DON’T let art back into the church?

The fourth of Betty Spackman’s Kitsch bitch choruses makes full use of her experience, the decades she’s now been an artist of faith wrangling with the Church’s indifference or hostility to the arts. The title of the last chorus is “Let’s get art back into the church!” What Spackman puts on paper following the title, however, says the opposite of this to a large degree.

She begins by suggesting why we might want to bring art back into the church: Bare, ugly walls and healing the wounds of artists who have suffered through years of rejection by leadership and their peers. She then continues by suggesting why churches should not necessarily become art galleries, saying “Even thought I am an artist and would welcome visual expression in any form, in any denomination, I’m just not convinced that we should be spending our energy fighting to get art into the church. I’m more interested in getting the church out into the streets — and even asking if our church buildings are not preventing us from fulfilling our ‘great commission,’ as people of God and as artists.” [Emphasis mine]

As much as I mourn on this blog the Church’s indifference to the arts and architecture, I can agree with Spackman’s statement. Yes, if you bring up church architecture I will still happily tell you what I think the American church is doing wrong and how it could change for the better. Would I like to see more art in church buildings? Absolutely. Could this be dangerous to artists and the art community as Spackman suggests? Possibly. Her concern is, in part, that the Church will take over the arts, begin telling people what is good and what is bad art: “The church as well as government has for centuries been responsible for persecuting innocent people, stopping the voices of prophets and poets and burning their books. One has only to look at history to see the dangers of declaring what is acceptable art and what is not — Hitler’s condemnation of ‘degenerate’ art, for example, or the silencing of poets by the Bolsheviks.”

If I recall correctly, I have at times clarified my interest in seeing Christians — who make up the Church — become more interested in the arts as different than getting art into the church. At other times, my writings probably seem to contrast Spackman’s desire to keep art out of the church. In reality I don’t believe our deepest shared desires as artists of faith are opposing. She possesses twice (roughly) the life experience and historical context to draw from than I do and, therefore, can write more clearly about the subject. To clarify again, my interest isn’t so much in turning churches into art galleries; it’s more to see my brothers and sisters engaging in culture, changing culture, being “in” the world instead of segregating themselves from it.

A friend of mine recently relayed part of her family’s search for a new church:

“Just last night we were talking about two local churches that are currently meeting in rented spaces. One is itching to build a $1M building, and in the process of buying land to build. We asked the pastors about it, and they admitted that their building will be used only 5 hours a week (church offices are elsewhere), maybe less. But they feel that it’s important to have a building because “people don’t consider you a real church until you have one”. Another pastor we met with said that the church has $8M; he wouldn’t build or buy a building, but would instead start a daycare for the kids of single women, or put it into ministry some other way, and continue renting a theater (which is pretty cheap to rent on a Sunday morning) to meet for church. This seems to me to be a better use of money, even though it’s unconventional. If the church needs a nearby presence, then rent or buy a storefront to house offices and a couple meeting rooms for mid-week Bible studies or coffee, etc. Why spend so much for a giant, empty building?”

Some will suggest that hoarding $8M of parishioner’s giving is equally as irresponsible as spending it on an unused building. Even larger churches don’t come across this kind of money in short periods of time, let alone smaller ones renting meeting spaces. But my friend’s point is well taken — unless this church has a more specific goal than was suggested to her, in which case “hoarding” is actually “saving up.” The pastor mentions a daycare, but apparently didn’t give the impression this was a hard and fast reason for his congregation’s large bank account.

Growing up, indeed even into my college years, the emphasis on evangelism was inviting people to church. While this may have, at one point in the now distant past, been a culturally reasonable approach to introducing people to God, it’s not so much today (“Seeker-friendly” approach included; as I recall, the pastor at Willow Creek in Chicago recently suggested this approach — spearheaded by his church — wasn’t in the end such a great idea.). As important as architecture is to me, as much as I lament the current state of the built environment in America, the second church in my friend’s example is the wiser of the two in my opinion, both fiscally and evangelistically.

My brother attends a storefront church in downtown Grand Island, Nebraska. This church is very outreach oriented. It regularly schedules events to get people into the building — not necessarily for a Sunday morning service — by using art, music and coffee strategically according to its location. I’m not sure how well it’s working, but their idea seems to lie in between the two above, and perhaps betwixt Spackman’s thoughts as well. Knowing what I know now of real estate in that community, their storefront was probably a relatively inexpensive purchase, fiscally responsible(My dad is in the process of purchasing a 6,000 square foot building in the same downtown for less than $80k.).

Still, the most effective method of introducing people in our post-modern* culture is probably going out to meet people where they are, not attempting to lure them into a specific meeting space. Artists should therefore attempt to live incarnationally. By this I more or less mean “Be a part of the community around you.” Don’t live reclusively. Live “in” the culture and represent the God you have the privilege of knowing and loving to the best of your ability. Use your gifts in drawing or sculpture or music to this end.

* Post-modernism, while maligned a few years back by Christians in America, is not in and of itself a moral or immoral thing. It represents a shift in the broader cultural manner of thinking and responding, in my opinion, to changes in times and environs. There are, as perceived by people of faith, good and bad parts of this new way of thinking, just as in the past people would have observed — according to their values — good and bad parts of other new -isms as they came along.