Honors Church: Honoring the Many Voices of Worship

On the Sabbath of November 6 at 11:45 am, the seminary chapel’s two-manual organ came to life with its majestic pipes filling the room with the rich sound of Samuel Wesley’s “Duett for the Organ,” an introduction to Bach’s “Grand Triple Fugue.” The “Brothers Pak,” composed of Andrew Pak (junior, music performance) and Joshua Pak (senior, biochemistry), as Dr. Pittman, Director of the Honors Program,  affectionately called them, crossed and tangled their hands to play a duet written around 1826 as the prelude to the annual Honors Church, setting the tone for a diverse kind of worship. Only a few moments later, after the opening prayer and welcome, the choir burst into song, singing “Heart of Worship,” a contemporary praise song written in 1999 by Matt Redman in an upbeat style completely contrasting the stateliness of the organ.

This merely illustrated the theme of the Eleventh Honors Church program, named “The Many Voices of Worship.” Throughout the service, there were Scripture readings in different languages, poems about the Sabbath, passages taken from works of Christian authors and speakers, all characteristic of past Honors Church programs. However, this year, the focus was on the very nature of worship, as a kind of meta-thinking of the way in which we worship. The Honors Officer Team carefully arranged the program into sections:

Part 1: What is worship?
Part 2: How and why do we worship?
Part 3: How can worship be alienating?
And Part 4: How can worship be healing and transformative?

Each part had its own set of music, readings, and testimony from a speaker–each that stood unique in its own way. As one of the speakers, Rekha Isaac (sophomore, biochemistry), mentioned: “throughout the program, different perspectives of worship were expressed, which I thought was really cool since it’s something different from the regular church service.” The other speakers, Alexander Navarro (junior, physics and math), Shania Watts (senior, viola performance and English), and Nora Martin (sophomore, psychology and English) similarly gave testimonies that corresponded to a different subset of a topic involving worship.

The inclusion of multiple musical styles, testimonies, and readings gave the sense of a built-in and multi-faceted approach to the topic, and encouraged multiple people to share the stage throughout the service. This seemed like an effective method, as Honors Public Relations Officer Gloria Oh (junior, biology) also noted after the service that “seeing a good number of students standing on the podium to bring life to the amazing quotes, instead of having one person preach, was something I really appreciated about this service.” The program brought many voices to the table in a type of discussion and acknowledged the dangers of a dogmatic view of worship; the readings detailed how such a view can alienate and ostracize others of the same faith who don’t share the same mode of worship. As this issue is pertinent, especially across cultures, and even in my personal life, the difference in worship culture has become a point of contention that tears apart communities and leaves many isolated from a community of faith. The Scripture reading in Part 3 of the service with the Pharisees in Matthew 23:1-5, 13, 23-24 delineates this kind of very human behavior–the tendency towards hypocrisy, holier-than-thou attitudes, and blindness to the “weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith.”

In response to this problem, the program brought to light the many ways we can implement worship as a way to include, heal, and transform others in Christ. The conclusion was that even in our failings and alienation of each other, we have the chance and ability to show compassion and outreach through our worship. The message came across beautifully that although we are divided by human cultures, we are ultimately one in Christ. This manifested within the actual service itself as a culmination of diverse modes of worship styles and thoughts coming together in one service for the purpose of praising God. With the final lines of the choral postlude “The Lord Bless You and Keep You” (John Rutter) floating through the chapel and mellow breath of the organ releasing its last chord, Nora Martin reflected, “Honors church was an exploration of the methods and responsibilities of worship. I hope those who listened came away with a deeper understanding of worship and what it means to them.”