"First Thing, We Gon' Do Is Take Over The Music": Worship Gives Voice and Place to Minorities

     I remember going to a church in a Midwestern town with some close friends. Like my wife and I, they were an interracial couple comprised of a black male and white woman.  As African Americans accustomed to being in the minority, my friend and I tried to find  the other black people in the predominantly white congregation. My friend initiated a conversation with a few of the black members of this church at the end of the service.  My friend suggested that they have an informal gathering of the rest of the black people and  hang out. One of the first phrases one  of the black men  said, without being led into the conversation or asked about it was: "First thing, we gon' do is take over the music". The man was joking and not being militant, but at the same time we all felt the struggle he was facing. He was in a predominantly white church and he was black. The fact he  possibly wanted something different from Contemporary Christian Music did not cross the church's mind. Yet, these African American brothers and sisters would not share this fact  candidly, because the word was being preached, which is what mattered  most to them. Most importantly, they did not want to upset the community at the church, which was a predominantly white Mega Church. As a corollary, these voices of my African American brothers and sisters probably will not be heard for a long time. They will not bring it up, which effectively creates the unintended consequence of them being voiceless. Sadly, this experience tends to reflect the tension minorities face in America, whether Asian, Latino, Hispanic, Native American, Middle Eastern, etc.  It's okay to look different as long as you make the white majority feel generally comfortable by maintaining their cultural norms. Therefore, majority culture churches must understand that having multicultural worship gives minorities in your church a voice that they do not experience in everyday life. For this reason, all multiethnic churches must commit to multicultral worship.

     In order to have any level of success in this country, many minorities in America know one rule: We must make white people feel comfortable with us. We need to learn their culture and their ways of communicating, in order to succeed in the professional world. The consequence of oppression and discrimination have left many minorities still having to get jobs from white owned companies and organizations. I am not trying to condemn, but I am simply describing the experience. As a result, many minorities have to assimilate into the cultural norms of Anglo culture. This fact effectively silences many of the aspects of a minority's culture of origin. Thus, many minorities have created bastions of their respective cultures, in which they can experience and do things "their way" without having to explain or educate people on why they do the things the way they do. More importantly, they do not have to modify or "tone" anything down. For instance, I know personally for many African Americans this place has been the church.  Consequently, majority culture churches must have an awareness that some minorities have a wrestle going on during the church service. Many of them wrestle with  the feeling like they are losing a piece of themselves  after hearing no music or experiencing cultural norms from their culture of origin. In other words, they feel themselves losing their voices and identity.

       Moreover, many minorities have acclimatized themselves to majority culture's obliviousness. Candidly speaking, many have acquiesced hope in  Anglo culture's alacrity to change. It's not that we have not spoken up, but when we have asserted our feelings, we may encounter resistance in at least three ways. First, we bring feelings up to someone in a position of power in a respectful way. We ask them to coffee and explain our concerns. That person looks us in the eye, they smile, and they concur with us. They describe the theology of multicultural expressions. We get excited and we believe: "Man somebody might just hear me". What happens next: nothing changes. We might also get a bone for one week or maybe a month, then we go back to the "same ol,same ol".  Second, we  might  encounter people telling us that our request for expressions from our culture of origin represents personal preference. It makes us feel spiritually guilty for wanting something that's familiar to us. We might also hear: "There is no Jew or Gentile in the gospel and we should not get so caught up in the cultural aspects. These cultural aspects can cause unwanted divisions." In effect, that response  makes us feel spiritually guilty for longing for the expression of Genesis 1:26-27 from our culture of origin. Thirdly, we might encounter "Our musicians just can not do that." This fact has validity, most white musicians can not play songs from different cultures. It would take a lot of learning, training, failure, and effort to do something "unfamiliar". Yet,  most minorities have been doing this same learning, training, failure, and effort to do something "unfamiliar" over the centuries for their survival.  The representation of the gospel and apologetic Jesus calls for in John 17 is at stake and you can't make the effort to learn our respective cultures? That  is a poor excuse and candidly speaking extremely lazy.

    Now that we know the effect that not hearing minorities can have,  we must discuss what doing multicultural worship can bring. First, multicultural worship makes minorities feel like they have a place in the body. Let's say I wanted to make a room for my wife and I, then I put a video game console in it, surround sound, beer opener, a basketball hoop, 60' HDTV in that room.  Although I made the room for her and I, she would not feel welcome in it. She has no expression of herself in the room, yet I  would expect here to feel comfortable and like she belongs in the room.  We all know the problem with this set-up, I am expecting her to act like a male, when she is a female. She can be female and different as long as she does not mess with my stuff and change things around. Many of us minorities feel like my wife would in this example, welcome as long as we do not try add anything of our own. Therefore, multicultural worship in effect gives minorities furniture in the room. We have a voice and we have power. More importantly, we have a place in the body.

    Secondly, multicultural worship will teach your congregation cross-cultural skills. Most Americans, whether White, Black, Asian, etc do not have cross-cultural skills. Doing multicultural worship will teach your congregation about other cultures. They will learn the thoughts, customs, beliefs, and unwritten rules in other cultures. Music can bring up all these issues and can effectively help your congregation engage with other cultures. There is no greater sense of pride, then seeing a white person try to imitate my culture. It makes it feel like my culture matters to them and it makes me feel like I matter to them more than making them feel good about having a black person in their congregation. As the congregation continues to participate in one another's respective cultures a beautiful thing happens: the unfamiliar, becomes a part of the congregations heart language in worship. When I worship and I do not hear a song in French, Spanish, CCM, an African language in a service, I feel like a piece of me is missing. Multicultural worship will bring this to your congregation after years of intentionally pursuing it.

   Lastly, multicultural worship helps to provide the solution to the divisions we face here on this earth. We break down barriers, when we share culture and histories. It is important to me that black history is important to other people in my church body. Being in the same room together and not addressing the issues is not breaking down barriers. It's simply going up to the barrier and saying: "We are staring at you barrier, so we have done our duty". The church's duty is to break down barriers. Worship can be a launching point of breaking down barriers. It will help bring a little of the "not yet" to the earth. The church is supposed to be a place in which we show people the "not yet", so we can help people encounter the LORD of the "not yet": Jesus Christ, who will reconcile all nations under his rule and authority, including their respective cultures.

1.) Globe from www.dreamstime.com
2.)Church found online and not the one discussed in the blog

What Do Minorities At Your Church Think?: Don't Take Their Silence ForAbsence of Struggle

In this blog,  I am going to highlight what it is like to be a minority in a majority culture church context. When I say minority, I mean a group of people that do not have as many numbers as the others in a given context. When I say majority, I mean the group of people that outnumbers the rest of people in a given context. Therefore, when I say minority in this blog I do not necessarily mean people of color and when I say majority I do not necessarily mean white. I want to highlight the illusion that a majority culture can have when they have minorities come to to their church:  minorities do not struggle with the majority culture's way of doing things. On the contrary, majority cultures should not take the silence of minorities for the absence of struggle.  The following quote represents the reasons they might be there and have not said anything:

"I do not necessarily like the music at this church, but I go because the community is real and the preaching sticks to the word. Therefore, I am willing to sacrifice somethings in order to be here. I don't really want to say that I desire something different in worship, because I do not want to cause discord in the church. I just want enjoy the word and the community."

This declaration would be true of most minorities that attend a majority culture church that does not reflect anything from their "heart language". I define heart language as: the language that best communicates to a person through representing familiar cultural norms, symbols, music, food, language, .etc. For instance, as an African American hearing anything familiar from the African American church  experience allows me to connect with God in a deeper way, than hearing things from contemporary white christian experience. (Don't get me wrong I love me some "Come Thou Fount", "How Great Is Our God",  the "Horse and Rider Song" (shouts out to Brandon Marshall) ,  Bryan Chapell is one of my favorite preachers, etc.) This connection happens because I hear things in my heart language. It makes me feel more at home. All people no matter their background, need to hear things in their "heart language", to have a deep experience in worship and the life of the church. In addition, doing things in their heart language communicates to them that they have a voice in the life of the body. When people have a voice, they feel empowered. when they feel empowered, they feel like they have a place.

     Yet, a lot of times when we find ourselves in the majority culture, when we have minorities come to our church we do not consider that they may have different ways of doing things then us. For instance, in my experience in the African American church we would have a spattering of white people, sometimes Africans, but we never took time to consider doing things in their "heart language". Instead, we took their presence as legitimizing the way that we did things. Sometimes we would even make them "honorary Black People". You not "really white for real" or you not "really X for real". I am convinced that this happens to minorities a lot in majority contexts. Their identity gets assimilated into the identity of the majority. This assimilation usually carries with it a little bit of resentment of having their cultural identity disregarded and made to seem unimportant. If it does not have resentment it definitely has sadness. In a lot of cases both feelings are there simultaneously.

Consequently,  a lot of churches that have multi-ethnicity and/or multiple races, but they have minorities longing to hear things in their heart language. If you are a multi-ethnic church and/or mutiracial church (a church with more than one ethnic group or racial present), and you know your worship, leadership, langauge, etc. is monocultural, then I challenge you with four things:


I.) Go to one of the minorities in your church and ask them to tell you candidly about their experience. Ask them if there where no other person from the majority culture present, how would they describe the church in comparison to what was familiar to them? For instance, if your church is all Asian and you have some black people ask: "If you were just around black people, how would you describe our church in comparison to what is familiar with you culturally?"

II.) Alert your church leadership that there are people different from the majority context and we need to make sure they feel included.

III.) Ask those minorities in your church context, "How can we help shape a worshiping experience a community experience that would help you feel more at home, and reflect things from your culture?"

IV.) Do what they suggest to you or they will lose trust in you. (If you are an individual member of a bible study, you can make a home where these heart language issues get worked out. Invite that person to your house and have them cook their favorite dish for you or you could go to theirs, etc. Be creative and ask for wisdom from the spirit. )

The majority culture must initiate this conversation, because minorities in your church have no hope of you really changing. Secondly, they do not want to cause discord, because they truly love the community they have. Lastly, they have been burned in the past by trusting people in the majority and have them not make good on their promises. Whatever you do, do not take their silence for absence of struggle.

Image from: http://www.fredspencer.com/where-has-this-year-gone.html/man-thinking-02