If someone were to ask me, “What’s the primary way your faith has changed or developed over the years?”, I think I would simply have to say, “God has kept getting bigger.”
When I was a senior in high school I was dating a girl who was Pentecostal. You may know something about the worship style of those churches. I, on the other hand, grew up in a straight-laced Southern Baptist Church that didn’t add contemporary music until I was grown and moved away. So you can imagine my shock when she took me to a revival. Let’s just say I was disturbed. I said out loud to her, “This isn’t God. This isn’t what church is.”
Since then, with the help of many teachers and authors, I have obviously learned that God is beyond any one particular form. But it is also true that God can be found IN forms. In other words, the myriad of styles, experiences and artistic forms all have the potential to communicate something powerful about God that mere words or sermons cannot.
Recently, a church member shared a website with me, and it was one of those times that I found myself saying, “How had I not seen or heard of this?!” It’s a site hosted by the Biola University Center for Christianity, Culture and the Arts. I’m not sure how long it has been around, but they say it was “founded on the belief that the interrelationship between contemporary artmaking, theology, and religious tradition holds much richer potential for exploration and study than it has yet received.”
In particular, during the seasons of Advent and Lent, they put out daily devotionals that include poetry, visual arts, and music. These daily mashups for those seasons are so incredibly rich and diverse. In looking through last year’s Lenten season, I found much of it to be enriching, and pretty much each day challenged me to see God in a new way or through a new kind of artisitic expression.
We have begun the season of Lent, and we are starting a new series called “Wherever He is Found: A Lenten series of encountering Christ through the arts.” We will be drawing on expressions I’ve found through this and other resources as we seek God wherever He can be found. The person who introduced me to the website said that these resources “made her heart sing.” We could all use some singing and nourishment right now. Come and seek God with us in worship this Lenten season.
-Pastor Corey
