Should there be dancing in the Church?

Question 11091

Dancing in church divides congregations more sharply than the biblical evidence really warrants, and it does so because the argument is almost never about the texts. It is about culture, temperament, memory of previous churches, and a set of instincts that people find difficult to articulate.

So let me try to separate what Scripture actually says from what we have inherited, and then offer the principles I think should govern the question in a local congregation.

Is Dancing in Church Found in the Old Testament?

There is no doubt that dancing appears in Israel’s worship and appears positively. Miriam took a tambourine and led the women out with tambourines and dancing after the Red Sea (Exodus 15:20). David danced before the LORD with all his might as the ark came up to Jerusalem (2 Samuel 6:14), and when Michal despised him for it, she was the one rebuked.

The Psalms are explicit. Let them praise his name with dancing (Psalm 149:3), and again, praise him with tambourine and dance (Psalm 150:4). The Hebrew machol denotes a round or circle dance, and the picture throughout is of communal celebration rather than performance.

Ecclesiastes acknowledges a time to mourn and a time to dance (Ecclesiastes 3:4). So anyone who claims that dancing in church is inherently unspiritual has to reckon with a considerable weight of Old Testament material that says otherwise.

What the Old Testament Evidence Does Not Prove

That said, the evidence needs handling carefully. Almost all of these instances are spontaneous celebration at a national deliverance or a great procession, not a scheduled item in a regular service. Israel’s worship in the tabernacle and temple was highly ordered, and dancing does not appear in the prescribed liturgy.

There is also the matter of covenant. Israel’s worship included instruments, incense, sacrifices, priestly vestments and pilgrimage festivals, and nobody argues that the Church must reproduce those because they appear in the Psalms. Selecting dancing from that list while quietly ignoring the rest is inconsistent, and I have made the same point about the use of instruments in worship.

So the Old Testament establishes that bodily expression in praise is not offensive to God. It does not by itself establish a pattern for dancing in church under the New Covenant. Those are two different claims, and conflating them is where most of the argument goes wrong.

The Silence of the New Testament

The New Testament says nothing about dancing in the gathered assembly. The word choros appears once, in the parable of the prodigal son, describing the celebration at a homecoming. Where the New Testament describes church gatherings, the emphasis falls on teaching, prayer, the Lord’s Table, singing and mutual edification.

This silence is not a prohibition. Arguments from silence work in both directions and are weak in both. What it does mean is that anyone insisting that dancing in church is required has no text to stand on, and anyone insisting it is forbidden has none either.

What we do have is 1 Corinthians 14:40, that all things should be done decently and in order, written to a congregation whose meetings had become chaotic. That verse is the closest thing we have to direct guidance, and it sets a standard rather than a rule.

The Principles That Should Govern

The first is edification. Paul’s repeated question about anything in the assembly is whether it builds up the body (1 Corinthians 14:26). Dancing in church that draws a congregation into worship may edify. Dancing that leaves most of the room watching a few people perform probably does not.

The second is order. Worship is meant to be intelligible and unchaotic, because God is not a God of confusion but of peace (1 Corinthians 14:33). Anything that becomes disordered, or that competes for attention with the word being preached, has stopped serving the purpose of the gathering.

The third is modesty. Whatever else is true, movement that draws attention to the body in a sexualised way has no place in Christian worship, and I do not think that needs arguing. Some styles of dance carry associations that cannot simply be declared irrelevant because the intention is good.

The fourth is conscience. Romans 14 applies here as much as anywhere. Believers who find dancing in church distracting or troubling are not to be dismissed as unspiritual, and those who find it natural are not to be treated as frivolous. Neither group gets to legislate for the other.

Choreographed Dance as Ministry

Some churches use prepared dance as a presentation, in the way others use drama or a solo. I have no objection in principle, and I have seen it done with dignity and real effect. But it belongs in the category of performance, and performance in worship needs watching.

The risk is that the congregation becomes an audience. Corporate worship is something a church does, not something it observes, and any element that consistently turns participants into spectators is working against the grain of the gathering. That criticism applies as much to elaborate music as to dance.

So my counsel to a church considering this is to ask who is being served. If the answer involves the gifting or visibility of the dancers, think again. If it genuinely draws the room towards God, and the congregation is not left feeling like a theatre crowd, it may be a good servant.

Culture, Memory and Honest Motives

A good deal of the heat in this debate comes from somewhere other than exegesis. Some believers associate dancing in church with the excesses of a movement they left. Others associate the objection to it with a cold formalism they escaped. Both are reacting to a memory rather than to the question.

It is also worth noticing how culturally conditioned our instincts are. British Baptist reserve is not a biblical mandate; it is a national temperament with a long history. Congregations in other parts of the world would find our stillness as strange as we find their movement.

I say that as someone whose own instincts run towards order and away from spectacle. Knowing where my preferences come from does not oblige me to abandon them, but it does oblige me to stop presenting them as though they were straightforwardly biblical.

A Word to Leaders

If you are considering introducing dancing in church, do it slowly, teach through it, and do not impose it. Worship practices adopted without explanation cause more division than the practices themselves ever warrant. Congregations accept a great deal when they understand why.

If you are resisting it, examine whether your objection is scriptural or temperamental, and say honestly which it is. Presenting a preference as a doctrine damages your credibility on the things that really are doctrinal.

And in either case, keep the main things central. A church can argue about movement for a decade while its prayer meeting empties and its preaching thins. That would be a poor exchange.

Dancing in Church and the Regulative Question

Behind this argument sits a larger one about how worship is to be governed. Some hold that only what Scripture positively commands may be included, which would settle the matter against dancing in church immediately. Others hold that whatever Scripture does not forbid is permissible if it edifies.

I do not think either principle can be applied with the rigour its advocates claim. Those who use the stricter rule still have hymn books, projectors, an order of service and a sermon of a length no text prescribes. Those who use the looser one still draw lines somewhere, and the lines usually turn out to be cultural.

My own position is that the New Testament gives purposes rather than a liturgy, and that a congregation is answerable for whether its practice serves those purposes. Dancing in church is therefore a matter for wise local judgement, taken with the whole congregation in view. See my answer on the regulative principle.

And keep the question in proportion to its size. Whether there is dancing in church will not determine whether a congregation is faithful, fruitful or worth belonging to. Preaching, prayer, love and the ordinances will. Get those right and this one settles itself far more easily than the arguments suggest.

One practical note for congregations that decide against it. Do not make dancing in church a test of orthodoxy or a marker of who is sound. It is a matter of wisdom, and treating it as a boundary marker gives it an importance the New Testament plainly does not.

So, now what?

Hold the question loosely and hold the principles firmly. Dancing in church is not commanded and not forbidden, which places it among the matters where a congregation must exercise wisdom, patience and charity together.

If your church practises it, ask whether it is building people up or drawing eyes. If your church does not, ask whether the reason is biblical conviction or inherited habit. Either way, do not let this be the thing that divides you from a brother. What are you actually defending?

Let them praise his name with dancing, making melody to him with tambourine and lyre! For the LORD takes pleasure in his people; he adorns the humble with salvation.

Psalm 149:3-4, ESV