But somehow the last item on this list is one we rarely see in our church gatherings. Somehow our puritanical roots, in reaction to a world at odds with the things of God, tilted toward legalism, choked off this gift of God that makes him smile.
Yes, dancing is associated with people drinking too much and doing the sad, destructive things that people do when they have no self-control. Anything taken to an extreme can be harmful. But if a party that’s gotten out-of-hand is wrong, so is a life lived without the God-pleasing frills of celebration and exuberance.
Dancing is one of those gifts that, like art itself, has an edge to it. God gave us judgment and free will in order that we might enjoy his gifts that have this edge. Think of the gift of relationships; conflict and broken trust are an inevitable aspect of relationship, but so are love and commitment. Or think of the gifts of sex or alcohol. They can produce great joy or incredible pain.
25 years ago in the D.R., Karen and I learned to dance. The Dominican people have a national dance called meringue, all shuffling feet and swinging elbows. It’s as Caribbean as steel drums and hits your spirit like the sun rising over one of its white, sandy beaches.
In the charismatic churches of Latin America, I discovered something spiritual in the banner-waving dancers who gave physical expression to the joy of the Lord. In the early 90’s my own five small children thrilled to the jive of Midnight Oil’s ‘Blue Sky Mining’ while hanging on my back and legs. Later in 2002 we visited one Peruvian church that had discovered the sacramental aspects of dancing and capped its worship services with a wonderfully kinetic Latin version of a hoe-down.
Last year my daughter Emily joined a South African dance and drama troupe that so captured my imagination, I felt God saying, ‘Help bring that ministry to a Church in America that has forgotten how to dance.’
Something about the arts has the power to unlock windows to the soul. Dance being a subset of the arts has the power to do that. As an example, take the deeply traumatized young people of New Orleans. This past week, the dance ministry we started (called 13th Floor) reached into the spirits of hundreds of students who came forward for prayer. 140 of them gave their lives to Christ.
How does the evangelical church recover this gift which lights up our soul and causes us to shine in ways that make God’s eyes sparkle? For one thing, we need to move beyond theological repentance to throwing a few dances. When I attended Wheaton College, dancing was verboten. Thankfully a few years ago, the institution repented of its wet blanket attitude and abolished the policy.
A lot of churches may not have such a policy in place, but would be scandalized by the idea of scheduling a dance. They need to get over their bad selves and join the 20th century. We’re losing two million a year from evangelical churches in part because of this head-in-the-sand approach to culture. We need to rediscover our bodies as tools of worship.
The children of Isaiah danced the horah and have passed it down as a part of their heritage to this day. We American Jesus followers need to discover our dance too.
Amen!! Let’s dance like David did, and worship Him with our movement…