By Dr Esther Shin Chuang
A few years ago, I started asking, “When all the nations come together to worship God in heaven, what would that look like?”
At the time, I was attending a multi-ethnic church in the U.S., but the worship was monocultural, representing mainly a contemporary white-American culture. I struggled with it, asking, “Is this what our worship should look like when there are multiple ethnicities in our church body?”
This led me to study in depth the relationship between culture and worship during my doctorate of worship studies. The majority of my scholarly work taught me one thing: multicultural worship is the ideal expression of worship when the nations come together.
So, what is multicultural worship? Multicultural worship is when multiple cultures are celebrated and multiple cultural elements are utilised in worship. This celebration of diverse cultures could be done by using visual art, musical forms and styles, languages, stories, testimonies, instruments, dance, drama, communion elements, prayers, and gestures that reflect diverse cultures.
The more I studied, the more I realised that multicultural worship is not just for multi-ethnic churches, but for every church. Even if there is only one ethnic group in the church body, multicultural worship enriches the church service.
So why should we embrace multicultural worship in our churches?
1) Multicultural worship reminds us that God loves people of all cultures. God shows his steadfast love and faithfulness toward the nations in Psalm 117. His heart for the nations is shown throughout Scripture, and if God loves all peoples and all cultures, the church should show that love in our worship services.
2) Multicultural worship shows that God welcomes diverse cultural gifts. C. Michael Hawn writes in Gather into One: Praying and Singing Globally that Revelation 21:24, 26 shows how God welcomes the cultural gifts of the nations into the Holy City, a place of perfect worship in the coming Kingdom of God. If God welcomes the cultural gifts of the nations, then the church should also welcome the diverse cultural gifts of all peoples.
3) Multicultural worship gives us a glimpse of worship in heaven. In Revelation 7:9–17, we see a great multitude “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” (7:9) worshipping God in heaven. When this group of multi-ethnic, multicultural, multilingual Christians worships God, the result will inevitably be multicultural. Meaning, the people will bring their own cultures, customs, and cultural expressions to worship and glorify God. This multicultural worshipping community in heaven is a community we look forward to joining one day.
4) Multicultural worship was part of the church from the beginning of church history. The church was born on the day of Pentecost, when God was worshipped in multiple languages spoken by “Jews from every nation under heaven” (Acts 2:5). Soon after, when the Christian church began to take place in 1st century Palestine, worship was multicultural. The early Christians drew from Jewish roots and Greek ideas, taking cultural symbols of the Greco-Roman era, such as the meal practice and water washing, and forming them into early Christian worship. When Emperor Constantine made Christianity legal in 313 AD, church liturgy became more stylised and formal but continued to be multicultural, adapting to the surrounding region’s culture. This adaptation of church liturgy to various cultures lasted until the 16th century when the Council of Trent made the Roman rite the uniform liturgical rite of the Western church. It wasn’t until the 1960s, with the Second Vatican Council, that liturgical diversity was affirmed once again in the Western church. Now, both the Protestant church and the Western church can worship God with their multicultural gifts.
5) Multicultural worship enriches the global church. Multicultural worship reminds us that every culture has something to share with other cultures. The American church has something to receive from the African church, the Asian church, the European church, and vice versa. Through cross-cultural sharing, our worship experience is enriched.
6) Multicultural worship reminds us that we are part of the global church. We are often stuck on focusing on “myself”, “my church”, and “my country”. But when we worship God using the cultural expressions of others, we are reminded that we are part of something bigger—the global body of Christ. And when we sing songs from the global church—since songs are the prayers of the people—we are praying with the global body of Christ.
7) Multicultural worship is an act of loving our neighbour. When we incorporate multiple cultural elements in our worship, we don’t become ethnocentric (thinking that my culture’s values and ways are the best). Rather, by embracing the many cultures around us, we show that we love our neighbours.
8) Multicultural worship allows people from those cultures to worship God using their heart language. When we sing in Korean, it will be a foreign language for many in Penang, Malaysia. But for me, that is my heart language. Although I am Korean-American, seeing an artwork of a Korean Jesus or singing worship songs in Korean stirs my heart in a way that white-American worship cannot. I feel more closely connected to God as I speak to Him in my heart language.
Multicultural worship is not only beautiful but biblical as well. However, I am not saying that your church must celebrate multicultural worship every week. I understand the reality. But if your church is not doing multicultural worship at all, you can start by introducing a worship song from a different culture and/or language in your service. You can sing the song showing Christian artwork from that culture. You can also share the theology behind singing songs from other cultures. And this multicultural worship will give your people a beautiful glimpse of the multicultural worship in heaven.
As Soong-Chan Rah writes in Many Colours: Cultural Intelligence for a Changing Church, the purpose of multicultural worship is to “honour the presence of God in different cultures…[and] to see God at work in all cultures, not just in one.” My prayer is that the church continues to honour God’s presence in all cultures, love others by embracing their cultures, and love the God of all nations.
About the Author
Dr Esther Shin Chuang is an award-winning concert pianist, gospel singer, worship leader, and educator who has shared music and taught worship seminars in North America, Asia, Africa, and Europe. She earned a doctorate in worship studies from the Robert E. Webber Institute of Worship Studies in the U.S. She was a Pastor of Music and Worship at Church of the Saviour and Faculty of Music and Worship at Moody Bible Institute in the U.S. before she and her husband, Rev Dr Tony Chuang, relocated to Penang, Malaysia. She is currently a lecturer of worship at Malaysia Baptist Theological Seminary.
