Taizé Worship

I enjoy worshiping with the songs and silence of Taizé as much as any other way I know to worship.

Sing with all your heart to the Lord!

I am still worshiping at home with the kids, since last fall when Salimatou decided she was not going to let the kids go to church with me any more unless I sent them to mosque with her. Salimatou and I still live with our severe differences, and worshiping only at home has its problems, but I should have been leading them in worship at home before all this happened.

We have had some very good worship times. Abraham and Maria sing more than they ever did at our church in town. Partly that is because we have chosen songs they know and also sing songs more often than would happen with the greater variety of songs at the church in town. We have had good times of prayer, and each of us has also had a time when we really heard what the Bible says. Worship at the church in town just isn’t geared for a 7-year-old and a 9-year old.

We often use songs from Taizé. I love the Taizé songs, and I have found to my delight that Abraham and Maria like them more than I expected they would and have been participating more and more.

About two weeks ago now I also led a Taizé worship during the evening chapel time at the mission. I wondered if I was going to be singing by myself.

There was a time a couple of summers ago when I led many Taizé worships at the mission. There was a time when we were between chaplains at the mission when no one would show up for the chapel service for several nights each month, and many of the nights I led a Taizé worship. Once several of the men learned the songs, the participation was very good.

Now it had been a long time since I had led a Taizé worship at the mission, several months at least. This time, however, several men made an effort to sing along even though they didn’t know the songs. The good thing about the songs from Taizé is that, since the songs are short and you sing them over and over, you can pretty much learn a song even the first time you sing it.

At the mission I sing 2 to 3 songs and then have a Bible reading followed by 5 to 15 minutes of silence. I break the time of silence with an Alleluia response and then have sentence prayers for 5 minutes or more, following each prayer with the Alleluia response. The Alleluia response sung to God helps keep the prayers more focused on God and his power. After the prayer time, we sing 2 to 3 more songs to conclude the worship time.

A man who serves as resident assistant kept the phone and was in the back of the chapel for much of the service. After we finished our worship time, he asked me if I noticed that of all the men besides me who prayed, all but one were minorities.

I hadn’t noticed. I sit in the front row and face the front. (I also always remove the lectern to remove anything between the men and God.) I recognize some of the voices, but never all of them. However, I have noticed that minorities (mostly African-Americans and Hispanics) participate much more than the whites. For the Hispanics, perhaps you could say that it reminds them of some of the singing in Catholic churches. For the African-Americans, I think they’re already used to dealing with strange cultures and have things different from what they know forced on them all the time.

I hand out two sheets at the beginning, one page with the words to the songs in the order we’re going to sing them, and another sheet with at least the Bible text of the passage we read. After the worship time, I tell everyone they may take the sheets if they want but to leave them on the chairs if they don’t and we’ll pick them up. Very often either a man who liked the service a lot or, even more often, one of quieter or more unpopular of the men will make it his job to help me pick up the papers. Even the outsiders find a place where they belong.