ last days the table was the place of his final instructions, including a command to continue to gather at the table in remembrance of him (1 Corinthians 11:23-26). Meals were full of significance and order, and provided a way for God’s people to experience him as they connected with one another.
A meal was never simply a time to ingest food and quench thirst; at meals people displayed kinship and friendship. Meals themselves—the foods served, the manner in which that was done and by whom—carried socially significant, coded communication. The messages had to do with honor, social rank in the family and community, belonging and purity, or holiness. Social status and role were acted out in differentiated tasks and expectations around meals, and the maintenance of balance and harmony at meals was crucial to the sense of overall well-being. Among God’s chosen people, meals became ways of experiencing and enjoying God’s presence and provision.3
Likewise in worship, as we connect with each other in community, we encounter God. If the worship experience and practice is filled with people coming from different ethnic backgrounds, social ranks and ways of eating, then there will be opportunity to enjoy God’s presence together. This guiding image of communion at the Table of Christ is central to why we participate in crosscultural worship. The table communicates fellowship with others (across differences, as Jesus modeled) and with God.
One of my favorite places to encounter Christ at table is in Luke 14, which illustrates a master’s invitation to a great banquet feast. The master’s invitation list reveals no favoritism at the table. All are invited the banquet: the social elite as well as those from the highways and byways. The tension mounts: people from different ethnic and socioeconomic standings gather. The result: awkward dinner conversations. And let’s face it, we tend to avoid parties where we expect awkwardness.
But isn’t being at the Lord’s Table in the church like being at an awkward party? Imagine a dinner where random strangers from all walks of life—poor, rich, old, young—are invited. There they are, staring at one another across the table wondering what they can possibly say and why the other is dressed like that. This is the church! The church consists of people from every walk of life, profession, culture, nationality, race and background. We come together at God’s invitation. The table is an intimate and unique place of communion; shouldn’t we Christians be able to share a meal without the painful moments of disconnect? It would be easy if we were all clones, but God in his wisdom did not create us that way. As individuals we are different, and as communities we are different. The way we communicate and relate is shaped by culture, and the result is tension and awkwardness.
The awkwardness we experience when sharing a table crossculturally can be present for many reasons.
1.Lack of exposure. When I was visiting friends in Cairo, they served me a dish of slimy green soup. I stared down at it and the tension began to show on my face. It was molokhia, which is similar to kale but with three times the calcium. It was delicious!
2.Preference. In Northern China many of the families we visited served us mutton dishes. Lamb is not my favorite.
3.Fear. Given that my mother is from Colombia, I decided to sponsor a World Vision child from a slum outside of her hometown. When my sister and I went to visit, our hosts served us a water-based mango drink. We consumed it and prayed for our digestive system.
On a recent trip to Portugal my Portuguese friend Pedro publicly made fun of me for eating with my fork in my right hand. He told me that he can tell who in a restaurant is American because they put their knife on the plate and move their fork from their left to their right hand. He said putting your knife on the plate lacked etiquette in most European countries. I immediately jumped online and looked it up in order to defend myself. Sure enough, there are different styles of cutting and eating food, and I was being offensive in this context. I imagine that there are dozens, if not hundreds, of cultural cues we give off when sharing a meal. The food at the table, the way we cut our food, and whether we use utensils at all give away our country of origin, cultural background and maybe even socioeconomic status. Pedro and I went back and forth for a bit, but in the end we decided that language wasn’t the only thing that we didn’t share in common. We ate, laughed and thought about the many difficult and awkward moments there are to share crossculturally. When people come to the table across differences, tension is not necessarily because people dislike one another. Tension exists because we each carry a particular set of norms that we subconsciously live into.
CHALLENGE
One of the greatest challenges of our generation is that people make choices based almost exclusively on preferences. We have hundreds of restaurant choices, and if we want to stay home we order online or call. The options are endless. And we view our Christian practices (church, podcast, worship) similarly. We navigate all the choices by means of personal preference. Picture someone who doesn’t like a certain TV show. If asked why, she might say it’s just not her thing. Insisting on multiethnic worship runs against the grain of that kind of personal preference. People might think African American worship or songs in Mandarin or Spanish are okay for some, but diverse worship just is not their thing. They may not understand that worship in community is more about us than about me. Conversations about worship are often contentious due to the energy behind people’s preferences. Like many of our faith practices (preaching, Scripture study, prayer and leadership), both biblical principles and cultural preferences are at play.
Intentional multiethnic worship provides great challenges. It reflects our culture of preferences; there is a lot of variety, and individuals have many choices depending on the service they choose (or even within services). But it can also be countercultural because sometimes one specific dish is served. Imagine a group of friends deciding what to do for lunch. In the past, places with limited menus were the only option. Then, as Americans became more open to other foods, menus became more diverse. Today, we can eat in community without having to share the same type of food. Sometimes, though, like at the Wednesday night small group at my home, only one dish is served. My husband and I always cook for our small group, which spends one hour around the table doing life, and one hour studying Scripture and praying. This ethnically diverse community eats whatever we serve them. Sometimes they have to ask what they are eating, because they are having Indian for the first time, but they still try it. We have not yet had a group member stop attending because of the variety of food or the fact that their preferences are not being met.4 We do have people with gluten and dairy allergies, so we are intentional about the food. But all are gracious guests who are open to our sriracha mayo chicken and kimchi rice, or chipotle rub chuletas (pork chops) or whatever happens to be on sale that week at the store.5
OPPORTUNITY
The world is increasingly diverse, and the church has the opportunity to welcome worshipers. If we do not develop worship practices that resonate with a variety of people’s longings, we may lose more people. What are some opportunities we might have to welcome new people into our faith communities? Who is missing? Where is their potential for growth and inclusion? The three categories of people we should keep our eye on are unchurched, millennials and people of color.
Unchurched. Let’s consider the unchurched. The number of religiously unaffiliated people in our society is on the rise. Some have called this “the rise of the nones.”6 This is particularly pronounced among adults under thirty, a third of whom are unaffiliated.7 Yet, even though they are unaffiliated, two-thirds of them claim to be spiritual or to believe in God.8 They are not hostile to Christianity but not connected to a church. Certainly, most of us have acquaintances—whether on campus, in the workplace or the neighborhood—in this group. They generally believe faith-based communities are good for society but find them suspect because they do not reflect their cultural realities. They think religious organizations are too focused on money, power, politics and rules, so looking for a church does not interest them.
Millennials. Age matters! Generational shifts in the church are being captured by organizations such as the Barna Millennials Project, dedicated to research in the area of the next generation of Christians.9 The Barna research echoes the research from the Public Religion Research Institute, which notes that white Christians make up only 25 percent of younger Americans, but nearly 70 percent of older Americans are white Christians. “That’s a remarkable demographic change.”10 For the majority church there is a huge opportunity to engage our young people if we make our worship spaces relevant to their everyday.
People of color.
