One of my favorite books is C.S. Lewis’s “The Great Divorce”. For those who haven’t read it, Lewis tells about human souls visiting Heaven, where they encounter spirits who try to convince them to let go of their biases and “lesser loves” and seek the perfection of God. One such visitor was a famous painter on Earth who, when he encounters the beauties of Heaven, can only say, “I should like to paint this.”

The Heavenly spirit replies, “Why, if you’re interested in the country only for the sake of painting it, you’ll never learn to see the country.”

“But that’s just how a real artist is interested in the country.”

“No, you’re forgetting…that was not how you began. Light itself was your first love: you loved paint only as a means of telling about light.”

I think this is a great observation of how easy it is to get so wrapped up in art for art’s sake that one forgets where beauty comes from. This could be said of any profession or ministry–even the most noble cause ceases to be meaningful if it is only a cause. In the end, every human need we can seek to attend to on Earth will pass away except for the need for God.

Art is like anything else–redeemed when it looks to God, and meaningless when its focus is on anything else. If your skill is music, play your heart out with a prayer that your audience might wonder where the beauty comes from. Beauty has deep truths to say about God that words sometimes can’t.

As far as planning for art’s role in worship, I think Summit utilizes its resources really well. It seems that the church doesn’t make use of music and media as a mandatory or “religious” element of the service, but rather allows those with specific gifts and a love for God express what is in them naturally. Along the lines of what Insider was saying earlier, if no one in a congregation can play instruments or sing, I’m not sure what the value is to anyone to force a praise band project upon them. But if God-loving, talented people are present (which Summit is blessed with in abundance), then by all means let them share what God has given them.

Thanks for a thought-provoking post, JD!

At the end of the day, the Holy Spirit will bring the dead to life, and awaken our weary souls to the glories of God. Or He won’t.

The most important role any church can play is that of prayer.

There’s nothing wrong with pursuing excellence, but I wonder what the ‘creative strategy meeting’ time to prayer time ratio is in a lot of churches where ‘creativity’ and ‘excellence’ are the big focus.

I am a believer that comes from a secular music background. In considering “worship-driven” music, I realized that excellence on a local church level is still subject to playing more or less popular worship songs and playing them well. From my point of view, those songs aren’t that artistically valid to begin with. So in a sense, the local church expression of art in music is subject to songs the congregation knows (no matter how cheesy or artistically weak they may be.)

In other disciplines it seems to be the same battle. Walk into a Lifeway Christian Store and what kind of art do you see? The next “Mona Lisa” is nowhere to be found, but we do have nice paintings of sheep and crosses.

Until the local church learns a proper role within culture (yes, artistic culture too), instead of partitioned from culture, the artistic value of local church art is crippled. If a congregation does not communicate with or understand good art, it cannot edify them.

On a practical level, why not take a chance to equip artists from within the church? So many artistic souls are ready to donate their mind to the local church, but find there is simply not an opportunity.

It is helpful to me to recall ages in church history where churches were cultural and artistic hubs in which creative people worked.

And just a note from a secular perspective on excellence, “being in the spirit” while critical to the effectiveness of worship does not change the artistic identity of the musician or artist. So many Christian musicians I know have excellent, Spirit-focused hearts and very poor skills. Just like any discipline, old fashioned practice plays a huge role.

Also, Edwin, I would love to hear a bit about your scriptural basis for art. What passages do you think speak to this?

I have the privilege of pastoring and very artistic bunch of people we have people that mime, dance, rap, musicians, artist, etc. Our leadership team in intentional about shepherding them to now put the ‘craft before Christ’ and that comes with discipleship.

I think primarily the eldership staff will steer the ship to ensure that the gospel is central and not production, but to negate any form of christocentric artistic expression will hurt the church and the different gifts place in the church. We can’t be so hard against ‘what could happen’ that we strangle the creativity within our churches, I’m pretty sure God knows who will attend our churches as well as the gifts that he has placed in each local body.

I’m for putting more into production to creatively present the gospel while not altering the message at all. While I agree that the Holy Spirit doesn’t need production to work on a persons heart, I believe He can and does work thru the vessels producing and we should encourage that in our people.

I think you guys at The Summit do a great job of this and that you have found and maintained that balance. I’m encouraged and challenged by you guys to engage the culture with relevancy and excellence in preaching and creativity.

Ultimately it’s God who we want people to be impressed by and when our people give Him the glory for their creativity, production and art, those that see it for the first time are left with a the person and work of Christ and production and expression of self.

Grace and Peace,

-Jerome

I’m a visual artist and have always and will struggle continually on how to maintain quality aesthetics with an authentic Christian worldview without making it too ‘kitschy’ or look like it belongs next to a Thomas Kincade painting. I try to create art that ultimately points towards Christ and opens a dialogue between myself and the viewer, between myself and God, and hopefully the viewer, or fellow worshiper, and God. Isn’t that the point?

Its an unfortunate but seemingly realistic observation that our culture values appearances. Competition for the focus of our attention is fierce. We’ve become conditioned to be attracted to certain sights, sounds, and symbols through media and other sources. Artistic expression through video, images, music, is such an enormous communication tool that it would unimaginable to not use it.

Its probably not too much of a stretch to think that in some way the hip graphics, video, and music that a church uses are ‘bait’ to attract a broad (or narrow) demographic of people. Its a fine line between tasteful artful expression and overproduction. Summit Church strikes that line to perfection in my opinion. Its bold, it catches one’s attention, and its powerful in it’s messages.

At the end of the day, however, it’s the power of the Gospel that has to take over as the overriding message to be broadcast to the masses. And if there were a way to measure the artistic excellence in delivering this message, JD Greear would have to be considered a Picasso.

While the music, art, video, production and such are huge tools that no doubt have helped shape the Summit Church into a place that is attractive to it’s congregation, there are a great many people that exit the doors on a Saturday night or Sunday morning are not thinking about that production. They are, rightly, thinking about the Gospel based message that has been shared.

It’s my opinion that it’s the compelling story of the Gospel as delivered by JD or any of the other blessed communicators on staff that brings people back week after week.

That and, of course, the body of believers that one is surrounded by at the Summit Church. An amazing, truly amazing, life-filled, extraordinary body of diverse people.

No amount of production or artistic excellence will ever replace these two things.

In Jesus.

TN

I kind of see where they’re going. However, the Holy Spirit has the power to overcome any obstacle…and probably works in spite of us more than we realize.