I preached at Bethel Gospel Tabernacle in Jamaica-Queens, New York, one Sunday in 1992. The song service was very black, very Pentecostal, very joyful, worshiping not only with hearts and voices but with bodies and faces. As I stood up front with my friend, Pastor Roderick Caesar, I was doing my white best to move with them.
They were all smiling at me in a big way and I was feeling cool, free, and soulful. Roderick leaned over and said, “You know why they’re smiling, don’t you?” No, I didn’t. He chuckled and said, “It’s because you don’t know how to dance.” I laughed, but my face turned red. Then I looked at their smiles again. It was OK with them that I couldn’t dance and they could. They were smiling at me, not laughing. Maybe we could work out an agreement: I’d teach them something from the Word of God, they’d teach me something of the joy of God.
I was raised to prefer a mild Aristotelian joy, as in the philosopher Aristotle who defined good as the mean between two extremes. I didn’t want the kind of thing I saw at the local Pentecostal church in my hometown-too raw and boisterous. Nor did I want what I saw in my liturgical friends-too buttoned-down and cerebral. If the “liturgicals” were an aged cabernet, the Pentecostals were tequila. I was a Calvinistic Baptist, and I wanted grape juice. I wanted good doctrinal preaching, minimal body involvement, a rousing hymn, and damp eyes once in a while, not wet. I wanted joy in regular doses I could count on, and above all, control.
I remember a key moment when I was pastoring my first church. One Sunday the music director asked me if, when I called the congregation to worship with Psalm 134:1-3, I would actually invite the congregation to do what the psalm says. “Lift up your hands in the sanctuary and praise the Lord.” It did seem silly to say those words and not do them, so I agreed. No big deal, really, we would just . …lift . …up . …our . …hands.
I was surprised how nervous I was. But I was even more surprised by how it affected me. I almost couldn’t get the words out of my mouth. I was so moved. Getting my body involved in worship got a lot more of me involved too. It connected more of my heart with God’s truth than I had ever known. Move over, Aristotle—make room for King David.
My six-year-old daughter Mary was with us that Sunday at Bethel Gospel Tabernacle. She too was impressed, especially as they shared prayer concerns with each other.
Jamaica-Queens can be a dangerous place. Her eyes grew big as she listened to prayers for protection from gangs and guns. Then she participated in a joyous service of song—and dance!—quite unlike anything she’d ever seen as the child of a Presbyterian pastor.
A few weeks later, my wife Lauretta came home a little late one afternoon, fifteen minutes after Mary got home from school. As Lauretta walked up to the door she heard Mary inside, singing loudly and boisterously, a six-year-old’s version of what we had heard at Bethel Gospel Tabernacle.
When Lauretta opened the door, Mary ran to her and hugged her. She had been scared to be home alone, she said.
Lauretta asked her why she had sung in that particular style. Mary answered, “I was scared, so I started singing like a black lady!”
She was in kindergarten then. So was I. We’ve been learning together to “sing like a black lady” ever since.
Ben Patterson is campus pastor at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California. He’s a speaker at the next National Pastors Convention (see p. 70).
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