Consider yourself warned. 
I’m about to write about something that is very near and dear to my heart. I love people. I love the uniqueness that we each have. I love the fact that none of us are alike. We have our own taste in movies, cars, decorating, music, etc. Diversity is a beautiful thing. Diversity in unity is even more beautiful to me… and I really do believe God loves it too.
Being a musician has made me look at diversity a little differently. Being a Christian musician (which, by the way, I HATE that label… just so you know) has made me examine diversity even more closely. For some strange reason, we in the church world think that ALL Christian music (namely worship music) has to sound exactly the same. We make formulas for everything. Heck, we made a formula for “getting saved” didn’t we? Now, just when I thought we couldn’t get any worse, we have somehow decided to make a formula out of worship. “If you do this, then the presence of God is guaranteed to show up.” “If you don’t do enough of this, then you are not worshiping in the correct manner.” “If you don’t raise your hands during the 2nd chorus, you are not a passionate worshiper.” “If you don’t worship with spontaneous songs, you’re not worshiping.” And the list goes on and on. Here’s the difficulty I am having with this. What qualifies us to be the worship police? How can I sit in judgment of your worship to God? The one person that I am familiar with from the Bible who sat in judgment of someone’s worship was Michal the daughter Saul and wife of King David. As David danced before the ark of God as it was being brought into Jerusalem, the Bible says that Michal despised David. She looked down her nose at his expression of worship. It offended her because it was not the way she thought worship should be done. Can I just say, none of us have the right to sit in judgment of anyone’s personal way of worshiping. We do not have to all do it the same way. When we walk down that slippery slope of “cookie cutter” worship, we are trading true UNITY for UNIFORMITY. True unity is understanding that other people look different, sound different, sing different, worship different… and in those differences we embrace the ONE who is the reason we worship. God. Uniformity says that you have to look like me, dress like me, sing like me, sound like me, worship like me. All uniformity does is bind you up yet again in comparison, jealousy and competition.
The best example that I have is the difference in the way I worship and the way my best friend, DeLynn, worships. I feel like a screaming crazy woman when I begin worshiping. I honestly hate how loud I get. DeLynn, on the other hand, is so sweet and smooth sounding. She is a lover of Jesus and it’s like listening to someone whisper in the ear of her lover as she worships. It’s beautiful. And yet, DeLynn and I can sing side by side together never feeling competitive or jealous of one another’s ways of worshiping. Our focus is Jesus. There’s no comparisons. One isn’t better than the other.
My prayer is for us to each understand the special unique song that each of us has and to be willing to share that with the world.
Come on, unity!!
Live Life Loud!
~Sandy
