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/Members & Leaders/Worship Services and Resources/Creating Culturally Diverse Worship

Members & Leaders > Worship Services

Creating Culturally Diverse Worship

by Serna Samuel, United Methodist Women Regional Missionary

The diversity of Christian worship is as vast as the diversity of countries and cultures where Christ's followers live, serve and worship. Participate in worship activities that lift up other cultures where Christians live and model ways to bring new life to worship. Take new ideas for worship home to your local United Methodist Women, church, district and conference.


What Is the Issue?

Worship is deliberately seeking to encounter God in Christ. It must be:
  • Authentic to the Gospel and Christian tradition and relevant to life.
  • God uses worship to transform lives, heal wounded souls, renew hope, shape decisions, provoke change and bind people together.
  • It is action oriented, and therefore people participate and not observe.
  • It is a place where our relationships with God and each other are nurtured.
  • It gives identity — it nurtures common learning and spiritual growth.
  • It is transformational; we experience justifying grace in worship (justifying grace is when God offers us a relationship of unconditional love and grace).
Features of Christian worship:
  • Celebrating being in God’s presence and the world
  • Hearing the news God has for us today
  • Making an appropriate response with our lives
Celebrating being in God’s presence and the world:
  • We begin the celebration with the truth that we are in God’s presence and world and exist solely because of God’s love: Genesis 1:26-27, Psalm 46:10, Psalm 19.
  • Jesus is alive and works through us in producing good for humanity despite the presence of evil and moral decay in the world.
  • We use songs, dances, prayers to adore God.
Hearing God’s news:
  • God communicates with us constantly and hence we encounter God through Christ, the Bible, the church, the Holy Spirit and our daily experiences.
  • We use songs, words, dance and prayers to adore God.
  • Sometimes we express our guilt, our sin, our actions, inaction, silence, and this is a sign of unworthiness before God. This is confession. Psalm 51-1-5.
  • Proclamation of what God has done for his people is done through drama, visual aids, symbols and acts such as the use of water in baptism or bread and wine in Holy Communion/Eucharist.
Making a response:
  • Our response can be organized or spontaneous.
  • Spontaneous Pentecost experience: Acts 2:1-13
  • Organized experience: Acts 2: 42-47
Culturally diverse worship experiences in scripture:
  • Exodus 15: 1-2, 19-21 
  • Psalm 137
  • Isaiah 58: 1-5
  • Mark 11: 1-11 (12-19)
Diverse worship expressions in cultural communities:
The “mainstream” western model:
  • Origin: European, e.g. Roman Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist
  • Tradition: In most cases has rituals and practices that have remained for centuries without significant variation.
The “minority” divergent model:
  • Origin: Migrant populations (e.g. Asians, Africans, Caribbean, South and Central Americans) form new/independent churches in adopted homelands (USA, Europe, Canada). If not, their influence/involvement in established ones help to shape their ‘new’ character.
  • Tradition: new rituals and practices, use of drums/pan and other musical instruments in worship.
Enabling culturally diverse worship:
The music divergence:
  • Mainstream model: music is “classical,” the use of organ, little use of body in worship.
  • “Minority” model: music is non-traditional, varied and lively. Use of a variety of contemporary instruments, and strong use of body language in expressing faith.
  • Divergent visuals:
  • Mainstream model: chalice, stained glass windows, pews, baptismal fonts, vestment.
  • “Minority” model: instruments: contemporary electronic devices like projector, screen, etc.
  • Divergent “message”:
  • Mainstream content: teaching about the church’s doctrine and faithfulness to its teaching
  • Delivery and participation: intellectual and non-participatory.
  • Language and illustrations: emphasis on proper use and articulation of language.
  • Expectation: mass communion, blessing, challenge.
  • “Minority” model:
  • Content: varied messages; focus on peoples’ lives.
  • Delivery: participation: highly participatory, more dramatic, interaction, alter calls.
  • Language and illustrations: appropriate to peoples’ life situation.
  • Expectation: call/ challenge to personal commitment.

Resources

  • In Church: An Introduction to Worship and Preaching, by Stacy John; Great Britain, The Garden City Press, 1971
  • The History Place
    www.historyplace.com/unitedstates       
  • The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints Media Library
    www.lds.org/media-library/images/categories/gospel-art       

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More Worship Resources

  • Music for Worship and Events"worship guidance"
  • Creating Inclusive Congregations"worship guidance"
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