20/20 Vision Series -- Cross-Cultural Discipleship and Worship

Good morning, everybody. I'm Danny Yancey, and I'm on staff here at CTK as the worship director. My task today is to talk to us about cross-cultural discipleship and worship. I recognize it's Super Bowl Sunday, and I'm sure you all have plans. So I'm going to be as careful as I can with our time as possible.

To start our sermon today, I want to begin by telling you a story—a story about me and why I originally said no to coming to serve here as the worship director at CTK.

In case you hadn't noticed, CTK, I am Black. Maybe you noticed, maybe you didn't. For as long as I can remember, I have always been Black. I was raised out in rural Granville County by two Black parents who faithfully loved me, my brothers, and each other very much. My K-12 educational experiences were all in schools that were predominantly Black. My undergrad experience was at North Carolina Central University—Eagle Pride—right down the street in Durham, which is an HBCU, which stands for Historically Black College University. The churches that I grew up in and the churches where I served as worship director for over twenty years prior to coming here to CTK were all predominantly Black. My world didn't really begin to diversify until around grad school. But in that diversification, it wasn't always in the best possible ways.

Growing up, I knew I was a minority. There was no question about that. But the circles that I was in gave me such a sense of pride and such a sense of belonging that even in situations where I could feel that I wasn't liked, there was never a question of whether or not I belonged. That changed in grad school.

In a number of the classes that I took in grad school, the entire class would be full except for two seats—the seat on my left and the seat on my right. I persisted but never felt that I belonged.

Then came my move as a teacher from Durham Public to Wake County. At Wake County Public, I was teaching at a middle school in which I was one of only two Black teachers on faculty. I was following a teacher that was absolutely fantastic. And if any of you are teachers or you know teachers, you know you're always told as a teacher, don't follow a teacher that's really good—try to follow someone that's not good. I followed a teacher that was fantastic.

Whenever I would meet parents, I would always hear this comment: "So, you're the new choir teacher. You've got some pretty big shoes to fill."

To know how that hit my heart, you had to understand something about how African Americans grow up—a phrase that we all have grown up hearing. It's this: as an African American, in order to be seen as equal, you have to be twice as good. So in my working at that school, I worked feverishly to be accepted, to be seen as an equal. And even after national conference performances, after Carnegie Hall performances, even after a Grammy nomination, I could feel some acceptance but never equality and never a sense of belonging.

One day, while I was teaching at this middle school, I met one of my choir parents who I later found out was a pastor. This pastor and choir parent met me at a Barnes and Noble while I'm book shopping with my children and says to me, "Mister Yancey—that's my other persona—Mister Yancey, I would like for you to think about interviewing to be the worship director at my predominantly white Presbyterian church." He went on to tell me all these fantastic things about this church called CTK—all about its mission, its vision, its values, and why he thought I'd be a good fit as worship director.

But to be honest, I didn't hear any of it. I was still stuck on two words: white and Presbyterian.

You see, CTK, without knowing anything at all about you, I heard those two words and assumed I knew everything about you. I held firm to what I knew to be traditionally, stereotypically true of the Presbyterian church, and that tradition and those stereotypes were in sharp contrast to my identity in the Black church. And so, because of my own preferences, my traditions, and my cultural idolatry—I'll get more into that later—my answer to Jeff was no thanks.

In my mind, I was thinking, who would do such a thing? Who in their right mind would go so far out of their way, so far out of their normal, to serve people who were so different from them? You see, my culture, like an idol, was the thing that I ran to for safety, for comfort, for belonging. Why in the world would I make such a sacrifice in favor of worshiping and serving cross-culturally?

Perhaps you're thinking some of the same things.

Living into our new vision, engaging in church planting, becoming cross cultural disciples, and pursuing biblical justice are all things that are gonna require change. They're gonna require uncomfortable conversations, and they're gonna require worship experiences outside of the normal PCA tradition. Why in the world would we do this? Well, here's the answer that the Spirit pressed into my heart back then: Because Jesus did it and because he commands us to do the same.

Before Christ would die on the cross, he would make that ultimate sacrifice to suffer, bleed, and die on the cross. He first sacrifices Jewish tradition, political norms, and cultural preferences right here in our text printed in our bulletin today. It's the story of the Samaritan woman found in the book of John chapter four. And today, we're gonna look at verses 19 through 26, and then we're gonna skip down to read verses 39 through 42. As is our custom, CTK, let's read God's word together.

The woman said to him, "Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship." Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe me. The hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know. We worship what we know. For salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. For the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth." The woman said to him, "I know that Messiah is coming. He who is called Christ. When he comes, he will tell us all things." Jesus said to her, "I who speak to you am he." — John 4:19-26

Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony. He told me all that I ever did. So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them and he stayed there two days, and many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, "It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the savior of the world." — John 4:39-42

Would you pray with me? Holy Spirit, would you speak through me today? Would you let them hear my voice but your words? And would you open our hearts to receive with fresh ears what you would speak to us today from the scriptures? This we pray in the strong name of Jesus. Amen.

Cross Cultural Disciples and Worship

Cross cultural disciples and worship. If you're taking notes, here's my main idea and my three points: As cross cultural disciples, we worship cross culturally for the sake of the commission, communication, and communion. I'll say that again. As cross cultural disciples, we worship cross culturally for the sake of the commission, communication, and communion. Let's dig in.

Today, we're looking at the well-known story of the woman at the well. She's a Samaritan living in Sychar, which is a Samaritan town. Yet, we see her coming to the well at noon, and this is an odd time to draw water. It's the heat of the day. And historians tell us that most women during that time would come to the well early in the morning with the other women. This well was a place of community for them. They would come to converse with one another, to share in community together. However, this Samaritan woman has a shady past and this past makes her an outsider, an outsider in her own town.

I understand how she feels. As an African American, I am 100% American born, lived in no other country. Yet, sometimes, people who look like me and like our Hispanic or Latin brothers and sisters, blessed with brown skin, are sometimes treated as second class citizens, and sometimes told to go back to a country to which we've never even been. I feel her pain. I'm a North Carolinian, born and raised right here in the American South. I have lived in no other place, and I am just as proud of my southern heritage as anybody else. Yet often, my ideals about what makes the South a beautiful place are often eclipsed by monuments and flags that celebrate a different kind of southern heritage, a heritage that feels anything but beautiful to me, a heritage in which even though I'm a southern born American, I'm still very much an outsider.

Even within the church—within the church—sometimes minorities are treated as outsiders. Their worship traditions devalued. Their authentic expressiveness in worship viewed as distractions away from real worship. They're often invited into worship spaces only for the ministry gifts they possess or to simply give the appearance of diversity. Oftentimes, we want the appearance of diversity, but only if it doesn't require things to change. We don't like change. So we often talk the talk of inclusion, but our actions scream assimilation. And assimilation means the death of true diversity.

Assimilation is never the goal of cross-cultural worship. Instead, our goal in cross-cultural worship is to glorify God and to follow the example of Christ by bringing the outsider in. We follow the example of Christ as shown to us here in our text and we lay down some of our comfort, sacrifice some of our preferences so that everyone, even the outsider, can glorify God together, can experience and be a witness of his goodness and his glory just like the Samaritan woman in our text.

Though she came to the well as an outsider, after meeting the Messiah, she would leave a missionary. Many Samaritans from town would come to believe in Jesus, not only because of her testimony, but because Jesus, being the excellent teacher that he is, models for us what it means to live out the Great Commission.

This Great Commission forms the statement that Jesus commands us with these words at the very end of the book of Matthew, chapter 28, verses 19 and 20. He says this:

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you, and behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. — Matthew 28:19-20

This is the work to which every believer is called, to which every Spirit-led, Bible-teaching, gospel-centered church is called to go and make disciples of all nations.

In living into the Great Commission, it's our responsibility to share the gospel with all the world. We must share the gospel and share in the gospel of Jesus Christ with those who look like us and with those who don't. With those who vote like us and with those who don't. With those who worship like us and with those who don't. With the insiders and the outsiders.

It's not our business to decide who is worthy to receive the grace of God. That's the Spirit's work. We must always be careful to not allow our cultural, personal, or political preferences to place non-biblical borders around the redemptive work of Christ.

Jesus shows us this back in our preaching text. He sees this Samaritan woman. He really sees her. He compassionately converses with her so that she can see herself, really see herself, and then leads her to the truth by listening to her, really listening to her as she questions him about her cultural worship preferences in verse 20. Listen to what she says:

Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship. — John 4:20

We've already read Jesus' response in verses 21 through 24, and in his response there, Jesus is teaching her and us that true worship isn't based on location nor is it based on culture. The message of the gospel is greater than our culture.

So as we seek to become cross-cultural disciples in our worship, our aim is to hold the gospel higher than culture. That's the essence of being cross-cultural disciples. Because we hold the cross higher than our culture, we learn to lay down our cultural preferences, and we lay it aside all for the glory of God. Because the cross is higher than our culture, we seek to live more fully as a church into the Great Commission. Because we hold the cross higher than our culture, we can, from time to time, sing songs in languages that we don't primarily speak, all for the glory of God.

This is the essence of cross-cultural worship. It isn't always easy. It isn't always comfortable. But when we follow the example of Christ, the result is always beautiful.

The Importance of Genuine Engagement

Moving on to point number two: as cross-cultural disciples, we worship cross-culturally for the sake of the commission and communication.

Getting back to my grad school coursework—the focus of my master's degree is in music education. Whenever we were in class and issues would arise about teaching music to poor, at-risk, urban youths, the conversation would somehow always steer in my direction. I'm looking at my textbooks and I can just feel the eyeballs boring into my skull in this conversation. And the entire time, I'm thinking to myself: poor, at-risk, urban issues? I don't know. I grew up middle class out in the country. Ask me about skipping stones in a creek. That I can tell you plenty about.

But nobody ever asked me about my upbringing. They only saw my brown skin and assumed they knew everything about how I grew up. No one took the time to invite me in, to engage me in conversation. If they had, they would have seen that blackness, just like whiteness, just like Asianness, Hispanicness, or any otherness there is, comes in all different shades, colors and represents a diverse spectrum of life experiences.

Now, it's important for me to say here that no one particular way of being is better than another. Because some people sometimes look at me and say, "Yeah, Danny, I get it. Yeah, you're Black, but you're not ghetto. You're not hood. You're not like them."

And in response to those well intentioned but misinformed conceptions, my response is, I am them and so are you. Because God's image is placed on all of us and God has a purpose for all of our upbringings to bring glory to himself. And so the key to seeing the beauty in all of this, the key to seeing this beauty is to get beyond stereotypes. Dismiss every assumption and see people, all people, as image bearing equals. Image bearing equals. Equally as valuable as you are. And the key to this begins with learning to listen. Really listen. And in listening, we begin the process of communication.

After listening to the Samaritan woman's question about worship, listen to what Jesus says in verses twenty three and twenty four.

But the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshipers will worship the father in spirit and truth. For the father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. — John 4:23-24

Worship at its core is simply communicating with God. We listen and speak to God in our singing, our praying, even in our giving, we're communicating. Our liturgy here is designed to be one big conversation with God, a conversation that speaks in spirit and truth, spirit and truth, head and heart.

The Truth Side of Worship

Here in the PCA tradition, we like truth. We hear truth spoken, sung, prayed, confessed and preached week after week. We like our hymns dripping with truth, all 15 verses in one hymn, all oozing theological truth. As my non-PCA music leading friends tell me all the time, our services are heady. Another phrase often heard is "frozen, chosen." You've heard that one, right? You won't hear very many amens in our sermons. Instead, during our sermons, our amens are said in the form of copious note taking. Our joy in the service is often present but invisible. The lowercase s, spirit, the spirit in the heart in our worship is a feature that we keep to ourselves.

Now, I've been told that this is an attempt to not be distracted by emotion or our attempt to guard against emotional manipulation in worship, and I hear you. I really do. But I submit that according to scripture, according to what Jesus says here, that when we worship in truth without spirit, it isn't true worship. It's just a meeting or just another lecture that we're attending.

I'll also submit that while, yes, we direct our worship vertically, indeed. God is both the initiator and the audience of our worship. We give our worship to him. However, in worship, we also preach the truth to each other. In our words, in our songs, in our elbow bumps, in each part of our liturgy. And CTK, sometimes, your visible joy in worship is the sermon all by itself.

I know for me when I've had a hard week and I've been looking at the news and I see heartbreaking story after heartbreaking story after shocking story after shocking story, and I know you've seen those same things too. And we get into the service together, and I look over, and I see your joy in worship. I see your hands lifted in praise. I see you singing loudly to the glory of God. That does my heart so good. Because it says to me that if you can worship after having seen the same things that I've seen, I can too. And I can see that God is still good as a testimony to his faithfulness. That's what your visible joy in worship is for me. And that's a sermon that I need to hear week after week after week.

The Spirit Side of Worship

Lest you think I'm just harping on the PCA, worship in the other direction, one that is all spirit with no truth also falls short. An emotional joyful service devoid of truth is just a pep rally. And like a pep rally, these services are loud, emotions run high, you feel good for the moment, but when the service ends, the only thing you're left with, like a pep rally, is a sore throat. The feelings are gone, but the struggles and challenges of life are still very much so present, and you're left with nothing of substance to hold on to. Pep rallies don't have much transformational power.

For true worship to take place, spirit and truth must go hand in hand. This is how God wants us to communicate with him. Spirit and truth trump tradition and preference every time. Hymns versus praise choruses, melodic simplicity versus harmonic complexity, folksy returned hymns versus CCM. These are all merely vehicles that assist us in our worship, that assist us in our communication.

Think of it like this. Think of it like getting a rental car for a trip that you've been planning. You're excited. You've got the trip all planned. You've got your bags all packed. You head to the rental car place. You head to Enterprise or Hertz, and you say to the attendant, "I'd like a Dodge Caravan." And the attendant says, "I'm sorry. We only have a Honda Odyssey available, but it's gassed up and all ready to go." You then leave, angry that they didn't have the car that you wanted. You get back home. You grab your suitcases, put them back in the closet.

You get on the phone, you call your hotel, cancel the reservation, and you sit on the couch and sulk, and you miss the trip all because it wasn't the one you preferred.

CTK, my prayer for us as our worship director is that we will never miss the joy of worship simply because our worship style isn't the one we prefer.

What Cross-Cultural Worship Is and Isn't

At our point in this communication, I'd like to take just a few minutes to communicate exactly what cross-cultural worship is and what it isn't.

We define cross-cultural worship as this: unifying acts of reverence unto God in which we intentionally sacrifice the comfort and familiarity of our own preferences and culture in mutual affirmation and celebration of the value, beauty, and validity of worship from diverse cultures.

Notice that the first things in this definition are reverence unto God and intentional sacrifice. So for those that are thinking that in cross-cultural worship we're taking our focus away from God to place it on each other, that is not our intent. First and foremost, as cross-cultural disciples, our goal is to glorify God. And we do this by intentionally laying down any cultural barriers that would hinder others outside of the dominant culture from seeing Jesus and engaging in worship. In other words, we decrease. Others might increase to the end that Christ would be all the more magnified.

The next part of this definition digs in a bit deeper: affirmation and celebration. To illustrate these, let me give you one more story about me, and this time it's a time in which I failed as a teacher.

A Story of Failure and Correction

As alluded to earlier, in addition to serving as worship director, I'm also in my seventeenth year of teaching. Years ago, at one particular spring concert, I was really excited about this piece of music called "American Folk Rhapsody." It was a medley of three American folk songs: the song called "Cindy," the song called "Simple Gifts" by Aaron Copland, and then there was this other song called "Pick a Bale of Cotton."

This piece had fantastic body percussion, a killer piano part, and maybe all of that distracted me and I didn't pay attention to the words. Listen to the words of this final song:

Jump down, turn around, pick a bale of cotton. Jump down, turn around, pick a bale a day. Oh lordy, pick a bale of cotton. Oh lordy, pick a bale a day.

Imagine how my heart dropped when after our concert, I was reading a Facebook post from a friend of mine who's also a choir director and she was facing backlash from her parents and principal about performing this exact same song. Some of her African American parents didn't think it was appropriate for students to be singing and body percussioning about the joys of picking cotton.

I thought about the African American families in my own choir. I thought about my own ancestors. And I thought about the fact that this song ignores the harsh reality that for them, cotton was viewed to be more valuable than their very lives.

This failure, though it couldn't be erased, had to be corrected. And so the next time our class met, even though the concert was over, I passed that piece of music back out and we had some conversations about how this song could be seen as offensive and demeaning. I finished that conversation by apologizing to my students. I apologized for giving them history without giving them context, for celebrating the beauty of American folk music without affirming the harsh realities shared by African American folks.

Celebration Without Affirmation Is Appropriation

In church, we are guilty of a similar form of celebration without affirmation. When we take elements from other cultures without inviting the people from those cultures to have an equal seat at the table, celebration without affirmation is appropriation.

We are guilty of cultural appropriation each time we sing songs from other cultures without allowing the people from those cultures to speak into the lived experiences that created those songs. We're guilty of cultural appropriation when we tune in to hear Black voices sing and tune out when those same voices are speaking against racial injustice. We are guilty of cultural appropriation when we invite minorities into our spaces, into our churches, only for the gifts, talents, and value that they add to our own lives.

Celebration without affirmation is appropriation.

Affirmation Without Celebration Is Tokenism

Similarly, affirmation without celebration is tokenism. Those movies that we love with the one Black friend who's really funny—that's tokenism. The TV show with the one adoring, sassy Latin housekeeper—that's tokenism.

That black worship director with the master's degree in music and over twenty years of experience in church music leadership that we assumed was only hired because he was black—that's a form of tokenistic ideology that asserts the erroneous misconception that if a person of color is in leadership, then it's only because of the color of their skin and someone's diversity initiative and not the experience, knowledge, and expertise that they bring to the table. Sometimes, the most qualified person for the job just so happens to also be a person of color.

Affirmation and celebration must go hand in hand. Mutual affirmation and celebration says that I not only see you as my equal, but I celebrate and thank God for the ways that we are different. And through cross cultural worship, we seek to rejoice and glorify God together in those differences as image bearing equals. This is the message that we wish to communicate to God and to the broken world in which we live. This is the way that we rise above appropriation, tokenism, stereotypes and assumptions through Christ centered communication.

Cross Cultural Discipleship for the Commission

For my final point, as cross cultural disciples, we worship cross culturally for the sake of the commission, communication and communion. Now, in this instance, I'm not necessarily talking about the Lord's Supper. The lowercase c, communion that I'm speaking of is the idea of togetherness, sharing with one another.

This we see at the end of our text beginning in verse 39:

Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony. He told me all that I ever did. So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, it is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves and we know that this is indeed the savior of the world. — John 4:39-42

This Samaritan woman arrived at the well and made assumptions about Jesus. Thus, when Jesus asks her for a drink in the beginning of the chapter, her response in essence is, "You're a Jew. You are different from me. You are an outsider and you don't belong here." But after Jesus takes the time to see her, to listen to her all without shaming her, she slowly begins to see who Jesus really is. She then takes that message and all of her newfound joy back to the people of the town of Sychar, and they come out to meet Jesus.

This led Jesus, a Jewish man, risking becoming ceremonially unclean by staying in that town for two days. And you can imagine in those two days, he's eating with them. He's talking with them. Jesus is communing with them, which led to their confession that Jesus is indeed the savior of the world.

CTK, imagine if our cross cultural worship could spill over in such a way that it leads us to go beyond being a people who worship cross culturally to being a people who live cross culturally. That in addition to our worship, we would develop deep cross cultural friendships that go well beyond tokenism and appropriation. That in addition to our worship, even our social media friends lists, our news feeds would represent a broader world view instead of this carefully curated narrow perspective that we sometimes find ourselves in. And that in addition to our worship, we would be so deeply transformed by the gospel that we would join a church plant. That we would seek out and engage in cross cultural discipleship. And that we would pursue biblical justice starting in Downtown Raleigh.

My Own Transformation

So really quickly as I close, getting back to my story at the very beginning. Obviously, at some point, something changed and my no to Jeff became a yes or else I wouldn't be standing here preaching to you today. What changed was my own heart.

Over time, I recognized that my no wasn't rooted in the gospel. It was rooted in fear. Fear of all the things that I would potentially lose or have to give up. Fear of letting go of my own preferences. Fear of change.

And so God did for me what he did for the prophet Jonah. Now, I didn't get swallowed by a big fish, but he shook my boat. He made my sea of comfort tumultuous and shook me in such a way that I realized that my staying where I was meant that I was being unfaithful to God's call.

And so, after a second meeting with Jeff and the elders and then a really awkward Sunday of leading worship here—I remember that. That was just awkward. My answer became yes.

And over these four years that I've been here, CTK, these four years of commission, communication, and communion with you, I don't feel like an outsider. But because of this church's commitment to living into the great commission and because so many of you communicate and commune with me and my family, I feel a strong sense of community, a sense of connection within the kingdom of God, a sense of belonging.

CTK, my prayer is that every person that comes to our church—Black, White, Hispanic, Asian, all people—would feel that same and even greater sense of belonging. And CTK, just like a family, we are not perfect. But by God's grace, we seek to be a people deeply transformed by the gospel, who plant churches, who become cross-cultural disciples, and who pursue biblical justice starting in Downtown Raleigh.

May this be true in our worship and in our lives both now and forever. Amen.