What’s worship going to look like in this diverse world?

Sandra Van Opstal, worship pastor, shares her thoughts on how worship will be changing in a more diverse and multi-ethnic country. She provides insights on the difference in worship styles based on culture and ethnic background. Her newly released book, Next Worship: Glorifying God in a Diverse World,  gives more insights on multi-ethnic worship and the need for the community to embrace this more.

 

 

PODCAST:

 

3 Take Aways

1. Know your culture to know your worship. Culture is so engrained in our worship style and preference. The first 10 minutes of worship service gives insight on the church’s culture, background and beliefs. It’s important for individuals and churches to know their culture and how that is impacting their worship experience. For instance, Latinos typically have a more celebratory style of worship where as Asian Americans traditionally have a more private, personal and repentant style of worship. Understand how your culture is influencing your worship so that you can embrace different styles and types of worship. This will give you a fuller expression of God’s beauty and kingdom. It’ll also help you get your worship on.

2. Worship’s goal is to bring solidarity. It doesn’t matter who you are, what language you speak or how you look. The goal of worship is to bring a unity and solidarity among a diverse group of people. Even people who look alike and come from the same ethnic background, there is so much diversity and differences. Worship brings people to worship God. It unites people with one voice and one heart. Lets not forget that as we worship in our churches.

3. Multi-ethnic worship is like learning a new language or cooking a new ethnic dish. I’ve cooked one new dish and it was hard. It took me two tries to really get it right. Learning to do multi-ethnic worship will take time, effort and energy. There will be moments of frustration and headache but there will also be even more times of celebration and beauty. Like most great things, it’s the things that are the hardest that turn to be the most rewarding. Multi-ethnic worship is so beautiful when you get to see it displayed on your church. It gives you a picture of us worshipping in heaven together as One church and body. What a picture so lets practice here now to prepare us for eternal worship.

Get to Know Sandra:

• Sandra’s profile at Urbana

• Twitter

• Latest Book: The Next Worship: Glorifying God in a Diverse World

• Sandra’s Book: The Mission of Worship

• Sandra’s co-authored book: Small Group Leader’s Handbook

Links Mentioned:

• IFES- International Fellowship of Evangelical Students

• Lausanne Movement

• Evangelical Immigration Table

• Calvin Institute of Christian Worship

• Audrey Tom: “The Asian American Worship Experience”

• Following Jesus without Dishonoring Your Parents

 

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