Is It Time to Revive Art In Church?

Over a decade ago, many churches embraced a toolbox full of options for designing worship services including music, video, drama, dance, visual art, poetry, spoken word, stories and testimonies, guided prayers, and interactive exercises. These days, it’s almost exclusively music and video. Certainly music and video are art forms, but what about the other tools?

There are many reasons to explain what happened. Developing arts teams in a variety of disciplines is expensive, complicated, messy, and inherently risky. I believe that several churches attempted to do more than their resources allowed them to do well. As I’ve often said, the only thing worse than no drama is bad drama! Sadly, any art form done poorly will be written off as a poor investment. So instead of recognizing that each of these art forms should only be used as often as they can be done with excellence, we write them off and stay safe. I also recognize that a church with solid Biblical teaching, engaging worship music, and a little video, can be a prevailing, healthy community. So why rock the boat? Read more

The use of "art" in the Anglican and Episcopal churches in North America is associated with a predilection for Baroque and Gothic kitsch. The proclivity for Baroque kitsch points to the influence of the nineteenth Roman Catholic Church; the penchant for Gothic kitsch to the influence of the Victorian Gothic Revival and the Anglo-Catholic Cambridge Camden Society. Their influence in the ornaments of the priest as well as the ornaments of the church have become enshrined by custom. Traditions tend to form quickly, particularly bad ones, and become entrenched just as quickly. Traditions that originated in fairly recent times such as in the nineteenth century are much more difficult to change than traditions that originated in the distant past. Anglican worship environments at their best like Anglican worship at its best reflects the application of the principles of simplicity, restraint, and functionality. This calls for a quite different use of "art" than that which typifies these churches.