At Oklahoma State University in the Student Union Amphitheater every month there was a night of worship that drew students from across the campus and around the state.\u00a0\u00a0 At these monthly meeting there was a melting pot of musicians that would collaborate to create an atmosphere of freedom and creativity to express feelings toward God.\u00a0 The worship night experience drew students from every walk of life and it was an open night of expression to God.\u00a0 What started simply as a night of singing and sharing about God had transformed into an awe inspiring night of so many different platforms for encountering God.\u00a0\u00a0 At the front of the stage on both sides there were easels arranged with paints and paint brushes to create unto God.\u00a0 In the middle there was space for students to write out their thoughts to God at small tables draped carefully with fabric and lit by a simple candle.\u00a0 For those who wanted to dance unto the Lord there was an aisle around the second level.\u00a0 Randomly there would be those who would bring their flags to engage in a colorful demonstration to God.\u00a0\u00a0 This might sound like chaos but in the heart of all this activity was a desire for everyone to be able to engage with God through whatever format they felt drawn to participate in.\u00a0 Simply put this was a night of \u201cvisual faith.\u201d<\/p>\n
It happened every month for about ten years.\u00a0 So many students were engaged into this incredible eclectic time and those who has never experience anything like it were so overwhelmed that they invited their friends to come and \u201csee\u201d worship happen right in front of them.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The paintings and drawings were sometime collaborations of multiple artists and then some nights it would just be a simple word painted on the the canvas.\u00a0 People took home this art to hang in their dorm room.\u00a0\u00a0 The words and expressions that were written down even turned into worship songs.<\/p>\n
It was not for everyone though.\u00a0\u00a0 Some people could not wrap their head and heart around this being \u201ctrue\u201d worship to God.\u00a0\u00a0 Their definition of worship and their definition of chaos would be radically different then ours or even mine.\u00a0 I played the keyboard and sang for this gathering for all this time and I can tell you that this influenced my perspective of how creative a God we serve and how when it all flows together the encounter is lasting and impactful. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0So when I started to dive into William Dyrness\u2019s book, Visual Faith, <\/em>his thoughts resonated with my experiences.\u00a0 \u201c<\/p>\n Here the story is meant to inform, even inspire and to recount and recall the biblical narrative, rather than evoke a spiritual reality.\u00a0 The spiritual intent is mediated to the viewer by the vocabulary of image that serve as abbreviated representations\u2014a kind of short hand for the full story of salvation. 31<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The story of salvation is what we celebrated but it was not in a typical or theological environment instead it was to bring to life the celebration of Christ.\u00a0 Serving a risen savior who brought life and wanted to engage in a personal way with each individual.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Christian who is concerned about making a convincing, rational presentation of the gospel will complain that \u201cstandards\u201d are gone and there is no way to communicate universal truths.\u00a0 But the other side of this is that both artists and viewers are now open to new experiences in a way they have not been previously.\u00a0 They are prepared to see new combinations of things that may spark insight or even fresh revelation of God\u2019s claim on their lives. (122)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This is what I saw happen with my own eyes.\u00a0 The depth of the fresh revelation for some was to experience Christ for the first time and then take Him with them back to the country they had come from. \u00a0For others it was to take them from a position of agnostic to a person open to faith.\u00a0 It was truly an amazing journey.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Dyrness takes the journey to look at the interaction of art, worship and theology. \u00a0He builds a strong foundation for these individually and powerful expressions having a relationship that needs to intertwine.\u00a0\u00a0 Dyrness describes his objectives as to\u2014extend and enrich a Christian conversation on the visual arts\u2014and he immediately relates this conversation to the dialog on worship (9). Dyrness observes that people are drawn to God through affliction, religious practices, and the experience of beauty. He then goes on to argue that because modern life has banished these first two draws, the church is limited to the third draw\u2014beauty\u2014in attracting people to God (22). Dyrness concludes arguing for renewal in three areas: a new vision for the arts, renewal in worship, and a restoration of the Christian art tradition (155).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The final thoughts that I have gleaned from this very interesting book has to do with today.\u00a0 The modern church has embraced or borrowed from a lot of sources to become culturally relevant for this generation.\u00a0 Dyrness observed this new trend in his writing, \u201cSince pop artists opened the way, artist have borrowed elements from popular or commercial culture to make ironic references to contemporary life.\u201d (127)\u00a0 One of the things that the church has gotten better at is integrating the message from the popular or secular culture and has applied it to the gospel salvation story.\u00a0\u00a0 This impacts the effectiveness of the message and the messenger.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Finally, postmodern art, with all its collaboration and interaction, often reaches for an experience that is deeply spiritual.(133)\u00a0 We are grateful for these growing sensitivities; indeed, we may even find in their work insights into a spirituality that will challenge our own spiritual perceptions.\u00a0 (133)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n We live in a day when just like our worship nights, there are multiple layers of what worship looks, sounds and feels like.\u00a0 The ability of more and more people to interact with worship outside the box and to embrace art, theology and worship all in the same setting is a trend that I see happening.\u00a0 A majority of churches has trended toward images to create their culture and to define who and what they will be.\u00a0\u00a0 I believe this is the era of Dyrness.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n William Dyrness, Visual Faith: Engaging Culture, Art, Theology and Worship in Dialogue<\/em>. Grand Rapids, Michigan, Baker Academic, 2001.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At Oklahoma State University in the Student Union Amphitheater every month there was a night of worship that drew students from across the campus and around the state.\u00a0\u00a0 At these monthly meeting there was a melting pot of musicians that would collaborate to create an atmosphere of freedom and creativity to express feelings toward God.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":72,"featured_media":9409,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[676,289,663],"class_list":["post-9408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dminlgp6","tag-dyrness","tag-lgp6","cohort-lgp6"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/72"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9408\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}