Hey Everyone,Hope you are having a good week. We are really excited about what is ahead for Advent and our participation in the Advent Conspiracy! For review, here is our challenge.This season, we will be challenged to: - Worship More (How do we engage in worship more this season, celebrating who God is and what he has done?) - Spend Less (How do we resist the empire of consumerism and choose to spend less this Christmas season?) - Give More (In spending less, how do we choose to give more by giving relationally, of our time and our creativity?) - Serve All (We will then take an extra offering each week of Advent to raise money to help with the water crisis around the world as well as supporting Love 146)If you are interested in being part of the Liturgy team for Advent, contact Sue Smith at 512.6080. They will have a meeting tomorrow night and need to know how much food to have available.Each week of Advent (Starting the Saturday after Thanksgiving, we will be meeting an hour earlier (6pm) for a potluck (the 29th) and cookies every other night. Our regular worship gathering will follow. More details to come…
Another interesting social justice event that I was just informed of: - this friday night bound: students for social justice (oru’s social justice group) is having a benefit concert at sublime, with 100% of the proceeds benefiting the she rescue home in cambodia. Event: An Incredible Benefit Concert! “stop sex trafficking” What: Concert Host: BOUND Start Time: Friday, November 21 at 7:00pm Where: SubLime Finally, remember that we are buying small gifts for some of the people at Pioneer Plaza this Christmas. You can pick up cards for this on Saturday!Peace Be With You,Preston SharpeLead PastorSATURDAY NIGHT Community Chruch
Paint/Sculpture
Paint, sculpture, and other visual media are most likely the most neglected forms of art by the church, especially the evangelical church, in the last fifty years. This may be due to sentiments from the iconoclastic controversy, or maybe from reaction from the Protestant Reformation. In addition to these things, it may have to do with the fact that this type of art is very hard to categorize, to “box-in.” Dramatic arts and technology can be seen simply as a tool for evangelism. Music can be seen as a tool for community singing. But, visual media is more difficult to categorize. It is harder to understand.
Mark Scandrette tells of his own experience in his book Soul Graffiti. “In grade school I was moved by the Renaissance paintings I saw while perusing books about Rafael, Michaelangelo, and Leonardo da Vinci. I was impressed by their technical skill and attention to detail…When I was eleven, a school art teacher, John Donais recognized my passion. A devout French Catholic bachelor, Mr. Donais was a dedicated inner-city public school teacher. He set me up with a “studio” where I spent three hours a day painting and sculpting with a seemingly endless supply of terra-cotta, plaster, and artist’s acrylics…At the end of the year he gave me his copy of The Master’s Painting, and inside the cover of the book he had written: ‘Artists have recorded man’s history and each looked at the world with their own vision. Learn how to see and you too will create your own kind of beauty! Mark, artists are the world’s caretakers of beauty. Join them and discover your world.’”[1]
L’Engle says, “All art has a iconic quality….We may not like that, but we call the work of such artists un-Christian or non-Christian at our own peril. Christ has always worked in ways which have seemed peculiar to many men, even his closest followers. Frequently the disciples failed to understand him. So we need not to feel that we understand how he works through artists who do not consciously recognize him. Neither should our lack of understanding cause us to assume he cannot be present in their work.”[2]
Truth and beauty should be reflected in art. Art reflects the beauty and mystery of God. As the church, we should affirm both truth and beauty wherever we see it. If art is neatly categorized in black-and-white categories, it is not true art. At our church, we encourage artist’s expression even in the worship gatherings. We have art stations set up for people to engage with at any point in the gathering. The purpose of this is not to be “cool”, but to show that music and preaching are not the only forms of artistic expression in the church. I believe this is helpful because many artists have felt rejected by the church, misunderstood for their craft. As the church, let’s affirm the work of God in the world, wherever we find it.
[1] Scandrette, 124
[2] L’Engle, 25