ART & SOUL K e v in D e Y o u ng
Common Ground, Common Sense The church and the arts have had an onagain off-again relationship for a couple millennia. At times, the church has been a patron of the arts, supporting and encouraging sculptors, painters, and musicians out of its largesse. At other times, the church has been standoffish toward the arts, seeing them as a waste of time, or worse, an expression of hedonism. Today, although many churches could hardly be called artist-friendly, interest in and advocacy for the arts are resurging. This is, in large part, commendable.The Bible speaks highly of those with gifts of artistry and craftsmanship. And let’s be honest, church culture is usually more conducive to the bourgeois than the bohemian, so it makes sense that we would have to go out of our way to welcome artists and encourage their work. As a pastor I think a renewed emphasis on the arts in our churches can be a very good thing or a very bad thing. It all depends on whether the “art is the answer” crowd and the “art is weird” crowd can find some common ground around some common sense.Toward that end, let me suggest several theses on the church and the arts. 1. We must allow art to be art. Sometimes Christians make the mistake of thinking that for art to be valuable it must share the gospel or try to point people to Jesus. Such an approach usually makes for bad evangelism and bad art. Art is valuable because it can be beautiful and full of truth. We should not expect art to communicate in the same way that discourse does. 2. A rt is valuable, but so are a lot of other things. Christians don’t always
know what to do with art. We think, “Is there really any value in a beautiful dance or a hard-to-follow poem?” But when done well, the fine arts can inspire us, comfort us, disturb us, and cause different parts of our brain to start firing. Art reminds us that “usefulness” is not the measure of worth. But art is not a god, nor is it God’s favorite college major.There is nothing intrinsically better (or worse) about being an artist than being an accountant, a computer programmer, or a cashier. 3. Art can do some things, and it can’t do some other things. Christians often struggle with art because it can be so ambiguous. It doesn’t traffic in propositions. It encourages us to think, but also to feel. It forms more than it informs. In this way, art can “teach” us about our creative and mysterious God. But being an engineer can “teach” us about our orderly and knowable God. We should not make the mistake of thinking that “the poets, the artists, the storytellers are the ones who can really teach us about God.”They can, but so can grocers and garbage collectors. 4. Our worship should strive for artistic excellence, but our worship will inevitably be “popular” and propositional. I’m always telling our people that we want “undistracting excellence” (John Piper’s phrase) on Sunday morning. Mediocrity is not a spiritual virtue. Every church will have different capabilities, but the goal is to have excellent music, excellent sound, and excellent instrumentation, just as we want excellent preaching. The worship service is not usually the time to give little Timmy a chance to play his scales on the piano. It is an opportunity for those who have labored hard at a craft to serve God with their labors. On the other hand, the goal of the worship service is not to display the talents of artists but for the congregation to be edified and to worship Jesus
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Christ.This means that the music must be fairly simple for hundreds of untrained people to sing it at the same time. It also means that our worship services will deal with truth in its propositional forms. I don’t want people leaving worship wondering what the point was. In 1 Corinthians 14 Paul argues for shared intelligibility in corporate worship.We aren’t looking for individualized worship experiences.We want maximum clarity, which means we won’t apologize for being heavy on words and light on other kinds of “art.” 5. Churches can learn to welcome artists, but artists should not expect the church to be an art gallery. While it’s hard for a mortgage lender to show his wares throughout the church, the visual arts are well suited for inclusion in “sacred space.” If there are talented artists in your church, consider finding the appropriate space for their work to be displayed. But artists need the humility to realize that not every piece can be used. Some art doesn’t fit the context or mood of the church. Some art gets dated, some is distracting, and some isn’t very good. 6. Artists can help us see our idols, and artists have idols of their own, too. Bankers may idolize money. Moms may idolize their kids. Academics may idolize the intellect. Pastors may idolize preaching. Artists can idolize selfexpression. What’s more, we can all be wrongfully proud that we don’t bow down to other people’s idols. Good art can help strip away pretension and pragmatism. Good artists will always be humble about their own limitations and besetting sins. And good Christians will always be eager to see truth and beauty wherever they can find it. ■ Kevin DeYoung is senior pastor at University Reformed Church in East Lansing, Mich., and the author of several books. He blogs at TheGospelCoalition.org.