Worshipping at Home
First appeared in editorial in EM News 6:3 (September 1997)
I had just flown from Paris to Dallas. When Sunday morning came along, the circumstances of my life had conspired to emaciate my soul: Our life's work, translation of the Bible into the Mono language, was in jeopardy; our Congolese friends were in the middle of a war that the rest of the world thought had ended. For a year, the concrete spiritual reality, so evident in our French charismatic church, had passed me by. A minister, the character in the Updike novel I was reading, had poignantly and convincingly decided that God didn't exist. A friend who had been instrumental in bringing me out of a period of agnosticism now seemed to be drifting into unfounded theological space. And I was still jet-lagged from my trip from France to Dallas.
Thus physically, emotionally, and spiritually weakened, I trudged into the Southwest Harvest Church with Paul Neeley. But at the first sound of the choir and worship band, my deadened soul quickened within me. They were singing songs I knew. In English. They were standing and clapping and swaying the way that the congregation in my home church in Chicago does. After over a year of learning to worship God in new ways in France, and before that three years in Congo, here was something familiar. Tears streamed down my face. My broken voice reflected perfectly the broken spirit beneath it as I joined my brothers and sisters: “Can't stop praisin' His name, I just can't stop . . .” We stood and prayed together for each other. Paul's white hand in my left, and the firm grasp of a Black woman's in my right. I was home. Singing and worshipping God with my heart, surrounded by people with skins and voices and clothes and words and gestures and improvisations that I knew, that had accompanied some of my life's most profound communication with God. And God began to rebuild me.
I believe that anyone can learn to worship God in unfamiliar musical, linguistic, and cultural contexts; every missionary has to. And God can and does speak through and around all sorts of barriers. But there's something profound about being home. About the peculiarities and particularities of a culture that is somehow mine. My heart language. Heart worship. Heart music. And it is this depth and fullness of communion with God when I'm home that I want all people in the world to be able to experience.
I had just flown from Paris to Dallas. When Sunday morning came along, the circumstances of my life had conspired to emaciate my soul: Our life's work, translation of the Bible into the Mono language, was in jeopardy; our Congolese friends were in the middle of a war that the rest of the world thought had ended. For a year, the concrete spiritual reality, so evident in our French charismatic church, had passed me by. A minister, the character in the Updike novel I was reading, had poignantly and convincingly decided that God didn't exist. A friend who had been instrumental in bringing me out of a period of agnosticism now seemed to be drifting into unfounded theological space. And I was still jet-lagged from my trip from France to Dallas.
Thus physically, emotionally, and spiritually weakened, I trudged into the Southwest Harvest Church with Paul Neeley. But at the first sound of the choir and worship band, my deadened soul quickened within me. They were singing songs I knew. In English. They were standing and clapping and swaying the way that the congregation in my home church in Chicago does. After over a year of learning to worship God in new ways in France, and before that three years in Congo, here was something familiar. Tears streamed down my face. My broken voice reflected perfectly the broken spirit beneath it as I joined my brothers and sisters: “Can't stop praisin' His name, I just can't stop . . .” We stood and prayed together for each other. Paul's white hand in my left, and the firm grasp of a Black woman's in my right. I was home. Singing and worshipping God with my heart, surrounded by people with skins and voices and clothes and words and gestures and improvisations that I knew, that had accompanied some of my life's most profound communication with God. And God began to rebuild me.
I believe that anyone can learn to worship God in unfamiliar musical, linguistic, and cultural contexts; every missionary has to. And God can and does speak through and around all sorts of barriers. But there's something profound about being home. About the peculiarities and particularities of a culture that is somehow mine. My heart language. Heart worship. Heart music. And it is this depth and fullness of communion with God when I'm home that I want all people in the world to be able to experience.