Essentials Red Fall 08 (Week 4)

For the Institute of Contemporary and Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen’s University, Essentials Red Online Worship History course with Dan Wilt

This week our class material and discussions centered on the topic of the worship languages of art and music, how they have been expressed through the history of the church, and how they can continue to be utilized in the church for the future.

For this post, I want to focus on the aspect of art.  The musical expression over my past dozen years as a worship pastor I believe has seen much exploration.  But the topic of art and liturgical art is an area which I believe needs the exploratory attention right now.  To paraphrase Gary Best, ‘…it’s the bicycle pedal that needs to be pushed right now to get forward motion on the bicycle..’

I was once again stirred on the topic of art and liturgical art as I worked through the class materials.  There is incredible value in the usage of art to communicate God (or even communicate with God) – whether just Him and His creative nature as the source of beauty and wonder, or His transcendence, or His actions / interventions throughout our history, or His promises for future action.  So in this sense, I would join in the sentiment that is often expressed by Dan Wilt that all art is sacred in that it all expresses something of God – even though that image may be extremely distorted and/or defiled at some times more than others.

In my class work, I mentioned the usage of icons historically and my own personal experience with them as a tool for worship.  While this practice has seen some problems and controversy in the past, I believe that there is incredible value in exploring a well thought out and balanced approach to these ideas.  As tools, liturgical art pieces give us yet another perspective from which to worship God.  We may be given the ability to engage God in a way that we have not been able to before, having limited ourselves to a smaller set of tools.  Any tool which helps us relate (as in relationship) to God in a positive manner that we have not experienced before is a good thing.  I’d relate this to the innate cry within every human for ‘more’ of this intimate relationship with our God, even if we are not conscious of it.  Why hold back?   Why hold back from another avenue with which we can encounter and relate to our Creator, Redeemer and King?

Art and/or liturgical art has the power to communicate, to bring to rememberance and even to draw to action in a specific way that no other expression can.  (I think it is completely fair to say that every expression has its strengths that others do not share in the same degree.)  The practice of meditating on the messages from the images of icons / liturgical art, the practice of using ’stations’ with accompanying art, the practice of spontaneous art creation during a worship service (including any way this may be a ‘prophetic’ expression), the practice of using art as a message (usually prophetic in nature) – I (and my friends) have in one way or another participated in this and have experienced the power of these ’sacramental’ type actions.  

These type of expressions in some forms have been experiencing a bit of a revival in the church in recent years.  I believe that we would be wise to get beyond our fear – even when it maybe attached to very real issues – and proceed in our continued exploration of these ancient ideas (always diligently keeping in mind our biblical and historical values, of course).  Through our explorations we may innovate and find new and creative ways to express these ideas and values using new materials, new technologies, new mediums, new expressions, all for the same purpose – to see the hand of God reaching through the veil between heaven and earth and taking hold of it.