Saturday, June 25, 2005
art at Opawa
Some thoughts by Shannon, one of the Opawa church’s plus 5 interns, who blogs here.
this past week i worked on creating an irrigation system for the front part of the church. this was to visually show how the living water (Christ) trickles down to other parts of the world. we placed 7 “mission stations” around this irrigation piping to represent specific places around the world to pray for (with specific missionaries to go along with each of them). we drew water from the fountain (the installation i helped make the week before) and visually showed how each of us (represented by the individual pipes, screws, etc) can work together as a church to pour out the living water to those in need. i was kind of skeptical before i worked on the project because i kind of thought it would either be really cheesy or really bizarre, but now i love it!
opawa is a muti-generational church and uses hands-on, creative art installations like this to generate discussion and get people interacting with eachother. in steve’s book, (“Out of Bounds Church“) it talks about how in this day and age, what we need now is a church that is more in tune with getting practical, hands-on things – or we may be in danger of losing the generation x’ers.
and as far as where artists enter into this picture, i think we as artists have the amazing task (and privelage) of stepping up to the plate. we live in a world full of images.
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I recently gave a preach at our rural church about the importance of the arts in our journey with God. The image that kept coming to my mind was that of a foot that has “fallen asleep” due to misuse and improper placement, in effect, being sat upon by the rest of the body. Here in North America, anyway, that is where we artists find ourselves in the body of Christ…sat upon, improperly used and ineffective. But God wants the body to walk, so He is prodding the artists…and the pins and needles start to come as the blood begins to return. It hurts!! The body can think of nothing else but the foot!! The body rubs the foot, stomps on the foot, overuses the foot…why? Not because the foot (us artists) are more special, or are the most important part of the body, but because the body desparately needs the foot to return to its normal function. Obviously as an artist, I am overjoyed that there is an awakening going on, but I am eager for the time when art in church won’t be surprising or “new”, but a normal, integrated part of the body’s functioning.
Comment by Paula — June 26, 2005 @ 1:56 am