More Art of Worship

A short excerpt from a thought provoking site regarding church paradigms:

"...You need the poet to teach you new ways to see; “Pay attention to the poet, you need him and you know it,” sings Cockburn. So why, then, do we keep using the arts for little more than glorified sermon illustrations? Music as the emotional tag that gets us opened up for the preacher?

Is it possible to create the kind of Christian communities wherein the poets are listened to, nurtured, and supported? In real ways? What might it look like to take seriously our deprivileged and exiled status, and began to rise to the challenge of retexting our communities not only with the preached word – which is something I’m pretty committed to – but also the word painted, sculpted, sung, chanted, filmed, danced, performed and offered in every way imaginable… literally imaginable! Most churches, including my own, have a full time preacher and a part-time musician, but why don’t we have a poet or a painter on our staff? A writer in residence? A film-maker? A director? A choreographer?

... And the angels peer expectantly because they know how deeply we need to be re-immersed in our foundational story; how badly we need to be fundamentally and imaginatively retexted; how powerfully we need to relearn how to sing the Lord’s song in this strange land."