Shout to the Lord

Posted on August 19, 2007
Filed Under Faith, Mae Sot |

On the way home from church today, I dropped by Hope of Mae Sot, an evangelical Thai church here in Mae Sot. Despite the fact that Hope Church is a Thai church, its services are all in Thai and most of its members only speak Thai, I like to pop in occasionally for worship, because it’s closer to what I’m used to at The Vine.

My regular church, Gospel Baptist Church is a fundamentalist Baptist church, set up be Filipino missionaries. As such, worship there is a little, well; it’s dull! The hymnal, called Baptist Favourites, includes a selection of songs that are on average at least 100 years old or more. But, at least they’re in English.

On the whole, the teaching at Gospel Baptist Church is quite strong, and that appeals to me. However, the truth is since this is the only English speaking service in Mae Sot, I didn’t choose the church, so much as I didn’t have any other real options.

I like Hope Church because it means I can enjoy worship with drums and a bass guitar, and I’m free to stand up, clap my hands and pray in the spirit.

This morning, the worship band opened with Shout to the Lord. It was sung in Thai, but the melody was unmistakeable. As soon as the band started playing, I was on my feet, clapping and singing along.

Since I don’t speak Thai, I sang in English, which with everyone else singing in Thai made for quite a racket. It was made worse by the fact that Hope is still a fairly new church in Mae Sot (its parent church, Hope of Bangkok is one of the largest churches in Thailand), and many in the congregation are new Christians and were not familiar with the lyrics, so were trying to follow along as best they can.

The end result was a long way from Hillsong or even the Vine Centre on a Sunday morning. But, as I sang along, I became aware of this simple fact: This was the Body of Christ in all its glorious diversity doing the thing we were made to do; worshipping our creator.

And, in that moment, it wasn’t about the music, or the song or the different languages, ethnic groups or anything else. It was just about the Spirit that was falling in that place. And God’s people responding in whatever language they could.