老司机传媒

This past weekend, 老司机传媒 celebrated the diversity on campus through an effort called AUnited Weekend, which was a collaborative series of events put on by multiple campus partners. Some of these partners were student clubs, including BSCF, AULA, and KASA, and SASA. The weekend featured three events, starting Friday evening with Infusion Vespers, followed by the cultural fashion show on Saturday night, and finally the Culture Fest on Sunday evening.

At Infusion Vespers on Friday night, members from cultural clubs on campus presented a “worship musical.” The musical took viewers on a journey through the different heavens–each separated into cultures represented at AU. It began with the Caucasian heaven, followed by Latin heaven, then Asian heaven, then Black heaven. There were three featured characters who were taken through the different heavens, and each struggled with different aspects of what the separated heavens signified for them and how that related to the way they worship God. Each cultural group, represented by the different heavens, sang worship songs in their own cultural style. They dressed in their traditional clothes and made references to things specific to their respective cultures. The dialogue between the three main characters and the angels in the different heavens brought together the underlying message of the musical. The first character struggled with viewing worship as something that could only be done in a certain way–the way she was used to. This was illustrated when she visited the Latin heaven and was displeased with the presence of loud drums, electric guitar, and up-beat singing–all things she was not used to in the place she was comfortable worshiping God. The second character expressed his struggle with finding exactly where to fit in. There were so many heavens to choose from and he was unsure of which one would be right for him–which one he truly belonged in. The third character expressed sentiment similar to the first character–where she criticized other cultures for the way they worshiped. What was especially interesting about this character was that she belonged to a group who had been looked down upon for the way they worship–yet she was turning around and doing the same to others.

At the end of the musical, all the heavens came together and joined in worship to God. I believe the main takeaway from the musical was that there is this pervasive idea that the way we do things in whatever group we belong to is the right way, and all other ways are wrong. We can see this in the church today–in the way that it is very separated between cultures. We have Caucasian churches, Asian churches, Black churches, etcetera. However, God has called His people to be united and embrace differences. The message portrayed was that we serve a God that is big enough to accept all of our worship–in whatever form we do it.