Redemption Boulevard A Multicultural Worship Ministry

Scenario

A missionary from China that your church supports is coming into town.  You want to honor this missionary by singing a song in Chinese.  A good friend of yours recommended a song called Pengyou, Ting (Listen, my friends).  You’ve also been working with a Chinese friend of yours to get the pronunciation down.  BUT you’re still afraid to sing it because you’re afraid of messing it up and offending this missionary.

Some helpful hints when you’re introducing language

One of the things I’m grateful for as a worship director at Aldrich Church is that I have more personal time to communicate with my pastor.  We try to do this between 2-4 times a month.  And this has been beneficial in how we form the worship services together.

One of the things we talked about was the importance of connecting the songs with do with either missionaries we’re supporting or people in the neighborhood.  What that means is that we need to take 30-60 seconds before we introduce a new language to talk to give people context.

Otherwise, people will be either self-conscious, disengage, stop singing, or in some extreme cases….leave the service.

By introducing why you’re introducing a new language people will get to hear your heart and be much more forgiving should you mess up.

What it means to be a worship leader/director

I think it’s important that as multicultural worship leaders/directors that we have other functions besides just leading the songs.  One of those functions is to teach.  Now, it may not be to the extent that our pastors do when they preach, but we do have teaching moments.

I’m a big believer in being thoroughly prepared for a service, when possible, so, as the Lord is leading you to introduce a new language take some time to work with your ministry leader or pastor.

Question for you

Have you ever been afraid to sing in another language?

© 2012 – 2011, Peter Park. All rights reserved.