I recently asked several adults in our Shine ministry a couple of questions about musical worship.
What do you like about worship? Why is worship important?
Some of my friends answered my questions out loud. Others typed their responses or wrote them down. Two of them communicated using a letter board, spelling out each word one letter at a time.
The way our friends communicate is different from person to person, and that is important because it also means the way they worship is different. Not everyone raises their hands. Not everyone sings with words you or I can hear. Some beat their own box drum. Some worship through traditional sign language or their own signs and unique hand gestures. Some by hand holding, some through jumping – or even taking a quick lap around the room! Some worship through quiet attention.
But make no mistake—they are worshipping.
When I asked, I wondered if they would talk about their favorite songs, the instruments, or the musicians on stage. They didn’t. Instead, they gave me a lesson on worship, bypassing the mechanics of a worship service and going straight to the heart of worship itself.
And all of their answers centered around these themes:
Carlos: “It helps me feel closer to Jesus.” Makayla: “I like feeling close to God.” Kathy: “It builds my friendship with Jesus.”
James 4:8 sums their thoughts up perfectly: Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you.
Dominique: “Music speaks to your heart in magnificent ways; it carries worship to your soul and spreads it through your mind.”
Makayla: “It is where I can talk to God and pray for people.” Robert: We worship “to listen to God.”
None of my friends described worship as a performance. Those are all ingredients for relationship building. How much are we speaking, praying, and listening in worship moments?
Carlos: “It helps me know everything is going to be okay.” Kathy: “It helps with fear; it helps me be brave.”
Bryan: “Worship makes me feel happy.”
Dominique: “Worship cleanses us and prepares us for the Lord.”
Jaden: “Every time we meet, we find something really amazing to remember.”
There is a transformation that happens when we worship. How could it not, when scripture says that God inhabits our praises!
Bryan: “It is fun. Everyone should come and enjoy it.”
Dominique: “Spreading the gospel with music connects us. We need it done.” Robert: The most important thing we can do is “bring glory to God.”
Carlos: Don’t change worship because “Shine feels like family to me.”
Worship isn’t always private; perhaps it was never meant to be experienced alone. Community is so important for us all. When we invite others in, it gives us a shared common experience, and that is a building block of a family.
Some of my greatest memories and deepest connections with the Lord have been in worship with my Shine friends and volunteer team all around. I can look around and see a friend’s wheelchair being rolled to the front so he has full access. Another friend leaps to the stage so she can put her hands on it and feel the music. A grown man twirling his favorite unsharpened pencil between his fingers with the greatest smile. Another contentedly snuggling his giant stuffed sloth. A young teen walking back and forth, back and forth across the sanctuary while humming. Hands all across the room are being held and raised together as one. Some bowing in surrender, and some dancing! Oh, the dancing! What joy and freedom.
All of us communicating worship in our own ways to the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come.
It is a kind of experience that pen and paper or a keyboard will never be able to accurately describe. One of those “more than you could ask or imagine” moments.
Again and again, we have said that we exist to make disciples who change their world. These interviews feel like evidence that a shift is happening.
These aren’t the answers of people passively attending a weekly social program or a nice community event. These are the thoughts of disciples who are engaging with God through worship and are changing their world by teaching us to do the same.
