Christian Unity Ministries

LangOfWorship

Unity News

May, 2005

The Languages of Worship

by Blake Coffee

Imagine, if you can, that God leads you and your spouse to adopt a Russian child who speaks only Russian. Then, imagine that God leads you to adopt a child who speaks only Spanish. And then imagine that God blesses you with a child who is deaf, and can communicate only with sign language. Being the loving parent you are, you want to plan a regular dinner experience for the whole family—an experience that will benefit everyone. Your challenge is this: which languages will you speak at the table?

It's difficult to imagine any of us being so calloused and hard-hearted as to force everyone at that table to either communicate in our language or not communicate at all. Would we not love those children enough to at least make some attempt to learn some of their languages? Wouldn't that make for a much warmer environment at the dinner table?

In John 4, Jesus encounters a Samaritan woman with an important question on her heart about worship: what is the right time, place and form for worship? Jesus' response points to a critical understanding of God's answer to this question: “Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father…the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him.” John 4:21, 23. With the ushering in of the Kingdom of God, and the Spirit of God to live in the hearts of men, true worship would no longer be about time, place or form. It would now be solely about spirit and truth—it is a matter of the heart. The tedious restrictions on form with which we were once burdened as a part of the sacrificial system are no longer necessary.

Some of today's conflict over worship style is fueled by a failure to understand this concept. Some Christians today read the Old Testament laws about God's stringent rules about the forms with which man approached Him, and wrongly conclude that those same restrictions are still in place, despite Christ's once-for-all sacrifice on the cross.

But sadly, much more of the conflict is all about personal preferences for one language over another. In those instances, the real problem is that we often don't love each other enough to learn one another's language.

Worship styles are no different than any other learned language. They are forms, both musical and non-musical, which we have learned and with which we have grown comfortable in expressing ourselves in worship. None of them are more “spiritual” than others. In fact, all of them are man-made forms of expression which are inherently un spiritual in and of themselves. There is neither any language nor any musical style which was created by God. They are all man-made expressions which we use in our meager attempts to praise Him. To argue that any language or musical style is even remotely worthy, in itself, to praise God is just arrogance on our part.

Back to our dinner table: do you see that the church coming to worship and the family coming to the table are similar experiences? Each is designed to be an environment where we are genuinely connected to each other. That connection is what distinguishes corporate worship from personal worship. They are different.

In the New Testament church, the very God you come to worship exists in the believer with whom you come to worship. See John 15:5; Col. 1:27; I John 4:12. In this way, God has already provided for the Spiritual connection. How can we possibly find that connection outside of learning to communicate in one another's language? More importantly, why would we even want to connect without learning each other's language? As we sit together at God's table, let this be food for thought!

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