A heavenly choir of voices

 In the book of Revelation, St. John the Divine describes a moment when he was swept up into a heavenly worship of service.

There before the throne of the Lamb, John reported seeing a choir of the saints, gathered from every tribe, nation and language singing the song of the Lamb. If you’ve ever attended a multilingual service, you’ll have to agree. It is an experience as tremendous as it is unforgettable.

One Sunday morning a million years ago when I was a middle school teacher living in the Lehigh Valley, I got up early one morning. got in a car with two co-workers and someone I’d never met before, and made the trip to 51st Street. There we visited Dave Wilkerson’s Times Square Church, a church that without question reflected the demographics of its city. If there is any church with representatives from every tribe, nation and language, this was it.

How do you lead a church like that? One could say “You’re in America, learn English,” but this church didn’t do that. The sermon was in English, with running translation provided into a babel of language. When it came to worship, though, they did the only sensible thing. They took turns.

This particular week, worship was led by Filipino members of the congregation. In Tagalog.

The Tagalog choir took their spots on stage, and they began to sing. Don’t know Tagalog? No problem! The songs were in play at a lot of churches, songs like “He is Exalted” and “Lord I Lift Your Name on High,” so they were easy enough for congregants to sing along with in their own language.

And they did. While my companions and I sang in English, people around us sang in French, Spanish, Bangladeshi, Kreyol or whatever other language they preferred, or they tried to read the words on the screen and sing along in Tagalog. It was an amazing experience. It wasn’t Babel; it was Pentecost.

A multiethnic church in my own city does this as well, on a smaller scale. When I visited a few years ago, worship was conducted in three languages, as lyrics in Korean, Spanish and English wove in and out in a groundswell of praise.

I don’t know exactly why Times Square Church took the approach to worship that it did. Maybe it was the path of least resistance, maybe they saw in it a fast track to growth that English-only services wouldn’t provide. Maybe Wilkerson just loved the sound of Romanian in the morning and knew he could get it in rotation this way.

What I do know is that little decisions like that go a long way to deciding what an organization will look like when it grows up. Give the hungry a plate of food and give the thirsty a cup of cold water, and people will sit and talk with you. Celebrate their language, their culture and their heritage — give them a place at the table as grand as your own — and you’re setting them up to be partners and friends for the long haul, ready to give all they have for the mission.

That kind of relationship isn’t something you just find in a church. That’s a piece of heaven.

Copyright 2022 by David A. Learn. Used with permission.