When you take a believer and add all of his or her life experiences, abilities, gifts, passions, and spiritual maturity, a worship language is born.

Every believer has a worship language.  Likewise, every church (made up of many believers) has its own worship language.  DNA is the perfect example of the variety but consistency of worship languages.  The base ingredients are the same, but the way that these come together produce very different results.

Unity

I believe that the “worship wars” were fueled by confusion of worship language.  How can our outward expressions seem so different but accomplish the same result – worship?  We find the answer in John 4.  The Samaritan woman “worshiped what she did not know” (4:22).  Her worship language was skewed because the “DNA” base was not right.  Jesus fixed her flawed notions by saying “those who worship [God] must worship in spirit and truth” (4:24).  The DNA of a worship language must be that we worship in spirit and in truth.  The inward, radical, and vibrant vertical relationship that we talked about a few days ago is the foundation and is necessary.

Diversity

If we all have the same components of DNA, how do we look so different in our worship?  Our human DNA variations makes us who we are.  In the same way that no human is the same, no worship language is the same.  Let’s go back to the Samaritan woman to see how this plays out. 

After Jesus taught the woman about worship and revealed His Deity, she went to tell others!  The key is in what she told the town – “He told me all that I ever did” (4:39).  Basically she is saying that “He knew that I am a whore, who’ve I been with, all the terrible things that I’ve done……He is the Messiah!”  She used the first half to get to the more important second half – JESUS.  Her testimony was used to worship Christ!  She didn’t try to cover it up and immediately become holier than thou, she used what Christ exposed in order to bring Him glory.  Said differently, she worshiped Christ through her past experiences.  (*This is not saying that we should celebrate sin in order to worship Christ).  There are countless examples in the Bible of people giving God glory because of what He did in their lives. 

Base Pairs

There are many components of a worship language.  Here are a few examples (individual and congregation worship languages) I’ll discuss further over the next few days.

• Age (Generational)
• Gifts and Abilities
• Life Experiences
• Past in Church
• Spiritual Maturity
• Geographic Location
• Musical Style
• Theology
• Age of Church

What are some unique traits of your worship language?  Leave comments below to help with future discussions.


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