Guest Post from Michael Gehrling: Stretching My Spirit – The Benefits of Crossing Cultures in Worship

This week’s guest post is from my friend and co-pastor, Mike Gehrling. God called us to start working together to plant The Upper Room together nearly five years ago. Those five years have been filled with a great gift of  friendship, which I’ve written about here. Throughout those five years God has also used Mike to teach me a lot about worship, so it’s fitting that his guest post here is about worship.

About the author: Mike loves Jesus. He also enjoys being a pastor and a campus minister. In his spare time he can be found going for a run, reading a good book, and appearing anonymously in Chris’s blogposts. One of his goals for 2013 is to write more blogposts than he did in 2012, which should be easy since he only wrote 9 last year. Keep him accountable at www.mikegehrling.wordpress.com.

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Have you ever worshipped in a church significantly different from your own? Maybe, on a mission trip, you’ve worshipped in a language other than English, and struggled to know what you were singing, praying and hearing. Maybe you’re a Protestant whose worshipped in a Catholic or Orthodox church, and have been taken aback when attention is given to Mary or to a saint. Maybe you come from a liturgical tradition and visited a contemporary or charismatic church, not knowing what to do what to do with your hands when you don’t have a bulletin and hymnal to hold, and when everyone around you is lifting their hands in the air. Experiences like these can be jarring and difficult, but they also provide opportunities to grow.

I’ve had the privilege of worshipping in a lot of different contexts, and have come to love worship that is outside of my own comfort zone. From worshiping in an African-American Baptist church for a semester in college, to learning worship songs while in a van on a mission trip in Southeast Asia, to visiting an Orthodox Church when I’m taking vacation time from Upper Room, I’ve learned a lot from the breadth of worship expressions that the body of Christ has to offer.

I started writing this blogpost with the intention of reflecting on what these experiences taught me about worship. However, I quickly realized that these experiences also taught me much about myself. Here are a few things that I’ve learned about myself from worshipping cross-culturally:

I Benefit From Being Spiritually Flexible

If you exercise regularly, you know that the more you stretch, the more flexible your body is. More flexibility means less discomfort, and less likelihood of injury. In a similar way, I’ve found that taking time to worship in other traditions, and learn from them, has stretched my spirit to the point that I’m now able to experience Christ’s presence in church contexts that are very different from what I had been used to. Five years ago, hearing someone speaking in tongues would have stretched me to the point of a spiritual muscle tear. Truly experiencing Christ while worshipping in another language would have been more than my spiritually flexibility could handle. Now, though, I’ve reached the point that I can experience God in familiar and unfamiliar contexts, and be content in either.

I Sometimes Use Humor as a Form of Judgment

I’ve rarely had negative experiences in worship. But there have been plenty of times that I’ve found myself laughing about elements of a worship service that were new for me. I remember as a teenager chuckling at the funny hat that the bishop was wearing in a Catholic service. I took great delight imitating the charismatic preacher at the first charismatic African-American church I visited. On the surface at least, I didn’t feel anything negative, but my tendency toward laughter blocked me from appreciating the deeper significance and beauty of what was happening. These experiences showed me that humor is my way of responding to culture-shock, and it was keeping me from learning.

Instead of Worshipping God, I Often Worship Idols of Mastery and Control

I’ve learned to sing praises to God in many languages. Swahili, Congolese, Vietnamese, Korean, French, Arabic and Hindi all come to mind immediately. But there’s one language that I always struggle with: Spanish. Many Latino worship songs move at such a tempo that the syllables go by faster than I can handle. That my tongue seems to be completely opposed to making that “rolling r” sound doesn’t help much, either. It used to be that my soul would check out during times of worship in which the leader had us singing in Spanish. It was too hard. I couldn’t do it well, or at all, and therefore I couldn’t really worship. My perspective changed, though, when I realized that it wasn’t the Spanish that was keeping me from worshipping; it was my attitude. In order to enter into a spirit of worship, I was demanding an ability to master the worship. While anyone can master particular forms of worship, or particular songs or prayer styles, no one can fully master what it means to worship the Triune God. The fact that I was demanding the capacity to master the worship style in order to worship meant that I had made an idol out of my own abilities, and that I was more often worshipping myself than God. The muscles in my tongue are still not good at speaking or singing in Spanish, but I’m thankful that my spiritual muscles can receive Latino worship as a reminder that entering into worship sometimes is hard work, and that I still have much to learn.

Praise the Lord that the Body of Christ has many members! May God grant all of us a heart that is open to experiencing him even in uncomfortable places.

• Cross-Cultural
• Worship