Negritos is a small community of, say, sixty, or so, families, nestled in the middle of the Peruvian Andes Mountains. Homes are made of mud, there is no electricity, the people eat only what they can grow on their farms, water is collected from the runoff of the mountain, and horseback is the best way of transport.
You can reach the village via a two hour truck drive on a windy gravel road, followed by a twenty minute hike, after the road abruptly ends on the edge of a rolling hill. At this point, you’ll find yourself in the middle of absolutely nowhere, and that “nowhere”, is Negritos.
With packs stuffed full of warm clothes, we arrived to the village, in company with the exhausted mules that carried our groceries and clean drinking water, atop their backs. We set up our tents, diced up a quick lunch with our pocket knives, and proceeded to wait, over the next six hours for the pastor we’d be working alongside to visit us, with directions for the week.
Pastor Juan, a petite mountain man, who apparently runs on ‘mountain time’, arrived that evening, just before dusk. He was a wonderfully kind, very quiet man that welcomed us graciously into his community. He informed us that we’d be presenting a teaching each night of our stay, along with a testimony, and a ‘special song’. Our first service would be that night, at about eight o’clock. We had the next two hours to become singers, and present a ‘worthy’ performance.
The tiny, sweet, church, made of mud brick walls and dirt floors, with toilet paper strung as streamers across the ceiling rafters, owned a beautiful kind of simplicity. As we sat in rickety, homemade pews, and drew our scarfs in tightly around our cheeks to block out the chilling breeze from the holes in the tin roof, the service began.
The timid pastor commenced with a mumbled introduction and a ten minute prayer. He then introduced our group, and we softly sang a poorly rehearsed song, embarrassed of what the congregation would think. We were followed by a group of three reluctant women that would lead the church in singing worship. They were unsure of themselves, but they lifted their voices in praise, regardless. They sang so loud, I’m sure their voices could be heard, resounding from the homesteads in the valleys surrounding the little mountaintop sanctuary.
I realized, as these three women sang their faces red, the error of my worship that night. I had gone up to the front of that church with intentions to please the congregation with my worship, not to please my Father. I had gone up, worried of what they may think of my voice, worried of if our cultural style would seem weird to them, worried that I’d forget the words, worried of things that shouldn’t have mattered.
But these women didn’t seem to care what I thought of their voices or if their instruments were in tune, or even if their clapping was in-sync. I realized, they didn’t grow up hearing the kinds of things I had heard about worship, as I grew up. And so, they simply worshiped, as best they knew how; with the most genuine spirits, I had ever seen before.
You see, churches, across the world, are arguing over matters like hurt feelings from praise team auditions, and whether instrumental worship is even biblical, or if raised hands and closed eyes are ‘too charismatic’…We demand answers to senseless questions such as: “should the lights be on or off?”, “a projector, or hymnals?”, “is the bass too loud?”, “should there be a fog machine?”, “hymns or contemporary songs?”,the list goes on and on. Meanwhile, a group of indigenous mountain families, in the middle of Peru, are worshiping our God using a guitar with missing strings, three tambourines, and voices that could break glass.
I don’t believe it’s the form that matters in our worship; in fact, I’m certain of its irrelevance.
Romans 12, verses one and two, tell us this:
“1 I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
Here, we can read how we’re called to lift up a sound of worship that is ‘holy and acceptable to God’. We’re not asked to compare our worship, to make sure it is acceptable to neighboring churches, or even worry if it’s acceptable to others within our congregation. We’re called to step away from the arguments of this world, arguments reminiscent of those we read about in Paul’s letters to the churches in Corinth, or in Rome; arguments that are judgmental, self-righteous, and mute, in the grand scheme.
The heart of your worship is what determines if it is pleasing to God, and our petty arguments about what’s best, our shaming, judgmental comments of who’s doing what, and the time we waste deciding all of these things, is simply not pleasing to our God.
“2 One person believes he may eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables. 3 Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him. 4 Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand. 5 One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. 6 The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God.”
ROMANS 14:2-6
If you read closely, you can see that this passage is about much more than eating habits and appreciation of our days. It’s telling us that God has created each of our hearts in a unique and wonderful way. It’s telling us that, as long as each of our actions honors the Lord in our hearts, there is no right or wrong, when we come into the house of God. It tells us the way of our brother, might not look the same as our own way, and it tells us that’s okay.
Set free, by Christ’s work, from the laws of the Old Testament, we are simply instructed to present ourselves; to come, to be with our Lord and lift up praise to His name, however that may look. You see, He just wants us, and He only asks that as we come, we come with joy, with right hearts, and with pure minds.
By saying that’s not enough, by saying that anything else matters, we’re diminishing the crucifixion of Christ, and the condition-less access His death granted us, to our Father. We’re ignoring His love for us, ignoring the times throughout the gospel that He repeatedly tells us to ‘simply come’, and, as a result, we’re hindering the reputation of the gospel, to the onlooking world.
Church, all God asks for is a joyful noise (Psalm 98:4).
Whether that be the chilling noise of a congregation united in the notes of an acapella song, the rich traditional noise of old style hymns, sang accompanied by a piano, the noise of upbeat tribal lyrics yelled out between dance moves to the beat of African drums, or the noise of a full on rock band bursting in sync with colored stage lights, any worship with joy, any worship with passion, and any worship with love, is worthy worship.
If we come, ready, willing, happy, before Him, with intents, purely to lift His name, we should be able to find Him in any of these scenarios. We should be able to set aside our ‘comfortability’, in order to bring Him a sound of worship and praise, lifted up by a united church body, of the pure kind of hearts He finds, oh so pleasing, and acceptable.
