Many moons ago, when I was a seminary student, one of my New Testament professors was Dr. Reggie Kidd. With his beautiful 12-string Taylor guitar, he led worship in our chapel services, which were characteristically wonderful. A few minutes ago, I happened to stumble across a blog of his. In a post describing the people of the church to which he belongs, Dr. Kidd said in part:
"Week after week these folks set up and tear down a gym so it can become a 'sanctinasium' [I think he's referring to a gymnasium that gets transformed into a sanctuary on Sundays.] Week after week they take turns watching each other's little ones so young moms and dads can worship. Week after week they honor each other's wildly different tastes in worship music."
Then he added this strange comment: "We don't do apartheid worship."
"Hmm," I thought to myself, "I wonder what he means by that?" So I got a dictionary and looked up the word, apartheid. I found 3 definitions, the first having to do with racial segregation formerly practiced in the Republic of South Africa and the third being "the condition of being separated from others; segregation." But it was definition #2 that unlocked his comment: "a policy or practice of separating or segregating groups."
It'd be so easy to practice apartheid worship at MVB because, like every other local church, we have "wildly different tastes in worship music." (Believe me! I hear about it all the time, from all directions.) And I confess that I've been tempted by the idea -- offer a service with only traditional worship music and another service with only contemporary worship music, so we can all separate according to our personal tastes and get exactly what we want. Tempted.
But only tempted ...
Because the Bible is absolutely clear (as Dr. Kidd acknowledges): We are to HONOR one another in the life of the church (Romans 12:10), not SEPARATE from one another. Can you believe it? God's word actually calls on us to become that mature in our faith! And it just makes sense! I mean, how can we ever announce a unified message of hope and life in Christ to a lost and dying world if we can't even sing songs together about him?
I say (and will as long as I have breath), "NO to apartheid worship!"
Greg
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