Thursday 1 July 2010

Korean body worship

Happened upon this on You Tube. It brings back strong memories of our time in Mozambique last summer.

I have not been a great fan, it has to be said, of 'liturgical dance' (sometimes known as 'inpsirational dance' and done to the accompaniment of worship songs either as performance piece at the front of some churches, or by enthusiastic members of the congregation waving large flags about whilst everyone else is singing slightly more sedately). I'm very happy for people to do it. It's a free country. I'd just rather not join the flag-waving fraternity, thank you very much.

However however however. God / life has a habit of trashing one's pre-conceptions, and when we were at Iris Ministries in Mozambique, there was also a party of Koreans. The Koreans were fabulous people. Fun loving, gentle, humble, generous, beautiful people who were just a joy to be around. Some of them did something called 'Body Worhsip'.

On the face of it, it should not have been anything particularly impressive. It wasn't very exciting. They didn't have many moves. They didn't know that many different routines. But every time they did it, it felt like someone in heaven had accidentally left the door open. There was one notable occasion when we were doing an evangelistic mission type thing to a village where the last team who went had rocks thrown at them. So there we were with the Iris Ministries truck and a crowd of several hundred, possibly a couple of thousand, villagers who had turned up out of curiosity because not much else happens rather than for any other reason. The crowd felt slightly edgy and hostile. Everyone was distractible and talking. Not the ideal audience for liturgical dance.

But the Koreans did their 'Body Worship' and for those minutes the atmosphere changed completely. It was incredibly moving. A hush fell and it was one of the holiest moments I've ever experienced.

So here are some Korean Body Worshippers. This is not an exciting video clip. And it is unlikely to make you want to take up Body Worship. But it brings back precious memories for me.

3 comments:

  1. I wonder if this is typical expression of faith in Korean Christians or unique to a smaller segment. We had an exchange student from Korea who was a Christian and we heard her playing her guitar and singing praise music, but I don't know about "body worship".

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  2. I've never heard of "body worship" as seen here, but I remember a pastor saying God gave her hands to worship him with. I think we can worship God with all we are, as an expression of our love for Him. If it gets into ritualistic things, I'm then not for it.

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  3. I'm not sure how typical it is in Korea. There seem to be an awful lot of Korean Body worship films on You Tube. But then there are an awful lot of Korean Christians, so I suppose even if a small percentage of them are into 'body worship' there could be an awful lot of Korean body worshippers out there..

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