My eyes scanned the list: rock, country, sacred, classical, and so on. It was the list of the music I have on my computer. I like to go from listening to one genre of music to another completely, different one, for the very reason that it is completely different. What can I say, I like variety. And I don’t think I’m alone on that.
I think God enjoys variety too. It’s obvious when we observe the many types of flowers that grow around us or think about the enormous number of species of beetles (more than 350,000!). And I think that God enjoys variety just as much when it comes to our worship of him.
Consider the churches in our area. Some are gatherings of 2,000 people, while others have a little more than 20. Some value their formality, while others take great pride in the informal approach. In some churches, all words come from pulpit, while in others it’s just not church unless those in the pews respond to the preaching with “Amen,” “Preach it!,” and “My Lord!” For some, worship is centered on dramatic manifestations of the Spirit, while others prefer a sense of reverence and mirror another form of Biblical worship as they “keep silent before the Lord.”
And then there’s the music. Any kind of music you can buy in a store, you can find at church: country, rock, classical, sacred, and the list goes on. The instruments employed are just as varied, including organs, guitars, drums, keyboards, saxophones, harps, cymbals, and more.
Some folks suggest that if the church were what God intended it to be, we would all be worshiping in the same way. How boring that would be! Why would the God who made the world in all its infinite variety, with all of the different cultures, creatures and people, expect all worship to be the same?
As I read it, worship in the Bible is incredibly varied---there is silence and there are vast choruses of angels singing the Lord’s glory, not to mention all manner of responses. There is the dramatic and highly ritualized worship of the temple, and there are the small Scripture-centered gatherings of the synagogue. And God is pleased by it all.
So I say, “Vive la difference!”