Bravery in Worship is Anti-Racism

In middle and high school, I sang in my youth group’s praise band. The middle school band was just as awkward as you can imagine – middle schoolers learning to play instruments, changing voices through puberty, and the general lack of both bodily awareness and overall confidence made for rough worship leadership. Despite these challenges, I remember it very fondly (though I’m grateful there isn’t much video evidence). 

By the time we entered high school, and as we grew into ourselves individually and as a team a bit more, we became relatively decent worship leaders. No longer did the band feel like individual instrumentalists, but we felt like a team, we made a cohesive sound, we led others in beautiful and meaningful worship experiences. I remember these years, too, with deep fondness. 

Upstairs, there was something else happening. As youth, we called it ‘big church,’ but for the grown-ups, they just called it Sunday morning worship. Big church consisted of one service with contemporary music and another with traditional hymns, and during the summers, the two services would blend into one. When they blended, there was both delight and grumbling among the people – joy in seeing people they didn’t run into every week from the other service, and irritation at not being familiar with all the words of the songs, or with the volume of the drums. 

I didn’t totally understand the grumbling, because as youth, we were going between different worship styles every single Sunday. The contemporary service at church was during Sunday School, so after Sunday School, the youth would make their way upstairs to Big Church and join the traditional service. Every week, we’d go from contemporary music in youth praise band, to traditional worship in ‘big church.’  

When I arrived at Whitworth University for college, I walked into worship experiences, both contemporary and traditional, thinking, “I know how to do this! I’m familiar with both styles of worship, I can speak the language.” And then… they sang a bunch of songs I’d never heard! It turns out, every community has their own repertoire of songs and practices that speak to their heart – every community speaks their own language. I had never heard the song How Deep the Father’s Love for Us before college. And now, it is one of my favorite hymns, it has become part of my soul’s song. 

At the first worship service of my time at Garrett Seminary, I sat beside a new friend, a member of The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Kansas City, and she asked me how to find hymns in a hymnal! A lifelong Methodist, she had never used a hymnal. When we got to the scripture reading, three different people read the scriptures. One read the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) scripture in English, another read the epistle scripture in Korean, and another read the New Testament reading in Spanish. For the readings not in English, I had to look at my bulletin, to read along; an experience I’d never had before.  Here, too, there were songs I had never heard before; I learned the songs For Everyone Born and We are Marching, songs that I now find myself humming and remembering regularly. 

In all these experiences, I’ve learned to love things that were new to me, which were very familiar (and close to the heart!) of someone else. In all these experiences, I’ve felt awkward and strange and ignorant and unsure. When someone started reading the epistle in Korean, I did not know what they were saying, and had to find the tool to make the experience accessible to me. When someone started singing a song I did not know, I often guessed at the melody incorrectly, and had to stop singing and understand that I was at the mercy of the song leader, and at the mercy of time. 

When I was in middle school, learning how to sing and play contemporary Christian music, other people treasured the gift my praise band had to offer. Our peers sang along, our leaders encouraged us, and because of that, I grew into who I am. Because I stuck with it, and didn’t shy away from the awkwardness, I grew into it, and it became comfortable - it became something I love.

This reality of my life, that I continually am presented with opportunities to love something new, experiences which started awkwardly and clumsily, I value the gifts that other people have to offer me much more, gifts that are not at all familiar to me. I so appreciate when people take me to restaurants they love and tell me what their favorite thing is to get on the menu, even when I would never have considered it on my own. Because of church, I am more open than I would have been on my own to new experiences. 

Because of church, and the continual opportunities it provides to learn to love something new, I think we can, individually and collectively, become more open to a diversity of experiences. I think, when we become more open to appreciating and loving a diversity of experiences, we continue our journey of anti-racism and decolonization. 

When we encounter cultures other than our own, whether different by race, geography, denomination, tradition, or family culture, we do not have a roadmap for how to navigate it. We don’t know what is considered rude, we do not know the melody to the song – we can not even guess what it might be! We, truly, are at the mercy of other people, and of time and exposure. Not being part of the dominant culture of any space makes us feel awkward, strange, ignorant, and unsure. We do not speak the language. 

But, we know, because of church (and other things), that we can learn new languages, we can learn new melodies, we can come to love something that was once foreign to us. The thing we come to love might never be ‘ours,’ but it might become a treasured gift that is woven into our own soul’s song. Or, at least, even if we don’t like the taste of the melody in our mouths, even if we don’t like the sound of a recipe, it will be an exercise in anti-racism, it will be a practice of love and humility to treasure and respect the way that other people sing and live. 

As you experiment bravely with our resources, I hope we remember and celebrate the fact that though we may assume differently, we each come from a variety of worship cultures and theological traditions, and will be encountering rituals, songs, prayers, and theology that are meaningful to someone else. As you adapt the resources to your own context, we invite you to share with us how it came to life in your own place!