When leading praise and worship, should you modify your style to suit your culture? Most of the forms of leading praise and worship are heavily influenced from the church in the developed nations, and for anybody who is in an emerging nation it’s important that you do not reproduce what you hear on worship CDs, but start leading praise and worship within your own culture.
Leading Praise and Worship is All about the Lord
Worship just isn’t about westernizing your church. Admittedly, there are various wonderful praise and worship songs that have been beautifully produced through the Western Church, and it is tempting to play and sing the songs precisely the same way which you hear them in recordings, but I do not believe that this is what needs to be done.
Leading praise and worship in church is about pointing people towards the Lord, and I feel the Lord desires to meet people where they are at and in their particular culture to impact their lives. God is absolutely not an Australian or American, so we should always not only worship Him in like that! You have a great opportunity to show your people how precious they are by embracing your culture!
Leading Praise and WorshipLeading Praise and Worship is In regards to the People
As I write this information I’m sitting in an area in northeast India, where these beautiful Indian folks are singing songs that I recognize, but in their own language. They mix songs in English in with their language, and I for one think this is actually cool! However, other than the odd language change, the actualy style is similar as I hear in churches across my own country, so I believe there could be some work to be done among worship leaders to assist them embrace their particular culture.
One of the great difficulties facing the first and medieval church was that much of the original writings were in Latin, a language which the common people didn’t speak! However wonderful a worship song is, if the people haven’t any understanding of a meaning behind it really is practically useless! For those leading praise and worship and you intend to make it relevant for a culture, one of the first steps should be to translate the words right into a language that your people will understand.
Leading Praise and Worship is About Expressing Your Culture
But it is not just about the words. Most cultures have their unique variety of music, and I believe that God delights in this as well. For some strange reason, those leading praise and worship appear to always need to make the sound more Western, rather than embracing the music and style of their unique culture. When we do this we miss an incredible opportunity to generate an original style by blending the two!
So if you live in in Africa, Eastern Europe, Asia, India or South America, why don’t you attempt to express your own culture in the way you lead worship. This will bring much joy to the heart of God, as well as to your people and your country as well. Western music is attractive, especially to young people, I would suggest that you blend the styles of your special culture with Western music to generate an original expression of worship the Lord.
If you’re leading praise and worship, you have an unbelievable opportunity to blend words, styles and instruments to produce a unique expression of worship to the Lord!
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