Diary of an Arts Pastor

The Conditions for the "Successful" Formation of Worship Art

2012-02-01T08:26:00.000-08:00

Ever wonder whether a particular work of worship art, whether musical or visual or poetic or otherwise, is forming a congregation in the way "that it's supposed to"? Ever wonder what it is forming in them? Is it forming them theologically, spiritually, relationally, emotionally or missionally--or in a combination of these and more besides? How would you determine whether it formed the people rightly or fully? What conditions would need to be considered in order to determine an answer to these questions?

Over the past year I've created a handout in order to explore these questions. I've handed it out at various conference in which I've spoken. I thought I'd go ahead and share it here. This will be part one of two entries. Feel free to use it in your own church setting. Whether it's as a pastoral staff or worship team or arts committee, these are the kinds of questions that are useful to ask in order to assess the complex fashion in which the worship arts form a given congregation.

For what it's worth I use the terms "worship" and "liturgy" to mean exactly the same thing in this entry.

A diagnostic to discern how the worship arts form us

While the arts in the context of corporate worship form us “in their own way,” they should not form us “on their own terms.” They should always form us on the terms of the worship service; or to use Wolterstorff's language, they should always serve the particular purposes and activities of the liturgy. The logic of art must always be seen to serve the logic of the liturgy.

Beyond this, we can say that the worship arts do not rightly form us in any kind of isolated or automatic way. For right formation to take place, the worship arts need to be intentionally integrated into the larger parts of the church's life, and they must be allowed to form dispositions in the congregation over time.

How would we discern whether any given work of liturgical art formed a congregation rightly, that is, according to the purposes for which it was created and to the context in which it is employed? Bearing in mind that we can never fully quantify the work of the Spirit and that our formation often happens unevenly, eight factors can be considered significant here.

1. Its context. I have in mind here two kinds of context: spatial and chronological. Spatially: Where in the sanctuary does, for instance, visual art occur? Does it occur on all sides? Is it concentrated in any one space? Do different kinds of visual art occur in different spaces, and are these different spaces invested with different meanings?

Chronologically: At what point in the order of service might the visual art become especially useful? Do banners process? Does an ornate wooden cross recess? Is an icon paraded around the congregation for worshipers to kiss? Does a stained glass window or a group of photographs await the congregants as they leave the building? Is the space left “artistically bare” on purpose?

2. Its use. I can imagine, for starters, four kinds of uses for liturgical art: didactic, performative, “service” and contemplative. If the stained glass windows along the nave of the church are intended to instruct the congregation, what kind of instruction is intended? If a dance is performed prior to the Eucharist, what performative value is sought here—as a celebrative act or a prayerful one or an act intended to symbolize the movement of the people before God?

Some kinds of music are called “service music,” whose purpose is musically to enhance different parts of the service. In an Anglican church I once attended in Vancouver, the music director ended the evening service with around five minutes of music, played either on the piano or the organ. The congregation was expected to sit and listen. The purpose was not to attend to the music as such but rather to create a contemplative space within which a person might prayerfully absorb the contents of the entire service.

3. Its content. Is the art traditional or contemporary? Is it, say, a William Cowper hymn or a Chris Tomlin psalm? Is it a familiar song or an unfamiliar one, and how often is the congregation exposed to unfamiliar content? Is the song sung in the indigenous tongue or a foreign tongue—English, Latin, Swahili, Spanish? Is the music aesthetically difficult, as with the compositions of Orlando Gibbons, or is it aesthetically simple, as with the modern hymns of Keith and Kristyn Getty?

4. The participants. Who is doing the art and how is the congregation intended to perceive those who do the art? In the case of a choir, is the choir adult, of one or both genders, of children, or of a combination of these? Is the choir perceived as “doing the work of worship” on behalf of the congregation? Are they perceived as “servants” or “leaders” of the worship? How do they dress? What symbolic meaning is vested in that dress? Is that meaning clearly understood by the congregation? Are artists the performers and the congregation the spectators? Is the congregation perceived to be a constant participant in the worship, as might be the case in certain African-American churches where dancing and clapping are seen as integral to proper worship?

Church planting, Dallas, Texas, March 6-8: A video

2012-01-24T14:31:00.000-08:00

Below is what I had to say in a little promo video for the Anglican 1000 Church Planting Summit. I'm super excited to be a part of this gathering. I think it'll be fantastic, not just because I'll be sharing the stage with Scot McKnight, David Breen, Archbishop Robert Duncan and David Roseberry, but because I'll get to meet a whole bunch of folks that I don't normally cross paths with here at Duke University: church planters. (Usually folks around here "get appointed" to a church.) I have the greatest respect and admiration for folks who plant a new church. What a courageous bunch.

A year ago November I spoke to a group of church planters in Chicago (see here and here). This past May I gave a lecture at Regent College's pastors conference (see here and here). In my talk at the Summit I'll be crafting a combination of these two talks and making full use of the audience for my illustrations. This will be a full-body contact talk. So get ready. It'll be a lot of fun, and hopefully I'll be able to share a few things that will serve the real and fundamental needs of church planters.

Register for the conference here.

This event will be taking place immediately after our totally awesome Laity Lodge retreat.

And, yes, I wholeheartedly believe the 1976 Dallas Cowboys were and always will be America's Team.

Charlie Peacock: the piano man who is definitely not a muppet but who will be speaking at our retreat

2012-01-22T13:19:00.000-08:00

"All Art House programs promote community, life, and world engagement, helping students become more and more interested in the same things that Jesus is interested in." -- Charlie and Andi

I first met Charlie in the summer of 2003. His book, New Way to be Human, was just published and he was two years away from releasing his jazz cum improvisational music CD titled Love Press Ex-Curio. We had invited him to be our guest performing artist at the 2003 HopeArts Festival. In this role he led a songwriter's workshop, performed on a Saturday night, along with a virtuosic but a little kooky bass player, and then I interviewed him Sunday morning during the worship service.

The fact is, I first encountered Charlie in the late 1980s. He was much younger then. I was a teenager. This was the time when he co-wrote with folks like Margaret Becker and produced music for The Choir, Twila Paris, Al Green and the just-about-to-be-controversial Amy Grant. (Today he produces work for, oh, small outfits like Switchfoot and The Civil Wars.) It was the heyday for CCM and I drank it down in stacks of cassette tapes. It was also the heyday for rolling up your stonewashed jeans so they fit like a cork screw around your ankles. Charlie was a hero. The fact that he was sitting in a chair across from me in the sanctuary at Hope Chapel was almost too good to be true.

For the record, that was also the summer that Josh Banner met Susanna Childress.

Susanna, aka, Strawberry Angel

Wha?

It was a very good summer, I confess.

What I love and admire about Charlie and his wife, Andi, is their commitment to seek the wellbeing of artists, their whole wellbeing. Never afraid to take risks, they founded Art House America in 1991. For twenty years AHA has invested in the lives of artists with a vision that is so compelling I'm tempted to jealousy, wishing I could do pretty much the same thing.

"Art House America was founded with the vision of nurturing creative artists and anyone looking to explore an artful, faithful life. In addition to promoting the seamless life of Christian discipleship and imaginative living, AHA also provides students with creative nurture, hospitality, and access to sound and exemplary vocational and spiritual counsel. AHA provides mentoring for artists of various art forms, resources that communicate the worth and necessity of all vocations (paid and unpaid)...."

Isn't that good? I think it is. And if one is tempted to think that Charlie and Andi have lived an idyllic life, they will probably be the first to share frankly their many experiences of heartache.

What do they have to offer our Laity Lodge retreat? Years of faithful though not un-costly service, insight into the lives of artists, from Bono to singer-songwriters trying to make a go of their craft (like our favorite Brooke Waggoner), a winsome, unassuming personal aspect, the pursuit of an intelligent approach to art and faith, stories of failure that instead of leading to an embittered cynicism have made them more compassionate to others, and a commitment as a couple to partner together even while respecting each other's distinct calling and gifts.

They'll be a part of our retreat at the Laity Lodge, March 1-4. Why not join us and get an opportunity to know them a bit? See here for all relevant information on the retreat.

Thank God for faithful servants like Charlie and Andi. Thank God for their wisdom and sense of humor. Thank God for the friendship that many of us have received from them. I'm excited to be with them again.

Here is the full meal deal bio note for Charlie.

Charlie Peacock co-founded the independent music company Twenty Ten Music with friend and entrepreneur David Kiersznowski in January 2010. Peacock serves as producer and Sr. VP of A&R. Peacock began his artist, songwriting and production career in the early eighties with recordings for A&M, Island, and the Sparrow Label Group. Peacock has played a lead role in creating major hits in three separate decades—most notably Amy Grant's "Every Heartbeat" (1991), Switchfoot's "Dare You to Move" (2002) and The Civil Wars' Grammy-nominated debut album Barton Hollow (2011).

Charlie is the founder of the label re:think/EMI and former Sr. A&R consultant to Sony/ATV and EMI CMG. Named by Billboard's Encyclopedia of Record Producers as one of the 500 most important record producers in music history, the Grammy Award-winning producer has over 20 Million sales to his credit with a diverse roster of artists ranging from Al Green to Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Switchfoot. Peacock’s director/producer credits include Any Day Now, Ten Out Of Tenn’s award-winning performance documentary feature, Brooke Waggoner's concert DVD And The World Opened Up, and The Legend Hank Cochran, a documentary tribute in collaboration with BMI and Sony/ATV featuring legendary songwriter Hank Cochran (Patsy Cline, Elvis Presley) and his famous friends: Merle Haggard, Jamey Johnson, Lee Ann Womack, Elvis Costello, Cowboy Jack Clement and others.

Peacock recently scored original music for the upcoming film Searching For Sonny starring Minka Kelly and the documentary Wrestling for Jesus; and contributed music to Nicole Kidman’s Rabbit Hole, Vampire Diaries, Pretty Little Liars, and the NBC Family Movie Night telefilm franchise soundtracks for The Jensen Project, A Walk In My Shoes, and Change of Plans in association with producer Randy Jackson. Charlie and his wife, Andi Ashworth, are Co-Founders/Executive Directors of Art House America.

Bits & Bobs at the start of the year of the end of the earth

2012-01-11T09:37:00.000-08:00

According to the writers of this Wikipedia entry, 2012 "is regarded as the end-date of a 5,125-year-long cycle in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar." What do the Mayas really think about it? Check out your local Mayan Predictions to find out.

Myself, I'm going to keep eating dark chocolate malt balls and writing this blog till the brimstone burns up all the electrons that make it possible for you to read it.

Here then a bit of this and a bob of that at the start of 2012. I've got a series on the vocation of the artist that I'd like to begin and a "Best of" for 2011, but those will have to wait till the baby is fed, the diapers are changed, the bottles are boiled, Phaedra is loved on and the comprehensive exams are given first dibs on any energy that is left over for the day.

First things first, though: You gotta come to that Laity Lodge retreat, March 1-4, where we'll talk about the care of artists and swim in the Blue Hole of the Frio River and eat the best food you'll consume all year long. It's a win-win-win, people. Stay tuned for more info.

1. The Technology Loop. You know you've been sucked under by it. You know you're a sucker for letting yourself be sucked again, over and over. You wish you had one technological gadget to organize it all. Here it is, courtesy of Portlandia.

2. Will art history majors save our economy? You betcha, and Matt Milliner has the goods on it.

3. The David Crowder Band is calling it quits, but David Crowder will keep doing his thing: making music in service of the church. Check out this fine interview over at CT.

What's next for your? What will you do for income?
I'm going to be making music for the church in the future. I just don't know exactly what that will mean and look like. I just know that I love writing for the church and to help people express themselves to God in a very direct manner in terms of corporate or collective singing. If I'm not doing that in some fashion, I definitely would feel like there's a vacancy. And so I'm sure there's more to come.

4. Ever want to bust out in song on a plane 30,000 feet above ground level? I have. A bunch of times, most of which would have mortified Phaedra. But these folks have the chutzpah and the goods to pull it off with class (on economy class). Call it worship just shy of the heavens. And make sure you listen to the clipped-off comment by the woman sitting somewhere behind the video camera.

5. Stephen Colbert, the latter day mystic? It's hard to believe (or perhaps not) that these words are attributed to the padrone of "The Colbert Report," but they're worth chewing on, as reported in this piece by The New York Times Magazine.

"In 1974, when Colbert was 10, his father, a doctor, and his brothers Peter and Paul, the two closest to him in age, died in a plane crash while flying to a prep school in New England. “There’s a common explanation that profound sadness leads to someone’s becoming a comedian, but I’m not sure that’s a proven equation in my case,” he told me. “I’m not bitter about what happened to me as a child, and my mother was instrumental in keeping me from being so.”

He added, in a tone so humble and sincere that his character would never have used it: “She taught me to be grateful for my life regardless of what that entailed, and that’s directly related to the image of Christ on the cross and the example of sacrifice that he gave us. What she taught me is that the deliverance God offers you from pain is not no pain — it’s that the pain is actually a gift. What’s the option? God doesn’t really give you another choice.”

6. Andy Whitman goes to his Jesus Freak Reunion. See here, via Image Journal.

7. A thing about the liturgical arts.

He suggests that “liturgical arts will offerthe best service to the church when embedded in something larger than themselves.” He maintains that the beauty inherent in art is valuable, but that the arts fulfill “a primary purpose in the actions and purposes of the liturgy.”

Yes, I said that. I said it in an interview for a publication by the Anglican Mission (now organizationally in a state of limbo, but, well, whoever let that stop one from loving the Anglican liturgy? Not me.) And Phaedra's art made it into the article too, so that's even funner.

8. Bruce Benedict's Top Ten Congregational Songs for 2011. I really enjoyed reading his list and the explanations that accompanied them.

Way to go, Cardiphonia. Keep up the good work.

9. The enchantment of simple, elegant lines. This is a really beautiful work of Chinese painting, which the artist has animated in three dimensions.

3D Chinese painting animation- Watch more Videos at Vodpod.

10. Three books I look forward to reading in the next month.

The Study of Liturgy, edited by C. Jones, G. Wainwright, E. Yarnold and P. Bradshaw (Oxford: 1992).
I'm thoroughly enjoying my readings in liturgical theology and this includes an anthology-like collection of essays by distinguished members of the field. It's organized around basic categories such as "theology and rite," "initiation," "the Eucharist," "ordination" and "the calendar." It'll be a great resource as a quick read of issues and concerns surrounding each facet of the liturgy.

Space, Time and Resurrection by T. F. Torrance (Oxford: 1969).
This spring semester Jeremy will run a seminar for his doctoral students on Thomas Torrance. This is the book we'll be reading for our first gathering. We'll also venture into The Mediation of Christ, "The Trinitarian Mind," "The Transformation of Natural Theology," "Natural Theology in the Thought of Karl Barth," "Theological Science" and "The One Baptism Common to Christ and his Church." I'm excited to spend time with a man I first visited in seminary, with his Trinitarian Faith: The Evangelical Theology of the Ancient Catholic Faith, a book that awakened in me a love for the Great Tradition. The book hurt my head every time I picked it up, but I was a better man for it.

Veronica Roth's Divergent trilogy, because I can't justify reading The Hunger Games trilogy for a third time in a row but I can read another, perhaps just a wee bit too similar, set of dystopian novels featuring a spunky teenage girl, who just so happens to live in society that is divided into five factions--Abnegation (the selfless), Candor (the honest), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent)--each dedicated to the cultivation of, yes, you guessed it, Aristotle, a particular virtue, in the attempt to form a "perfect society."

C'mon, you know that's going to be a good read. At least for the first 100 pages. Hopefully more.

My firstborn is a girl. I want her to be spunky like Katniss. I now need to check out her doppelgänger, Beatrice.

David's comings and goings in 2012

2012-01-03T14:32:00.000-08:00

In addition to studying for my comprehensive exams, occurring at the end of this month, and writing a dissertation, occurring as fast as I can write it, I have the privilege of visiting folks around the country and participating in the ongoing conversation about the church's relationship to the arts. Here are a few stops along the way. If you're in the area, I'd love to see you or meet you.

February 5 -- Preaching at All Angels Church in New York City.

February 17-19 -- Giving three talks in Topeka, Kansas, for an arts festival sponsored by five churches, which on that fact alone deserves a hearty hoorah.

March 1-4 -- Speaking at the Laity Lodge retreat for ministers to artists, in the middle of perfectly nowhere in Central Texas. Also speaking will be Charlie Peacock, Andi Ashworth, Ginger Geyer and Sandra Organ-Solis. A musician, a hospitality maven, a visual artist and a contemporary ballerina and me.

March 6-8 -- Giving a plenary talk at the Anglican 1000 Church Planting Summit in Dallas, Texas. The fact that I'll be sharing the stage with Scot McKnight, Archbishop Robert Duncan, Mike Breen and David Roseberry only makes this a sweeter deal.

March 22-29 -- Giving a paper (Lord-willing) at the Society for the Study of Theology's annual conference in York, England.

May - June -- Studying Latin in Durham, North Carolina. This isn't geographic travel but it will involve travel across time, to the land of dead languages. Ecce beatus homo, or something like that.

July -- Travel to the mothership, Austin, Texas.

September 22 -- Giving a plenary talk in Wenham, Massachusetts, at an event sponsored by Gordon College, Gordon-Conwell Seminary and CIVA. The day event will explore the dynamic between the church and the visual arts. The tentative title of my talk is "The Problem of Sight and the Possibility of a Re-formed Vision."

November 1-3 -- Giving a plenary talk at a conference in Los Angeles that will explore the relationship between preaching and the visual arts, aptly titled "Preaching in a Visual Age." It will be co-sponsored by the Ogilvie Institute of Preaching at Fuller Theological Seminary, the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship at Calvin College, and Christians in the Visual Arts. See here for previous Brehm Lectures, which this conference will constitute. Mark Labberton is coordinating. Details to come.

Other things are in the works. Stay tuned.

The God who takes his time

2011-12-24T11:58:00.000-08:00

Piero della Francesca, 1470

The God of Jesus Christ is a God who takes his time.

In the aftermath of Adam and Eve's rebellion, God pronounces judgment upon the serpent:

"And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel" (Gen. 3:15).

Then this God takes an incomprehensibly long and to many of us, an upsettingly long, amount time to do something about it.

A bit later he speaks through the prophet Isaiah a promise to his people Israel, which the prophet dutifully writes down.

The people who walk in darkness will see a great light;
Those who live in a dark land, the light will shine on them...
For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us;
And the government will rest on His shoulders.

Francesco di Giorgio Martini, 1460

Then this same God takes 700 years to make this promise see the light of day. If we go backwards seven hundred years, we land at the year 1311, the year that the Italian painter Giotto was in Assisi, painting frescoes in the transept area of the Lower Church, a year in which Dante Alighieri scribbled away at the Divine Comedy, Robert the Bruce roamed the lowlands of Scotland and the technique of knitting was being invented. If we go forwards, we arrive at 2711 AD, a year which only science fiction writers have imagined possible.

Our God takes seven hundred years to make good on his promises, and children innumerable are born to mothers and so many sons "are given" to the tribe that people stop counting because of the tedious quality of the ordinariness of it all.

Then the Messiah arrives, at last. As Gary Thomas describes this episode in God's history:

"This is the way of God: long waiting, intense action, followed by long waiting. Decades may come and go before anything seemingly significant takes place. The Gospels testify to a patient God who sometimes takes centuries to set up his move, and who then thinks nothing of sitting on it for another thirty years until everything is just right."

Our God is a God who takes his time, and if he takes his time with Adam and Eve and Israel and the disciples of Jesus, then, alas, he will do no differently with us, with me.

Our friend Margaret Thielman, with a desire to encourage us during our darkest days this past fall, said this:

"Just remember, the nights are long but the years are short."

Jans tot Sint Geertgen, 1490

I've been repeating that statement out loud to myself over the past weeks. She's right, of course, and Phaedra and I have only begun to feel its meaning with Blythe. At the moment, we have more long days and long nights than short years. But we'll get those short years soon enough, and since we're melancholy people I imagine we'll feel bittersweet about the passing of time and wish we could rewind the tape and do a few things over or cherish moments which we treated perfunctorily.

As we bring another year to a close and anticipate the beginning of 2012, I wanted to share this poem by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He wrote it at Christmas time, in 1944, from a Nazi prison camp. He was 39 years old, an age I now share with him. The last stanza has a "collect" quality to it and can of course be prayed or recited only in faith.

God did not spare Bonhoeffer death. God did not relieve his beloved Son of death. And he will not spare us death or suffering or travail either, as believers around the globe know firsthand, but he will give us the Holy Spirit without measure, to comfort and to encourage us while we travail, even as we wait for the fuller fulfillment of his promises. He also, thank God, gives us each other to bear our waiting together.

God bless you this Christmastide.

I offer this prayer as a prologue to Bonhoeffer's poem.

God of Adam and Eve, God of Abraham, God of our Lord Jesus Christ, you who sometimes take centuries to set up your move, grant us grace today while we wait for you to answer our prayers which we have prayed this year, this past decade perhaps--or our whole life even--and grace again to remain faithful to your calling upon our life, as difficult or inscrutable as it may feel.

May we not only know afresh the Christ of both manger and cross but also come to love him more deeply, so that we might offer grace to our neighbor in need, whoever he or she may be. This we pray through Christ the lowly babe and exalted king in the power of your Holy Spirit. Amen.

Michael Pacher, The St. Wolfgang Altarpiece, 1503

Faithfully and quietly surrounded by benevolent powers,
wonderfully guarded and consoled,
thus will I live this day with you
and go forth with you into another year.

Still will the past torment our hearts
Still, heavy burdens of bad times depress us,
Ah, Lord give our startled souls
the grace for which we were created.

And if you pass to us the heavy, the bitter
cup of pain, filled to the brim,
we will accept it, without trembling
from your good and beloved hand.

But if you wish us to rejoice once more
in this world and the brilliance of its sun
then the past too we will remember
and so our entire life will belong to you.

With warmth and light let flame today the candles
that you have brought into our darkness.
If it can be, bring us together once again!
We know your light is shining in the night.

When the silence spreads around us deeply,
let us hear that full sound of the world
stretching out invisibly around us;
let us hear the children's praising song.

Warmly protected by benevolent powers,
with confidence we wait for what may come.
God is with us at evening and at morning
and most certainly at each new day.

Giotto, Scrovegni Chapel, 1305

A hymn, a poem & a bunch of Advent Devotionals

2011-12-12T11:34:00.000-08:00

Advent and Triumph of Christ by Hans Memling

I sang the following hymn at a recent Vespers Service at Duke Chapel. As we moved from verse to verse I had two thoughts. One, why hadn't I sung this hymn before and, two, when can I sing it again? It's one of those theologically rich and poetically elegant hymns that deserves a prominent place in the church's worship during the Advent season.

I also wouldn't mind hearing a contemporary songwriter render it in a new musical style (like this [thank you, Bruce] and like this [thank you, Greg]), including pop-rock or symphonic rock or global music.

"Savior of the Nations, Come"

The words are by St. Ambrose, bishop of Milan (339-397 AD), translated into the German by Martin Luther in 1523, and then from German to English by William M. Reynolds in 1851. The music comes from Johann Walther (Wittenberg, Germany, 1524), while the harmony was scored by Johann S. Bach.

Savior of the nations, come;
Virgin’s Son, here make Thy home!
Marvel now, O heaven and earth,
That the Lord chose such a birth.

Not by human flesh and blood;
By the Spirit of our God
Was the Word of God made flesh,
Woman’s offspring, pure and fresh.

Wondrous birth! O wondrous Child
Of the virgin undefiled!
Though by all the world disowned,
Still to be in heaven enthroned.

From the Father forth He came
And returneth to the same,
Captive leading death and hell
High the song of triumph swell!

Thou, the Father’s only Son,
Hast over sin the victory won.
Boundless shall Thy kingdom be;
When shall we its glories see?

Brightly doth Thy manger shine,
Glorious is its light divine.
Let not sin o’ercloud this light;
Ever be our faith thus bright.

Praise to God the Father sing,
Praise to God the Son, our King,
Praise to God the Spirit be
Ever and eternally.

The following is a poem by Malcolm Guite. He's taken it upon himself to write seven sonnets corresponding to the seven "Oh Great" antiphons or prayers that the church has traditionally prayed during Advent. Here is his explanation for the project. I think it's quite wonderful. I encourage you to read--or even better, listen to--all his sonnets.

O Adonai

Unsayable, you chose to speak one tongue,

Unseeable, you gave yourself away,

The Adonai, the Tetragramaton

Grew by a wayside in the light of day.

O you who dared to be a tribal God,

To own a language, people and a place,

Who chose to be exploited and betrayed,

If so you might be met with face to face,

Come to us here, who would not find you there,

Who chose to know the skin and not the pith,

Who heard no more than thunder in the air,

Who marked the mere events and not the myth.

Touch the bare branches of our unbelief

And blaze again like fire in every leaf.

ADVENT DEVOTIONALS

Bliss Lemmon, woodcut

I have become a big fan of the congregational practice of an Advent Devotional. By no means do I think it's an easy undertaking, as you can see from the note I wrote to our church. Nor do I think there is only way to produce a solid Devotional. As my dad would say when I was a kid, De todo hay en la viña del Señor. Roughly translated: there's a little bit of everything in the Body of Christ. But when it comes to a practice that promotes a richly active way for members of a congregation to participate in the season of Advent, I can't think of a better one than a congregationally produced Devotional.

Here is a sample of Devotionals produced by congregations around the country (and in Canada too). If your church did one, or if you know of a church that did, please mention it in the comments.

1. All Saints Church (Anglican) Durham, NC.

2. Christ the King Presbyterian, Raleigh, NC.

3. Eastbrook Church High School Ministry, Milwaukee, MN.

4. Regent Colleget Advent Reader (while not congregational, still offers a helpful model for how it can be done well).

5. Grace Church, Bellingham, WA.

6. The Village Church, Dallas, TX.

7, All Souls Church, Charlottesville, VA.

8. Providence Church, Austin, TX.

9. Second Baptist Church, Liberty, MO.

10. The Gathering Church, Durham, NC.

11. Liberti Fairmont Church, Philadelphia, PA.

12. Christ Church Anglican, Austin, TX

13. Park Slope Presbyterian Church, Brooklyn, NY.

In Memoriam: Orlando DeAcutis (October 1921 - November 2011)

2011-12-07T12:19:00.001-08:00

(This past Thursday we buried my grandfather, my last remaining grandparent, in Dallas, Texas. As far as Christian funerals go, it was a good one. We wept for things that deserved a good cry and we laughed in remembrance of things that warranted a happy response. This is the eulogy I gave during the funeral service. It was wonderful to share this experience with my family. It was also very stirring to witness the Marine Corps guard fire its three volleys in his honor at the interment. I have a feeling it will take me several months to properly process his loss, but I'm grateful for a family that will share this process with me and give me permission to do it well.)

December 8, 2011

Dallas, Texas

A Eulogy

When I was four or five years old, I remembersitting on the toilet lid in my granddad's bathroom watching him shave. For the occasion he almost always wore a white t-shirt. I remember how his skinglistened with an olive oil tint and how his Roman nose took command of hisface in the way that any good Italian took command of anything--with aself-assured confidence, like a Joe DiMaggio at the baseball plate or a FrankSinatra on the silver screen. The bathroom, to my mind, was impossibly narrow,overrun by my grandmother's pink and cream cosmetic accessories, and mygrandfather assumed an impossibly large place in it.

Lathering his face with a thick froth of shavingcream, he would cut across his cheeks and chin with a thick metal razor. He cutcarefully but not fussily. The cuts were always clean and efficient, and I'mguessing that the engineer in him wouldn't want it any other way.

My grandfather did not allow me to interrupt him. Icould watch but I was not to interfere with a man's duty. This was man's work.

Dallas, Texas, autumn 1974

Part of me was afraid of my granddad. He had been acolonel in the Marines. His arms were muscly, and at 6'3" he seemedto always tower forbiddingly over me. He drank beer. He trimmed his lawn justso. He managed his finances punctiliously. He bluntly announced his opinions.And even as a kid I always felt that he kept at bay, perhaps just beneath thesurface, a reserve of powerful emotions, some of them terrifying. He was my granddad, yes. He was my mom'sdad. How much more intimate and normal could that be? Yet as Iwatched him shave, with nothing less than the kind of unqualified awe that alittle boy could have for his granddad, he was more mythic figure than homeygrandfather.

Yet there was also this. Behind the statuesque figure that was myItalian grandfather was a very tender man who loved his grandchildren with a commitment to invest in their lifelong wellbeing.

Granddad paid for Christine, Stephanie and me to getswim lessons in Guatemala.

Granddad gave money for us to take music classes inBannockburn, Illinois.

He bought Christine a computer when she returnedfrom England after her first year of college.

He made it possible for Stephanie to take ballet lessons in middle school.

He taught me to love the Dallas Cowboys, beginningin 1979.

During my senior year of college I passed theForeign Service exam and had driven up to Dallas on my own in order toparticipate in a full day of interviews with officers who worked with the StateDepartment. I knew my granddad was proud of me; I wanted him to be proudof me. I woke up early on a Wednesday morning in my grandparent’s house. As Igot dressed I could smell the smoky fragrance of sausage patties floating in fromthe kitchen. They were my favorite breakfast food. They still are.

When I walked into the kitchen I saw something I'dnever seen before and never saw again. My granddad was preparing a lunch forme. With meticulous care, he placed a sandwich, an apple, some chips and acandy bar in a paper sack. He wanted to make sure I ate well that day. Hewanted me to do well. The gesture represented a small but significant form of lovefor my granddad.

This past September, right around the time ourdaughter was born, granddad sent a generous sum of money to Phaedra and me.With the frequent challenges that we have faced since Blythe was born, I don'tknow what we would have done without his gift. Not a week has gone by this fallwhen we haven't thanked God for granddad.

Christmas 1973

In years to come we will be telling Blythe allabout her great-granddad, who, when he met her over Skype in late October, hisone and only time to see her, he immediately launched into the Bing Crosbysong, You must have been a beautiful baby, you must have been a wonderfulchild. He sang those two lines over and over, and with the dementia thathad recently taken over his memory, he looped back to the song throughout theentire course of our conversation. Phaedra and I received it as his finalblessing to Blythe.

While it was clear to me as a little boy that I wasnot to interrupt granddad's morning shave, this didn't mean I was leftun-involved. Even then granddad invested in my education. While I watched,granddad would narrate what he was doing--shaving cream here, the razor justso, a clean face washed down with cold water, not hot, and a splash of musky after-shaveto make grandmother happy.

Granddaddy, thank you. Thank you for investing inall of us grandkids and great-grandkids. Thank you for being so veryChrist-like in this manner. As someone who carries your name, this is a part ofyour character that I wish to emulate, with my own kidsand grandkids. It is a part that makes me very proud of you, granddaddy, andthat I think would make you proud too.

Granddad and grandmother with my mom and uncle

Uncle John, myself and granddad

PS: There is a strong stirring in me today to see my granddad on the other side of the veil. Come, Lord Jesus, come.

The Psalms and the Re-ordering of our Emotions

2011-12-01T06:17:00.001-08:00

I'm posting here a summary of sorts of my second talk at Tyndale College. If you go here, you'll see a video of the event, "Faith Talk Lectures in Christian Spirituality," plus links to the audio recordings.

Seven resources I would recommend in light of the topic are:

1. Jeremy Begbie, "Faithful Feelings: Music and Emotions in Worship," in Resonant Witness: Conversations Between Music and Theology.

2. Matthew A. Elliot, Faithful Feelings: Rethinking Emotion in the New Testament.

3. Peter Scazzero, The Emotionally Healthy Church.

4. Thomas Merton, Praying the Psalms.

5. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Psalms: Prayerbook of the Bible.

6. John D. Witvliet, The Biblical Psalms in Christian Worship: A Brief Introduction & Guide to Resources.

7. John Calvin’s “Foreword [or Preface] to the Psalter,” translated by Charles Garside, in John Calvin: Writings on Pastoral Piety, ed. Elsie Anne McKee, Classics of Western Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 2001).

(By the way, the entire All Saints Church Advent Devotional can be found here.)

Here, then, the precis of my talk, and in the helter-skelter of this season, may you find the psalms to be a constant companion to guide, comfort, order and perhaps even correct all that you will feel, alone or with others, over the next few weeks.

The Psalms and the reordering of our emotions
… Theologian Jeremy Begbie writes: “our emotional lives are messy… [they’re] tangled, they come and go, they jump out at us at odd times,” and we find ourselves alternately governed by them or petrified by them. Boys are taught to shut down their feelings, while girls are affirmed for their expression of the affections yet, according to recent studies, tend to experience more embarrassment, guilt, shame, sadness and distress than boys.

Each of you of course has your own story. Some of you may feel grateful for your family; others of you may feel embarrassed about them. Some of you may feel confident in your faith, while others of you may be doubting it. Some of you may be worried about your future or feel particularly alive at the moment or wrestling with depression. The fact that few of us have ever heard a sermon on the theological importance of our emotions probably doesn’t help matters. The fact that our society sends a steady stream of confused signals about the emotions only exacerbates our search for well-being.

How then should we as Christians think about the emotions? What place should we give them in our lives? Is there a positive role for them to play in our lives—a formative role rather than a passive or pejorative one? And what kind of help might the arts offer us?

What I’d like to suggest to you today is this: It is not when we let our emotions do whatever “they will do” that we are free. When we do that, in fact, we get into trouble. We lash out, we sulk, we envy, we covet, we resent--often in frightfully automatic ways.

Instead it is when we allow Christ to order our emotions by his Spirit that we are free. And God has given us the poetry of the psalms to aid us in this work. In the singing of the psalms, in fact, we get a taste of what it means to have our emotions ordered to the kind of true humanity that characterizes Christ’s life.

Let me explain what I mean... (listen here for the rest).

First Sunday of Advent: A Time to Begin Again

2011-11-27T05:32:00.001-08:00

"Joyful Mystery #1: Annuncation," oil/canvas, Jim Janknegt

Yet even as time begins in grace, so God in His covenant offers again to humanity the time of grace. In such a grace time does not flee but flows, it is not empty but fulfilled.

-- Karl Barth

Today is the beginning of the year.

Today, not the Gregorian calendar or the academic calendar, or even the cupidity-marred NBA calendar, is when Christians around the world mark the beginning of annual time and therefore the beginning of a new round of becoming conformed to the life of Christ.

Today we begin again the work of deconstruction and reconstruction that comprise the pilgrimage of the liturgical calendar. And, yes, today, not the feverish, mercenary, mushy and godawfully noisy next few weeks, is the most wonderful time of the year.

For Christians, Thanksgiving/Football/pre-Black-Friday Thursday means little. January 1st, or the day we recover from festal hangovers, means nothing. December 25 means something but only in an alternate universe. Cyber Monday, as a "made up holiday," is just plain pernicious. But for Christians, the imitation of Christ means everything and therefore we begin where Christ begins: at the Annunciation. More properly we begin with the prophets from long ago, but they too enter into the cosmic time that characterizes the overshadowing work of the Holy Spirit in Mary and at the beginning of creation.

What is announced in Gabriel's speech is that all beginnings and all endings will be entirely reoriented around one person, not the Caesar or the American Consumer, but the God-Man Jesus Christ.

As Christians, we will begin again and again and again at Advent, but not in a vicious cycle of reincarnation. We'll begin again and again in a series of beginnings that entail a telos, or ultimate purpose. We'll begin again not so that we can end in the exhausted arms of TGIF. We'll begin again so that we can end in the final purposes of God for his people: a perfect sabbath rest and the thoroughgoing renewal of the heavens and the earth.

That's why I love Advent. That's why I sorely need Advent. I need it to reorient my sense of what is up and what is down. I need it to re-attune my notion of what it means to go "forwards" and what it means to go "backwards." I need it as a yoke of timely discipleship.

I've had no discernible rhythm the past 11 weeks. My days have begun at 4 AM, at 7 AM, at 11 AM and, yes, at 11 PM. I'm worried whether I'll end my program on time. I'm behind on so many projects, both at home and at school. We're perpetually late to doctor's appointments and Lord knows when we'll get to church on time again. We feel like sad Texas tumbleweeds, tossed about by one urgent need after another, day after wearying day.

Advent reminds us what time it really is. Now is the time to wait. Now is the time to be simple and quiet. Now is the time to fast, perhaps to give an extra alms to a friend in need. Now is the time to repent and to relinquish.

Now is the time to begin again, not alone, but with others, and most importantly with the company of saints across space and throughout history and with Christ himself as our sweet, faithful Shepherd, who protects his sheep from harm and provides them everything they need.

Now is the time to entrust to God our feelings that we've been crushed under by time the past three months, lost time, unrecoverable time, miserable and painful time, even hopeless time, and join the goodly, perhaps also bedraggled, pilgrimage of saints who begin with Christ again.

And again, thank God.

The All Saints Church Advent Devotional

Unfortunately we encountered a number of glitches along the way and have had to settle for a two-part release of the Devotional. If you go here, you'll find the first week of the Devotional. We'll post the whole Devotional next week.

I'll include here one part of the Introduction. It's a new element to the ASC Devotional and a part I think I'm most excited about. But do see the rest (we're very pleased with the outcome) and consider printing it out and allowing it to become another aid to your devotional journey through Advent.

As editors, we have added a new element to this year’s Devotional. In the spirit of Richard Foster’s Devotional Classics, we have written daily exercises to accompany each reflection, excluding those that come from non-All Saints members (St. Augustine, for example!). These “exercises” have a practical aim. They are intended to offer the reader an opportunity to respond in some active, relational or spiritual way to what they have read.

In this way, the hope is that we’ll become not only hearers of the Word but also doers. Hopefully, too, it’ll be a fun way to engage the reflections throughout the course of our day. Principally, the desire is to see Christ’s life seep itself more deeply into the “changes and chances” of our life.

Retreat for Ministers to Artists: March 1-4, 2012!

2011-11-18T07:06:00.001-08:00

"Circle Bluff," Erik Newby

Good people: year four of our retreat for those who feel called to minister to artists has been officially confirmed by the Laity Lodge. I am officially thrilled. Thrrrrriled. See details below. Here is a stunning photographic rendition of Laity Lodge by Erik Newby, just in case you'd forgotten what went down.

Laity Lodge Time lapse from Erik Newby on Vimeo.

WHO?
For this retreat we have invited four speakers to address our group: Charlie Peacock (writer-musician-producer), Andi Ashworth (writer, cook, gardener, hospitality maven), Ginger Geyer (writer-visual artist) and Sandra Organ-Solis (contemporary ballerina, choreographer, director of SODC). Please see bios below.

WHAT?
Each will share with the group "5 They Wish They Had Been Told When They First Started Off as Artists" and "3 Practices That Enable Them to Stay Healthy as Artists and as Persons." I'll be giving them more details about these tasks, but my hope is that this will generate a good deal of insight into the care of artists especially in light of the fact that all four of our speakers have established a long career as mature artists (though I imagine they might even share moments of immaturity along the way). Also, all four have spent a considerable number of years investing in younger artists.

FOR WHOM?
We invite all folks who feel called to minister to artists and who seek to shepherd them well. If you sense a strong desire to promote the well-being of artists, to aid their integration, to encourage their flourishing, then this retreat is for you. Whether you serve artists in the church, or in a para-church organization, in an educational setting or as a volunteer, we welcome you. You may have years of experience, or you may be newly starting out. Either way, you will benefit from this time spent with kindred friends.

THE MUSICIANS WILL BE WHO?
The Credo Trio. We are pleased to welcome two members of Credo Trio to lead us in worship. The Credo Trio was established as the ensemble-in-residence at the Credo Chamber Music Festival in 2008. The trio has performed extensively across the United States, holding performance and teaching residencies from Boston to Los Angeles. The Credo Trio has become known for their ability to form relationships through music and their passion to live this out in their personal lives as well as on the stage. See their site here.

DETAILS?
To register, go here.

And please pass this along to anyone you know who might be interested. We'd love to meet as many of our kindred as possible.

BIOS:

Charlie Peacock:

Charlie is an singer-songwriter, pianist, record producer, session musician and author. While growing up in California, Peacock was inspired by John Coltrane and began playing the piano. After completing his education, Peacock formed a band and began a career as a professional musician. His albums include, Love Press Ex-Curio and Arc of the Circle (Runway). Peacock has been part of the creative team for several successful songs and albums including Amy Grant's "Every Heartbeat" (1991), Switchfoot's "Dare You to Move" (2003) and the The Civil Wars' album Barton Hollow in 2011. [Yes, I unashamedly pilfered this from Wiki.]

See this write-up of Charlie. I couldn't resist using this photograph. It's too good. But here's a cooler one.

Andi Ashworth:

A native Californian, Andi has lived in Nashville, Tennessee with her family since 1989. Andi is a writer (author of Real Love for Real Life: The Art and Work of Caring), gardener, cook, a lover of good books.Andi partners with her musical husband, Charlie Peacock, in the non-profit work of Art House America. The Art House America mission is to contribute to the making of artists and artful people who become highly imaginative and creative culture makers, who continue to mature spiritually, love well, and make known the kingdom of God.

Andi and Charlie's home, the Art House, a one-hundred-year-old, renovated country church provides the setting for their work, which includes owning and operating a recording studio, and running award-winning music/film production and publishing companies.Andi is the key architect of the nurturing environment so characteristic of the Art House and its hospitality. The Ashworths have two grown children, and two grandchildren, who have named them Honey and Papa.

See this lovely interview with Andi.

Ginger Geyer:
Ginger grew up in Springdale, Arkansas, where her artistic talent was nurtured by her family, community and the Ozarks scenery. She studied art under Donald Roller Wilson at the University of Arkansas/Fayetteville, and then transferred to SMU in Dallas. There she earned her BFA in painting, studied sculpture under James Surls, printmaking with Larry Scholder, art history with Annemarie Carr, Mary Vernon, and Bill Jordan, and went on to complete a MFA in museum education with Nancy Berry. She met Rick Geyer while student teaching at St. Mark’s School and they married in 1977. Her thirteen year career in art museum work began in the conservation lab at the Kimbell, which led to the organization of a large exhibition at the Dallas Museum of Art that introduced the public to the art, science, and ethics of art conservation.

See her website here.

Sandra Organ-Solis:

Sandra was a soloist with Houston Ballet and its first African-American female ballerina, leaving the company after fifteen seasons to work as a guest artist, independent choreographer, and become Artistic Director of Sandra Organ Dance Company (SODC), a contemporary ballet ensemble in Houston, Texas, founded in 1997. She was taught by Valerie Roche in her hometown of Omaha, Nebraska, in the Royal Academy of Dancing syllabus, and graduated valedictorian from Duchesne Academy before entering Houston Ballet Academy as a scholarship student.

Her international career with the Houston Ballet encompassed a diverse range of roles in the classical and contemporary realm, from choreographers Ben Stevenson, Frederick Ashton, George Balanchine, and Sir Kenneth MacMillian to Christopher Bruce, James Kudelka and Paul Taylor. She is on the faculty of Houston Ballet Academy, and the Houston High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. For her choreography, she has been awarded an Individual Artist’s Grant from the Cultural Arts Council Houston/Harris County as well as the Monticello scholarship and National Choreography award in the Southwest by Regional Dance America, having choreographed nearly 80 ballets in the last 10 years.

For the rest of her bio, go here.

Summary & Video of Tyndale Talks

2011-11-07T12:58:00.000-08:00

Stanley Spencer, "The Last Supper"

If you go here, you'll find a video summary of my participation in Tyndale's "Faith Talk lectures in Christian Spirituality." You'll also find podcasts for each talk. For what it's worth, it was fun to be back in Canada.

In a series of entries, I'll post summaries of each talk. In this entry I've included a précis of my first talk: "The Spirit of the Matter: The Holy Spirit and the Making and Remaking of our Bodies."

Tomorrow our conference begins in earnest and I'm excited to see what God will bring about in his kindness to us.

Oh, and today is my dad's birthday. Happy 71st, dad! You don't look a day over 48. I hope Germany is treating you well right now. A shout-out from the fourth floor of the Perkins Library.

THE SPIRIT OF THE MATTER

… Good friends, I tell you nothing new when I say that we live in a world of imperfect and broken bodies. You know this. I know this. And we each make the best of it, though we often perhaps find ourselves making the worst of it.

Like John Candy, the painful feeling that we might not be loved because of our body leads us to playfully pretend it does not matter. It leads us, that is, to minimize our broken bodies. In other cases, like my friend Mark, the knowledge that no remedy exists for our physical suffering often leads to a secret wish to die. It leads us, that is, to reject our bodies.

Minimizing and rejecting: this is what humans have been doing with bodies since the fall.

Christians, it must be said, haven’t fared much better in their responses to the physical body. At the extreme we have devolved to heretical views: Marcionite and gnostic, for starters.

At a less extreme level, we have enlisted the services of the Holy Spirit to argue for the superiority of the immaterial realm over the material one. We have believed that the Spirit is responsible for “spirit” work but not exactly for “material” work, and we have fretted about our too too sullied fleshy bodies and perhaps wished we could be disembodied spirits instead; or at least Brangelina.

So the focused question I wish to pose in this talk is the following: Have we in fact read the Holy Spirit rightly here? Is “spiritual” work necessarily opposed to “material” work? Might there be a better way to perceive the Spirit’s relation to our physical bodies than perhaps is often done? And what might the arts offer to this question?

My answer: The Holy Spirit has everything to do with our bodies. When you think Holy Spirit, think physicality, think corporeality, and you’ll be thinking biblically. If we’re going to view the Spirit in the light of Christ (which I believe we should), then we’re not looking at an escape from materiality, we’re looking at the preservation, healing and liberation of the material creation so that it can be what the Triune God has eternally purposed for it.

And what do the arts do? Among other things, they come along and deepen our embodied experience of life.

Happy Birthday, dad!

Workshops for the Anglican Worship conference

2011-11-02T12:05:00.000-07:00

“Duties of religion performed by whole societies of men, ought to have in them accordinge to our power a sensible excellencie, correspondent to the majestie of him whome we worship.” —Richard Hooker in Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (1597)

We're one week away from our conference, "Anglican Worship: A Conversation on Liturgy, Formation, Mission and Art." I'm excited to meet everyone who is coming. I've talked with our speakers and I think some very important work will be done at this event.

This will be the next-to-last entry I post on the conference. I'll write one more after the conference. In the meantime I've listed the workshops that we'll be offering and I'm only sorry that I can't be at them all.

Here are the key questions that will drive the discussion.

Here are commending words from pastors and theologians. Here are commending words from artists and worship leaders. What occasions this conference is here.

To register, go here. $99 for regular registration. $49 for artists, worship leaders, church planters and students. There is still time to register, so sign yourself up and come hang out with a sharp group of folks in an autumnal setting in North Carolina.

Here is biographical information on the workshop leaders.

THE WORKSHOPS
Ars est celare artem – “To conceal the art is the art.” | Martha Giltinan - Liturgical leadership is rarely thought of as a performance art, but there is an art and craft to both leading liturgy and preparing for this task. This workshop will explore liturgical leadership and the craft of serious preparation from Augustine to Arcade Fire.

Context, the Calendar and Creative Collaboration: the “How” of Incorporating the Visual Arts into Congregational Worship Life | Shannon Sigler - This workshop will look at the practical side of engaging the visual arts in your worship setting. We will discuss the importance of knowing your local congregational context, entering the Story of God through the Church Calendar; and finally, we will explore options, images and resources for incorporating the visual arts into different aspects of your congregation’s worship life.

Co-creative Community | Thomas McKenzie - Imagine a community formed around Christ in which creative people find their voice, exercise their gifts, and love the world through the talents God has given them. Imagine accountants, mechanics, and home-schoolers responding to the co-creative Spirit within. Imagine a church that values artists as people and art as something other than propaganda. This workshop offers practical suggestions based on real-life experience for making these imaginations a reality.

Culture, Vocation, and Mission | Chris Cairns - What does it mean for Christians to be “salt” and “light?” How can we cast a vision for vocation as mission? This workshop will explore ways that a local congregation can help parishioners undergo vocational assessment for mission while casting a parish-wide vision for engagement in culture-making.

How Liturgy Forms Disciples in the Local Church | Steve Breedlove - Is liturgical more than simply our style of worship? This workshop will explore how liturgical worship is at the heart of an Anglican church – particularly how it serves as the core of catechesis and the forming of disciples. We’ll look at how a congregation is anchored and oriented around liturgy.

Making Any Space Sacred | Jed Roseberry and Amy Waggoner - It’s not often that the space available to your church plant feels like sacred space. There are practical ways to make any room a welcoming environment that allows your congregation to engage in worship and to adapt your worship in liturgically faithful ways that can simplify Sunday mornings for any church plant. Some topics we will discuss are room layout, crowd flow, lighting, projection, sound, focal points, the use of color and space, and the challenges of using unconventional worship spaces.

The Spirit of God in the Creative Arts | David Clifton - A vision for Christian artists to once again return to the centre of cultural influence in society. “Art is not limited if we allow the Holy Spirit to enter.” John Tavener “Art is a lie that tells the truth.” Pablo Picasso This workshop will explore the calling of Christian Artists and look at how God is at work in the creative arts.

The Scourge of Screens: Technology and Anglican Worship | David Roseberry and Daniel Adkinson - For many Christians in North America, screens – flickering pixels – have become the focal point of the worship service. Whether it is depicting liturgical elements, song lyrics, video, or even a distant preacher, screens have become a way of life for many Christians. This workshop will look at the role technology should (or should not) play in an Anglican Worship service.

Seeing God and Singing the Sanctus with Isaiah | Jo Bailey Wells - Isaiah 6:1-7 contains a stunning vision of the Holy Lord upon his throne. The Prophet sees the Lord and hears the mighty cry: Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of Hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory! This workshop will explore the implications of this key passage for our liturgical imagination and understanding of Anglican Worship.

CIVA and something Steve Jobs' sister said

2011-10-31T08:36:00.000-07:00

"Miriam, Virgin Mother," by Bruce Herman, CIVA board member

John Witvliet prophesied that, once baby came, I'd be blogging less. John is a true prophet. He's right. I'm going to be blogging less for the foreseeable future, and John deserves a fine robe and a staff that makes miraculous things happen. Oh, wait, he already does that: he's the director of CICW.

This past week I've spent an inordinate amount of time away from my wife and infant child. Good grief. Who knew a man's heart could constantly and perhaps uncontrollably expand, and nearly break, for love of his daughter. I'm ready to be home. At the moment I'm taking advantage of Toronto International Airport's way cool free wi-fi to jot down a few notes about my visit to NYC. Next I'll share notes from the lectures I gave at Tyndale College in Toronto.

CIVA has an exciting future ahead.
If you're a believer visual artist, I'm here to tell you: CIVA is for you. If you're a professional contemporary visual artist: CIVA is for you. If you're a gallery director or curator: CIVA is for you. If you're a teacher or critic or collector: CIVA is for you.

And, yes, if you're a church leader of any sort whatsoever: CIVA is for you.

You can get a precis of CIVA's history here, but suffice to say, CIVA is an organization that's serious about art and serious about faith. Having spent the past weekend in meetings with the board, roaming around New York City from MOBIA to All Angels Church, from Jersey City to Queens, I have a great sense of hope about the organization's future.

To the two groups that have every good reason to be nervous about CIVA--professional artists and church leaders--and, yes, you should be nervous--I am here to tell you, Hermes-like: "Stay alert. Don't give up on CIVA. Watch what is about to come down the pipeline. CIVA's best days are ahead. Better yet: join us and help us take the organization into a vibrant, muscly, fruitful place." (What CIVA has accomplished thus far, over the past three decades or so, is outstanding. Full stop. But according to the testimony of folks who've been with the organization from the beginning, CIVA is entering into a new, and very exciting, season as a non-profit organization.)

The 2013 biennial conference will take place in Chicago, home to some of the most arresting architecture in America, a vibrant group of churches, outstanding museums and Batman. It'll be killer.

At some point in the near future, God-willing, a conference devoted exclusively to the question of the church's relation to the visual arts will take place. By "church" I mean the church in its worship, community, discipleship, service and mission to the world in the broadest and most concrete sense of these terms. By "visual arts" I mean anything you could ever imagine falling under that medium. Stay tuned.

If you want to join a growing community of visual artists, check this out.

If you're a church who has wanted to exhibit really beautiful visual artwork, check this out.

If you're wondering whether CIVA's board is comprised of sharp, humble, servant-hearted, energetic, far-sighted, well-connected men and women, the answer is: yes. Most definitely yes. See their bios here. The organization is in the hands of good leaders, if I may be so bold.

Am I indulging in a bit of hyperbole in this blog entry?

Not really. Not if I'm honest.

My only regret about my trip to NYC is that I didn't take enough photos. This subway-riding mug of me and Brian Moss is as good as it gets.

Something Steve Jobs' sister said is sticking with me all day
"I grew up as an only child, with a single mother. Because we were poor and because I knew my father had emigrated from Syria, I imagined he looked like Omar Sharif. I hoped he would be rich and kind and would come into our lives (and our not yet furnished apartment) and help us. Later, after I’d met my father, I tried to believe he’d changed his number and left no forwarding address because he was an idealistic revolutionary, plotting a new world for the Arab people.

Even as a feminist, my whole life I’d been waiting for a man to love, who could love me. For decades, I’d thought that man would be my father. When I was 25, I met that man and he was my brother."

-- Mona Simpson, "A Sister's Eulogy for Steve Jobs"

Advice to Advent Devotional writers

2011-10-17T15:46:00.000-07:00

Phaedra Jean Taylor, "Annunciation"

At the moment I'm working with my good friend Tanner Capps to co-edit our church's Advent Devotional. It's been great to partner with him. I submitted a piece to last year's Devotional and I've contributed an essay to the devotional that Regent College put out a few years back, and it's nice to be able to serve our church, All Saints Anglican, in this capacity.

I'm copying here a note (slightly abridged) that I sent to our writers. I share it for two reasons.

One, I hope it encourages you to consider trying something similar in your own church. It's such a great way to "build up the church," especially in an intensively particular fashion. I also believe it's an excellent way to get the arts involves. While it appeals primarily to the written and the visual arts, I could envision the other arts being brought in after the fact--an Advent hymn that responds to a given reflection, a dance that evokes the theme of the week, a Scripture-telling that enlivens the Scripture of the day.

Two, writing these reflections is actually hard work. You'd think it'd be easy. 300-500 words on the idea of waiting? We do it all the time--how hard could it be to write it up? Quite hard, I think.

If you care about the quality of the writing, and if you're willing to put in more than a few editing hours, then you'll ask your writers to bring their best. First drafts won't due. These essays are for public service. We owe it to our congregations to offer them a fourth and fifth draft, if not a ninth one. It goes without saying that the season of Advent merits a long rumination. Off-the-cuff reflections exhibit a lack of respect for readers and fail ipso facto to penetrate Advent's mystery.

Before I copy the note, here are the four themes that Tanner and I chose. We wanted something to create a coherent feel to the Devotional and we felt that these would be broad enough but also concrete enough.

1. Light and Darkness – November 27 – December 3
2. Waiting and Journeying – December 4 – December 10
3. Joy and Sorrow – December 11 – December 17
4. Arriving and Hoping – December 18 – December 24

We're excited to see the final product. We're praying as we go along of course--praying for the writers, praying for the process of preparation, for the design and printing, and for folks who will be reading it throughout Advent.

Oskar Kokoschka, "Annunciation"

It might be too late to get something like this started in your own congregation. Perhaps not. Advent arrives on November 27. But I'd encourage you to consider giving it a try next year. And make sure you start the process around June! Starting in the fall makes for a stressful process. Trust me, we know. As my good friend Kate Van Dyke reminds me often: "You can only get two out of three: good, cheap or fast." We'll certainly do everything to make this Devotional good and trust that the Spirit will guide us throughout and take responsibility for whatever fruit is born from it.

NOTE TO WRITERS AT ALL SAINTS ANGLICAN

As you begin ruminating on your essay, I want to share with you a few thoughts. I don't underestimate how difficult it is to write a good reflection, so please know that we are committed to praying for you and to encouraging you in this process.

Some of these thoughts may be familiar to you, others perhaps not.

1. The first thing to aim for is concrete writing. Make your reflection as concrete as possible. Avoid abstractions, as tempting as they might be.

For example, "I hate waiting at stop lights" is concrete.

"The Christian life is about waiting" is abstract.

If you're looking for some inspiration, check out Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas. It's an excellent model for a devotional.

2. Related to this, look for robust, particular imagery rather than general one.

This is particular: "Sitting in my office at school, I am completely cut off from any sense of whether it is day or night outside. I have two lights that I can manipulate: a fluorescent light and an incandescent lamp. If I turn them off, it's creepy dark. On certain days it's unnerving, other days it's depressing, and I wonder if it is disrupting certain biological rhythms that God intended to keep me healthy."

This is a general statement of the same reality: "Light and dark are themes in Scripture and they're really important."

True, but, nyeah, uninspiring; and, worst of all, completely forgettable.

The more particular you allow your reflection to be, the more universal it will become for the rest of us. Use vivid stories. Play with strong metaphors. Keep it "earthy." Let it all arise out of the text and out of your response to the text.

3. In that light, allow your essay to be a personal, affective wrestling with the theme. Try to move away from a cognitive exercise exclusively. Instead of standing outside of text, stand inside of it, feeling its tensions, asking questions of it that perhaps you've yet to ask, probing, sensing, following it down into its mystery. Understand the text well, yes.

Understand the theme biblically, for certain. But don't spend too much time re-telling the Scriptural text in your essay. We've likely read it already or will read it in light of the lectionary readings for the day. Instead engage the story as a kind of dialogue or, better, trialogue between yourself, the Scripture and the triune God.

4. Lastly, try to avoid "preachy" language--the shoulds and oughts and the invisible, sneaky "three points." Our reflections aren't intended to result in a sermon. They're intended to be an invitation for readers to explore the complex mystery of Christ's incarnation. Allow your study or exegesis of the texts to form the backdrop instead of foreground of your reflection.

5. And do give yourself permission not to have to resolve any tension or question by the end of your reflection. It's ok for us as readers to be prodded to think and feel deeper. It's good for our personal and spiritual health to wrestle more deeply with the implications of Advent in our own lives. We'll be better for it--and we'll also probably remember it long after we've read your piece.

That's it for now. We have every confidence that the final product, because of the Spirit's help, will result "in the glorification of God and the sanctification of his people," to quote to Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy.

Word count limit is 300-500.

The deadline is October 28.

We'll send a few friendly reminder emails along the way. If you're not able to get us the reflection by the 28th, we'll have to move on without it. We're working with tight deadlines and we need time to edit, lay out the design, send to the printers and place it in the narthex on the first Sunday of Advent.

If we think your piece might need a little gentle editing, we'll let you know straightaway.

We trust that the Spirit of Christ will aid and illumine you in this task. As you listen to his voice, jot impressions down, scribble down the phrases the pop to mind, prayerfully discern what it is that Christ would have you say to his people. And do enjoy the process as much as possible.

Praise God for your faithful service to his church.

Blessings,

David for Tanner and the Advent Devotional Team

Jim Janknegt, "Joyful Mystery #1: Annunciation"

More Good Words on "Anglican Worship" conference + Why? + Why again? + 2 vids

2011-10-07T09:17:00.000-07:00

Crunching Jesus
John 6: 53-58

The communion bread is laid on my tongue
so gently. But I am ravenous; I want to gnaw
the whole loaf.

Already we know we are his body,
but taking in this crumb of the earth’s flesh, this sip
of its given blood, presses Incarnation into my flesh.

As imagination takes in the symbol
and the substance, we become more acutely
vessels filled with Christ.

Even as we step away from the altar
and out the church door, we keep living the liturgy
and the urge to Eat and Drink.

The wine burns still in my throat.
I have a pasty shred of bread stuck in my teeth. Oh,
how to feed the hunger and thirst of the world?

--Luci Shaw

Words from Artists and Worship Leaders
In this post I include words of commendation from artists and worship leaders on behalf of our November conference: "Anglican Worship: A Conversation on Liturgy, Formation, Worship and Art." They're very fine words by the way. (See other good words here. See two videos below.)

What (problematic) questions occasion this conference? They are these.

1. Is it missional to practice the "full" Anglican liturgy?

2. In what way exactly is it "contextual" to process the cross at the start of the service, genuflect, wear vestments, carry the gospel to the center of the congregation, confess sins, sing the psalms or the Alleluia or Gloria, preach the lectionary texts, recite the Creed or cross oneself?

3. How does the fullness of the liturgy--its words, actions and spaces--form a congregation?

4. How can church leaders facilitate this formation? What mistakes should they avoid?

5. How does it form us in counter-cultural ways: counter to the culture at large or counter to the culture of the congregation itself?

6. How do these musical forms form us: congregational singing, service music, cantor-led music, choral song, instrumental music and even "singing in the Spirit"?

7. How do they form us in distinct ways and contribute together to the "participation" of the people in worship?

8. How does the arrangement of the space and the art on the walls or the visual data of the chancel or the aesthetic aspect of the narthex and the external spaces of the church form us--and our neighbors too?

9. How can artists serve the church's worship?

10. And how again is all this missional?

These are the questions that God-willing we'll explore together on November 8-10 in Durham, North Carolina.

Who should come?
Not just pastors, church leaders and church planters, but also artists of all media, liturgists and lay people who love to worship. If you know anybody who might be interested in joining this conversation, encourage them to send an email to katieb (AT) anglican1000 (dot) org.

To register go here (regular price at $99, for students, artists and church planters at $49).

To find all info go here and here.

GOOD WORDS FROM ARTISTS AND WORSHIP LEADERS

“As a congregant but also a poet and worship leader in the Episcopal Church, I have found Anglican liturgy to be profoundly incarnational, involving body, mind and spirit. Everything about it--the music, the antiphonal prayers and chants, the vestments, the body movements of kneeling, standing, reverencing--leads us into Christ’s presence until the ultimate, the crunch of wafer and the taste of wine in our mouths, unites us with him in a more than merely physical way. Such worship is both personal and communal, demonstrating what is meant by ‘the body of Christ’.”

--Luci Shaw, Breath for the Bones: Art, Imagination & Spirit, Writer in Residence, Regent College

“Art has been present in all cultures throughout all time and cannot be seen as a luxury but rather as something that fulfills a deeply human need. Likewise, liturgy is not a luxury or a ritualistic add-on. Liturgy is the metaphoric and aesthetic embodiment of corporate worship itself. Closely examining these deeply intertwined aspects of our humanity is essential for our time. The renewal of our liturgy is the renewal of the church. We would be wise to join in on this conversation.”

-- Albert Pedulla, Visual Artist and board member for CIVA, Jersey City, NJ

“Some of the greatest artistic achievements in history have been produced out of a worshipful response to the richness and depth of God's word and His creation. For those of us who are artists and worship leaders, the opportunity to contemplate worship in its fullness will undoubtedly serve to spark new creative inspiration that can impact our own crafts as well as the communities around us.”

-- Dr. David E. Berry, DMA, The Juilliard School; Director of Music and Worship Arts, All Angels' Episcopal Church, NYC

“As a violinist from a non-liturgical background, I was used to giving "special numbers" that didn’t feel integrated into the service. My present experiences in liturgical settings have caused me to see how the liturgy helps us to meaningfully integrate artistic forms into the rhythm of the service. As a worship leader in an Anglican church plant, I am experiencing first hand how the liturgical narratives provide with me a foundation for artistic freedom that results in transforming moments for worshippers. This conference is an excellent chance to talk these things out.”

-- Rebecca Engstrom, violinist and Worship Arts Leader, Light of Christ Anglican Church in Kenosha, Wisconsin

“I am thrilled about this upcoming conference. I've been an evangelical song leader for a couple of decades and am fairly new to the Anglican Liturgy. The liturgy has opened up a whole new world for me as a church musician. I strongly encourage musicians and song leaders from all backgrounds to attend this conference.”

-- Fernando Ortega, musician and worship leader, Christ the King Anglican Church launched in Albuquerque, New Mexico

“At this pivotal time in the American Anglican church, it is vital that churches begin to think more deeply (and creatively) about the role of liturgy in corporate worship. Too often liturgy is either performed unthinkingly or completely discarded. I highly recommend this conference to anyone who worships in a liturgical tradition—or would like to!”

-- Anna Swynford, Assistant Director of Worship, The Falls Church, Virginia

And here are two kinds of Anglican music that I fully endorse.

My strategy for Comps

2011-10-03T07:54:00.000-07:00

Typing a kleine Tag und Nachtmusik of ideas

After recently sharing a few thoughts with Josh Leim, a fellow ThDer in NT, I figured I'd go ahead and post a longer version here. If they're helpful to others, great. For those unfamiliar with doctoral programs, comprehensive exams follow the period of course work (usually two years, sometimes three) and must be passed before you can proceed to the writing of the dissertation.

I realize everyone's situation will be particular--with respect to institutional arrangements, the expectation of supervisors and committee, personal disposition and station of life, for starters. This is what seems to be working for me thus far (even as I type this entire section with my left hand while I hold a sleepy-fussy Blythe in my right, sitting in my pajamas in the early hours of Sunday morning).

1. First, I made sure I read the material posted on the ThD page. Once I understood this, I then sent an email to our director.

2. In the email I asked a question for clarification. Would the exams be testing knowledge we'd acquired through course work and anticipating material we'd need to know for our dissertation, or would it primarily focus on material we'd learned in our courses? The answer was the latter. That was helpful because it provided me with one of the essential items I would be looking for throughout this experience: good boundary lines.

3. In consultation with my primary supervisor, Jeremy Begbie, I determined the categories for which I'd be examined. Corresponding to my primary, secondary and dissertation areas, they would be: "Theological Aesthetics," "Pneumatology" and "Liturgical Theology."

4. I then drafted a list of books and articles for each category. Knowing that I would eventually land somewhere between 50 and 75, I began with an excess of material, somewhere around 100. These constituted the material I felt I needed to know and wanted to know.

5. After sending this list to Jeremy and then also to Lester Ruth, my secondary supervisor, requesting their editorial eye, I trimmed the list to around 70ish, give or take a journal article. This is the material I would wrestle with, know, memorize and then argue pro or con in the exams.

6. While some students know their questions in advance (and that doesn't actually make the exam easier), Jeremy informed me that I would encounter my questions on the day of the exam. I would have 14 days within which to take all three exams.

7. Here then the first strategy. The exercises which this preparation involves are several. The first exercise involves knowing the material well. To that end I read the book or article, then summarize the material in the following fashion:

- The book's/article's thesis
- Key issues or ideas that the material raises
- Key critiques on my part (both pro and con)
- Key quotes

I write a summary for every book or article I read.

8. The second strategy moves beyond knowing the material to being able to put the material in my own words and to determine where I agree or disagree with it, and to discern how I might state or build the argument differently.

9. This second strategy leads logically to a third one: determining a large-scale thesis for each category. What do I think about theology and the arts? How do I think they ought to be related to each other? Which thinkers have done the best job in this task? What are the critical issues with respect to the data of Scripture, the data of creation and culture, the data of significant figures in church history (Irenaeus, St. Gregory, Aquinas, Calvin, Von Balthasar, Wolterstorff, etc) and how they have been played off each other, constructively, critically or otherwise? What methods have been employed, assumptions made, terms defined and audiences factored in explicitly or implicitly with regard to the arguments?

Those are the kinds of questions that matter, to my mind.

10. Instead of leaving these answers scattered across a ream of sheets and post-it notes and the back of my hand, I've decided to organize them in a way that profits me short term and long term. For each category I will write a "10 Theses" document.

11. For example, I've written a "10 Thesis on Liturgical Theology." Doing this provides two benefits. One, it forces me to decided what I believe with conviction and what I believe light-handedly. Two, it gives me a good sense of what I'll teach when the day comes. How do I see liturgical theology in particular, the corporate worship of the church in general? The document begins, "If Christian worship in its corporate, public form is trinitarian, then the following will hold true." Then I go on to make ten statements which I believe hold true, and I write two versions of it: an abridged and an unabridged version.

12. The abridged version I memorize by heart. If you wish, stop me at some point and make me recite my ten theses about corporate worship. It'll take me 4 minutes flat.

13. The unabridged version relates to my short- and long-term goals. In this version I follow each thesis with a "pro" and a "con" section. With each, I provide supporting material to justify my claims. I also identify which thinkers/writers play a significant role in clarifying my thinking on an issue. For instance, thesis #5 goes like this (assuming that corporate worship will be trinitarian):

"That it will be personal and communal because, through the Spirit, Christians are made actively to participate in the Son's communion with the Father."

Some of you will know exactly whose language I've confiscated here--James Torrance's in his masterful book, Worship, Community and the Triune God of Grace. Plus there's a dash of Simon Chan, an echo of Robert Taft and a nod to the methodological approaches of Wainwright and Witvliet. Anything less than this, I argue, makes it too easy for our worship, both theoretically and practically, to slip into binitarian or unitarian modes.

14. In short, the unabridged version of my "10 Theses" becomes the cheat sheet for the exam. While I don't know what I'll be asked, I do know what I think and believe about the subject and I have a reasonable sense of how my arguments will resonate with or part ways with my primary interlocuters.

15. All extracurricular activities this term have to serve the larger purposes of preparing for comps. I give three talks at Tyndale College (Toronto) in October, I give one talk at the Anglican Worship conference in November, and I may be traveling to NYC in early December for an Orthodox conference on beauty. All talks will dovetail with material related to my exams. It isn't an option otherwise.

While my original date for exams was late November, I've decided to shift them to early January. With the arrival of the lovely Ruby Blythe Marie, things have needed to shift. As always, family and the well-being of my soul take precedence in this enterprise. I commit to praying while I study and I ask friends to pray for me during this time of preparation. I try to stay focused. I give myself daily tasks as well as weekly goals. I write to-do lists. I trust God to guide me well.

And I take Stanley Hauerwas' advice to heart: put one brick on top of another, one brick per day, and you'll eventually have a house built.

Oh, and my office walls are plastered with summary notes and theses statements, along with St. Augustine and the Doctor Angelicus, bearing daily witness to me about my current vocation.

The 12 Days of Blythe

2011-09-23T19:08:00.000-07:00

1 . stands for one beautiful baby girl, Ruby Blythe Marie.

Art.

2 . stands for two tired but happy parents.

Going for a walk.

So tiny, so tender.

3 . stands for the three persons of the Trinity who watched over her birth.

Everywhere we go.

4 . stands for the floor at the UNC hospital on which she was born.

Day shift.

5 . stands for the floor on which we recovered.

Gently, gently.

6 . stands for the medical personnel involved in bringing Blythe to safe delivery.

Night shift.

It takes a village.

7 . stands for the number of grandchildren that my parents now have.

My blessed mother with me at four days old.

My blessed father with me at five days old.

8 . stands for the number that I counted every time Phaedra pushed during a contraction, and I counted to eight four times per contraction, Lord help us.

Deliberations.

Up, down, up, down.

9 . stands for the month on which Blythe was born.

La siesta perpetua.

10 . stands for the hour on which she was born.

Grandpa Wendler.

Mumsy Wendler.

11 . stands for the day on which she was born.

The little things.

12 . stands for a fresh clean baby.

Squeaky clean in ducky towel.

Today is Blythe's twelfth day of life and with wholehearted and happy sighs of "She really is our baby," we praise God from whom all blessings flow.

Good words on the Anglican Liturgy conference

2011-09-19T08:00:00.000-07:00

There's a lot of excitement around the planning of this conference, slated for November 8-10. I'm including here a few words of commendation that we've received recently. While these words come chiefly from pastors and academics, we have another round that will be coming from artists. We really want artists to come. They're essential to the objectives of the conference. If you have any questions, feel free to send an email to katieb (AT) anglican1000 (dot) org. You can register here. Regular price is $99. For students, artists and church planters, the fee is a steal at $49. For all info see here and here.

And you don't have to be Anglican to come or to benefit from the presentations and workshops.

While we're finalizing the workshop options, here are a few of the possibilities: "'Sacred Space' and Church Planting," "Liturgy and Discipleship," "Liturgy and Mission," "Anglo-Catholic and Charismatic: Both at the same time?" "Plumbing the Resources of Anglican Music," "Releasing Artists in the Service of the Liturgy," "Art, Mission and How Not To Do It Badly."

GOOD WORDS

"In today's Church culture, it would be hard to over-estimate the importance of thinking in fresh and practical ways about the relation between liturgy, formation, mission and the arts. A superbly conceived event with tremendous potential."

-- The Rev. Dr. Jeremy Begbie, Thomas A. Langford Research Professor of Theology, Duke Divinity School

“Anglican liturgy is being increasingly recognised as a powerful way to deepen our corporate worship and as an effective means of teaching the Christian faith. Here is an excellent opportunity to understand it more fully with leading thinkers and practitioners. I am sure it will enrich all the individuals that attend and the churches that they represent.”

-- The Very Rev. Dr. Justyn Terry, Dean and President, Associate Professor of Systematic Theology, Trinity School for Ministry

"This promises to be an excellent conference dealing with the very important intersection of worship, belief, and culture. These scholars know and live out the fundamental principle that the life of the church is not simply about understanding doctrine but about living out our faith in ways that engage each other and the world."

-- The Rev. Dr. Jonathan S. Riches, Associate Professor of Liturgics and Theology, Reformed Episcopal Seminary

“With apologies to Qoheleth, 'of the making of many conferences there is no end.' But this one is set to make a mark. Drawing upon a new generation of liturgists, the organizers have assembled a first-rate lineup of reflective practitioners who are poised to catalyze the next generation. We've needed something like this, and now here it is. One might even hope that it is the first of many such gatherings.”

-- Dr. Garwood P. Anderson, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Associate Professor of New Testament and Greek, Nashotah House Theological Seminary

“Ever heard it said: ‘It's not so much the Jews that kept the Sabbath but the Sabbath that kept the Jews’? I'd risk an echo: ‘It is not so much that Anglicans keep the prayer book as the prayer book keeps Anglicans’. It saves us from 'designer' worship through its time-honored norms, yet provides a bedrock from which to be infinitely creative and fresh.”

-- The Rev. Dr. Jo Bailey Wells, Associate Professor of the Practice of Christian Ministry and Bible, Director of Anglican Studies, Duke Divinity School

“Anglican liturgy has been adored, even idolized, and yet abused and misunderstood as well. We desperately need to better understand our wonderful prayer book heritage and how we can all be both formed in Christ as well as informed by His Holy Spirit through this great gift. I believe this conference will be a big help to us all.”

-- The Rev. Dr. John W. Yates, II, Rector, The Falls Church, Virginia

“This conference rightly reintroduces liturgy as an urgent pastoral and practical matter--the very form and heart of the Christian life. Faithful evangelism and "church growth" start here, in an ecumenical mode, conscious of the new opportunities occasioned by our shifting culture.”

-- Dr. Christopher Wells, Executive Director, The Living Church Foundation

Art in Public: a moral responsibility

2011-09-16T06:49:00.000-07:00

I'm working on a blog post tentatively titled, "A Top 20 from the First Week." While I catch up on my mental wherewithal, however, I'll mention here a book review I wrote for Comment magazine. This is the opening paragraph of the review. And I've included an interview with the author below.

"When power corrupts, poetry cleanses."
—John F. Kennedy, "Remarks at Amherst College upon Receiving an Honorary Degree, October 26, 1963"

"I say . . . he is not an artist. He is a jerk. And he is taunting the American people, just as others are . . . And I resent it."
—Senator Jesse Helms, speaking about contemporary visual artist Andres Serrano and his work, "Piss Christ"

Is government funding beneficial to artists and their publics, or would it be better for artists to compete in the economic marketplace without government support? Should government funding come "with no strings attached" or should it uphold standards of decency and social order? Are contemporary artists progressive agents of social change or are they a decadent menace to society? These are the questions that motivate the argument of Zuidervaart's latest contribution to philosophy, Art in Public: Politics, Economics, and a Democratic Culture.

GRIID TV Interview with Lambert Zuidervaart from Girbe Eefsting on Vimeo.

While we're waiting: a few thoughts

2011-09-08T14:56:00.000-07:00

THE PRAYER OF THE OX

Dear God, give me time.

Men are always so driven!

Make them understand that I can never hurry.

Give me time to eat.

Give me time to plod.

Give me time to sleep.

Give me time to think.
Amen.

(from Prayers from the Art and the Creatures' Choir by Carmen Bernos de Gasztold)

Her official due date was this last Saturday, September 3. I was hoping she might come on Labor Day, September 5, because then we could celebrate her arrival as a national holiday. She, her mother, and the federal government could always agree that labor was a good thing, worth a cake and a barbecue. But she didn't come then, and now we're in what I call the "any moment" mode.

It's a fretful mode to be sure. Phaedra, poor thing, is feeling the brunt of it. Heartburn. Irregular sleep. Constant achiness. "Hormonally cuckoo." I told her that she and I were like the Israelites: waiting, waiting. Our baby girl in turn was sort of like Jesus: planning to arrive in the fullness of time. It's impressive how fullness acquires fullerness powers.

How do I feel about it all? Like it's surreal. I've held babies before. I've taken care of my sisters' babies. I've changed their poopy diapers, fed them, burped them, cuddled them, put them to sleep. I've sung Winnie the Pooh songs over them while they napped. I've cried for how beautiful they looked in their tiny, lovely vulnerableness. I can imagine what it will be like to have my own baby. I can imagine it but I still feel like I'm looking at a thick, impenetrable fog of beyondness. And that's the part that feels scary. Really, really scary. The unknown is positively frightening.

I lived as a single man for thirty-five years. I've been married for nearly four, and my whole life has been geared around certain basic, primal rhythms. These rhythms have not included waking up in the middle of the night, for the sixth night in a row, to comfort a squalling baby, who came with no return policy. That's the freaky part: the no return policy. It's why Phaedra and I plan to establish a "counseling fund." Forget the trust fund. What this child needs is the means to get counseling as a teenager when she finally realizes that her parents screwed up her image of God.

It's the fear of making an irreparable mistake. It's the fear that there won't be enough grace to cover that mistake, which is of course the fear that there won't be enough God. That's what we're afraid of.

It's astonishing how much fear accompanies the arrival of new life.

More astonishing, though, is the negativity that accompanies people's comments. It is often said in a well-meaning but slightly threatening tone. You better enjoy the last few months of freedom. Say goodbye to your life as you know it. Are you ready for the revolution? Ready for the madhouse? It's going to be the hardest thing you've ever done.

It distresses Phaedra and me to hear these words. We've been confused why people feel the need to say them. Is that how they feel about their children? While I was mowing the yard last week I got to thinking. Is it really a loss of freedom? "Loss" in what sense? What do you mean by "freedom"? And is bringing this baby into the world really going to be the hardest thing in our life?

The more I chewed over these comments, the pissy-er I got. I thought, really? The hardest? Try talking to a single person in their thirties or forties who desperately wishes they had a spouse to go home to every night, to hear that person say "I love you," not just once, not just coincidentally, but every day, to show care by a gentle physical touch, to assuage the loneliness that eats away at them.

Is having a child harder than not being able to have a child because of a damaged uterus? Is it harder than losing a child?

This "harder" business has a near infinite regressive quality. Is having a baby harder than having a toddler? How about sending your kid off to school for the first time, fearing that he or she won't make friends? "You think having elementary kids was hard. Try having teenagers." "Oh really? You think that's hard? Try getting them into college. Try getting them to want to do anything reasonable with their lives." "Oh you think that's hard? No, what's hard is fretting whether your children will find the right spouse--if at all."

"You think having children at any stage of life is hard? Try getting abandoned in your old age by your children, who refuse to care for you in your weakened, vulnerable condition. That's hard."

This kind of "harder" speech is a fruitless, cruel speech. It robs the heart of courage, which a person sorely needs to make it even through the best days. And it signifies a willingness, all too common, to resign oneself to living in an economy of scarcity. "You're going to be screwed, so you might as well get used to it now."

Is that the best we have to offer each other as Christians?

Thankfully, we've had enough people say much kinder things. The best thing to hear is, "You're going to be great parents." I can't tell you how much those words inspire our hearts. Of course we worry. Of course we wonder whether we'll be good parents. Even with all the resources, both literary and human, that God has surrounded us with, we struggle against the fear of "worst possible outcomes."

I don't think we can ever underestimate the power of a hopeful word. I especially loved reading this note from our friend Tamara Murphy:

"I'm positive the nursery will be delightful! We'll be praying for all three of you. For whatever it's worth, the first day or two or maybe the third or fourth, it's completely normal to think, "OK, when's this kid's real parents gonna show up and take her home so we can get back to normal." Totally surreal, those first few days. Also, the shortest-lived phase for newborns seems to be when they are completely squishy and curl up like a little wad on your shoulder -- try to get as much time with her in that position as possible."

I love that. It made me smile and feel so at peace. We're not alone in this.

No one told me, however, that I would experience a sympathetic weight gain. In high school I weighed 155 pounds. From college till May of 2011 I fluctuated between 160-165. I've long thought I should have been born in Kenya, where all tall, lanky men turn out to be nothing more than speedy middle distance runners. While I may not be lightning-fast, at 6'1", 165 pounds there are few things in the world that give me as much joy as running (with soccer in a close tie).

Four months ago in May, I stepped onto our bathroom scale. To my horror the dial fell on the number 178. Last week I topped 180. Fifteen pounds. How was that possible? I don't eat fatty foods. I rarely take sweets. What was wrong with my body. I went in to tell Phaedra, who was lying on the bed. "Can you believe that?", I asked incredulously. And, for the life of her, she could not repress the grin on her face. It just made her feel a little better about life.

What am I excited about? I'm excited to have this baby with Phaedra. I'm excited that she'll be the mother of my children. I'm excited that this baby is a girl. I'm excited to hold her, smell her skin, kiss her at any time of the day or night. I'm excited about the ways in which this child will force my life to slow down. I'm excited to see what she looks like. I'm excited to show her to my parents and my siblings and my nephews and nieces; especially to my nieces who cannot wait to babysit her. I'm excited about going to the gym for decades so I can stay fit to play with my kids--and grandkids. I'm excited to see what kind of "village" God will bring to this child to help us do what we could never accomplish on our own, bring her to maturity.

I'm super excited to be a father. And while the order and timing of things in my life hasn't turned out like I thought it would, I take comfort in remembering William Wilberforce and Charles Wesley. Wilberforce married in his late thirties, Wesley in his early forties. Both enjoyed a large family (six and three children respectively). Both took joy in the responsibilities and pleasures of fatherhood. Both give me a vision of what could be true for my life.

And on days when I feel sad about "lost time," I remember the words of our dear friend Martha Rasco:

"This life isn't the last word on the things that God has in store for you, David. Eternity awaits you with opportunities to take up all the unimaginable things you thought you'd never get to in this brief earthly pilgrimage."

For now, we wait. Some moments we wait with a good Lord, let's get this over with attitude. Other moments, we wait in hope. Whenever this bebecita wants to come out, we're ready, as ready as we can be, and we'll probably bawl our faces off.

(All photos are by me except the one of la bebecita saying hi. Artwork is by Erica Grimm Vance, titled "On the question of being.")

3 IVP art books

2011-08-28T20:34:00.000-07:00

These are three books that I've read or that I look forward to reading. Thanks to the good people at IVPress for sending advanced copies. (Descriptions are taken from the IVP website.)

1. Contemplative Vision: A Guide to Christian Art and Prayer by Juliet Benner.

"While working as a docent in an art gallery, Juliet Benner began showing people how to meditate on Christian art treasures that are rooted in a passage of Scripture. She taught a way of encountering the Word behind both the words of Scripture and the artist's meditation on Scripture. This became a way of seeing art as an aid to contemplative prayer. In each chapter you'll encounter a passage of Scripture and a corresponding piece of art. In the process you'll find yourself entering into a new experience of prayer and meditation in God's presence."

This is a great book for those who are looking for a marriage between lectio divina and the visual arts (or as it's often called, visio divina). It'd be suitable for personal devotion as well as for small groups. It includes artworks like Jean-François Millet's "The Angelus" and He Qi's "The Visitation," but I think Caravaggio's "The Supper at Emmaus" arrested my attention the longest.

2. The Soul Tells a Story: Engaging Creativity with Spirituality in the Writing Life by Vinita Hampton Wright.

"Creative work is soul work, and soul work is always creative work. Feeding one while neglecting the other will leave you restless and unsatisfied. Nurturing them both will lead you to new places of self-discovery and God-discovery. 'I believe that spirituality and creativity are intricately connected, yet they are rarely nurtured and talked about that way,' contends Vinita Hampton Wright. In these pages she leads you through the process and practice of integrating the worlds of Christian spirituality and creativity."

Some of the interesting chapter titles include "The Heart-Stopping Act of Saying Yes," "How to Craft but Not Control While Using Both Sides of the Brain" and "How to Thrive as a Creative in the Real World." I've yet to read this book but I have a hunch it'll do me a measure of good.

3. Word Pictures: Knowing God Through Story & Imagination by Brian Godawa.

"In his refreshing and challenging book, Godawa helps you break free from the spiritual suffocation of heady faith. Without negating the importance of reason and doctrine, Godawa challenges you to move from understanding the Bible 'literally' to 'literarily' by exploring the poetry, parables and metaphors found in God's Word. Weaving historical insight, pop culture and personal narrative throughout, Godawa reveals the importance God places on imagination and creativity in the Scriptures, and provides a biblical foundation for Christians to pursue image, beauty, wonder and mystery in their faith."

The two quotes that start the book off are by G. K. Chesterton and Jane Austen.

"Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers, but creative artists very seldom. I am not in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination." -- Chesterton, Orthodoxy

"It would surely be much more rational if conversation rather than dancing made the order of the day...."
"Much more rational ... I daresay; but it would not be near so much like a ball." -- Austen, Pride and Prejudice

Liturgical Formation & Shakespearean Impersonation

2011-08-19T10:27:00.000-07:00

"We could attend our neighborhood church to be soothed in the knowledge that all was well as our tour guide slipped into leotards to dance, yet again, an interpretation of the Twenty-third Psalm." -- A.K., monk of the Archabbey of St. Meinrad

I've been reading, and relishing, Aidan Kavanagh's On Liturgical Theology. Not only is it a masterful work of theological erudition, it is also beautifully and wittily written. One certainly wishes more books like this were written. Then again that would be to wish that we were all extraordinarily gifted. We're not, though there is something to be said for giving it a try.

(See video below for an extraordinary sample of thespian skill.)

A passage I read this morning from Kavanagh reminds me of something Jennifer Herdt said in her book, Putting on Virtue. Arguing against an "inspirationalist" view of discipleship, which believes we become Christ's disciples by waiting for the right inspiration or experience to cross our paths, Herdt encourages us to pay attention to the practices of an actor.

The goal of the Christian, she writes, as with the actor too, is not to be original but to be rightly imitative. Sam Wells, arguing a similar line in his slim but punchy volume, Improvisation: The Drama of Christian Ethics, says our job as disciples of Jesus is to be less original than obvious. As he puts it: "Free from the paralysis of being original, the pressure to be clever, the fear of the unconscious, and the demand to be solemn," Christians, under the tutelage of Scripture, can learn how "to take the right things for granted" (69).

The reason we play the role of Christ, whether in corporate worship or in our life at large, then, is so that we might play ourselves into the role of Christ. The reason we engage in regular practices that cultivate the life of Christ is a way for us to recognize that divine grace is mediated through “ordinary” means, not despite them. And the reason we “put on” exempla--whether St. Paul or Amy Carmichael or St. Francis or Jim Elliot or Dorothy Day--is because we believe that, as with Saint Genesius (3rd century AD), when we "put on" virtuous saints, there is a good chance that by the Spirit we might also become a virtuous saint.

In Herdt's words:

“In that ultimate sense virtue is imitative rather than original, while nevertheless being reflective of the distinctiveness of each individual character and each particular social and historical context—at the same time mimetic and authentic” (344).

Kavanagh comes along and says: pay attention to what you do in corporate worship. Everything that takes place in our public liturgies, from beginning to end, from front to back, from top to bottom, should be in the business of forming us into the trinitarian image of God.

Of all the juicy fruit he drops along this vein, here is one of my favorite:

"The liturgy does not analyze, explain, propound propositions, or polemicize. It does not attempt to educate in a didactic manner or to be commended in a public relations manner. It supports, forms, and nurtures by engaging people in communal acts within which the whole of rite as I have described it comes into motion. The liturgy cracks open radical values, invites without coercing people into them, and celebrates their living presence deep within these same values.... Thus the liturgy does not merely talk about God, but manifests the assembly's graced union with Father, through Son, in Spirit" (115).

It goes without saying that this is a description of the liturgy at its best (at our best too). He continues:

"When the liturgy moves or is moved from being of God to being about God, that is, when it shifts toward being some form of education done in a doxological context for ideological ends, then significant mutations begin to occur. Concepts become more precise, the assembly more passive, ministries more learned, sermons more erudite, and pews fixed. Texts proliferate, the sonic arts of liturgical oratory and the kinetic arts of ceremony fade, and people find themselves in church to receive a message rather than to do, somehow, the World according to divine pleasure....

Christianity becomes one telegram of consolation among others rather than a sustained experience of the presence of the living God, an experience which is itself the corporate message a liberated People proclaim in a world snared in thickets of its own making" (116).

In honor of this idea that, in corporate worship, we put on the whole of Christ with the whole of our person in the whole context of the people of God, I share with you this clever video. Here is a man who knows how to put it on. I watched it three times in a row just to savor the little moments of brilliance. (Thanks to Father Steve Breedlove for passing it along.)

(Image above: St. Genesius, patron saint of actors, attorneys, barristers, clowns, comedians, comediennes, comics, converts, dancers, epileptics, lawyers, musicians, printers, stenographers, and torture victims. He's a busy saint. Quote is taken from Kavanagh's book, pg. 68.)

10 questions for artists

2011-08-12T06:20:00.000-07:00

The following is a list of questions that I've drafted for the arts conference this weekend. I trust that the artists will have a chance to make something of them during small group discussions. I offer them here in the hope that they might prove helpful to other artists too, wherever they might gather. The intent of the questions is to provoke thought and to uncover deeper desires and concerns.

For what it's worth, I think a good facilitator would be helpful to negotiate the discussion as it unfolds (in, as the case may be, unpredictable ways).

Questions For Artists:

1. Who are one or two people who have been most significant to you in your development as an artist?

2. How would you describe the role that your family (of origin or presently) has played in your development as an artist?

3. On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you gauge your level of ambition as an artist?

4. What are one or two factors that, when they’re in place, enable you to really flourish artistically?

5. What are one or two factors that make it more difficult for you to flourish?

6. What are one or two primary areas of fear for you as an artist?

7. Ideally speaking, with reference to your life and work as an artist, where would you like to be in five years?

8. In what one or two things would you like to grow stronger in your relationship with God at the moment?

9. As you think of the factors that would enable you to flourish as an artist, rate the following list on a scale of 1 to 10: from most desirous to least desirous. (And you can’t put two in a tie; you have to rate them in order of priority. The idea is that, in forcing you to choose an order of priority, you'll discover what you really care about right now.) Then share with the group the reasons for your particular order.

1) Money.
2) Training/education.
3) Talent.
4) Mentors.
5) The right city to live in.
6) A small group of peer artists (to help you refine your work and push you to excel)
7) A small community of supportive friends.
8) A different personality than the one you have.
9) Greater discipline.
10) Time.

10. What are one or two ways we can be praying for you at the moment?

(Photo credits: above, Michèle M. Waite; below, French photographer "JR".)

Vancouver: A photographic record

2011-08-08T08:44:00.000-07:00

Beautiful British Columbia

Phaedra and I had a fantastic time during our visit to Vancouver in early May. The staff and faculty at Regent College welcomed us warmly, while the Pastors Conference brought me into conversation with very dear people. The weather remained friendly to our walkabouts around town. Friends, old and new, kept us company throughout--Bill Reimer, Rick Smith, Rikk Watts, Gordon Smith, Ahna Phillips, Brian Moss, Rosie Perera, Jo and Derek White, Laurel Gasque, Rod Wilson, Ross Hastings, Don Lewis.

I have only fond memories of my years at Regent (and a few embarrassing ones too--God help us for the dramatic sketches that I inflicted on the seminary during our Tuesday chapels). I'm grateful for the generous service that that "green little bunsen burner" has offered for many years. I'm impressed with their commitment to the arts--here, here, here, here--and I'm glad to see the large number of international students on campus.

I'm hopeful for the school and its role in shaping both laity and clergy, both future scholars and present professionals. And I'm always challenged by the humility I encounter in the faculty. Is there any better incentive to study hard? Is there any other way to inspire students to love the church and to serve their neighbors? I can't think of one.

Here, then, is a small photographic record of our time in Beautiful British Columbia.

Up.

This way.

Green.

Sounds of the homeland.

Weird performance artist with bullwhip.

Sushi (shared with good people).

In good company.

Regent College chapel--singing fulsomely.

Ross Hastings, Rod Wilson, myself and Paul Williams.

A sample of the Regent College library's gorgeous art collection.

Beautiful and Useful: "True North Wind Tower."

Anchor for Queen of Nanaimo Ferry.

Sun.

After sun.

SOS.

Reading.

Tasty adult beverage.

Galiano Island.

Wood.

View from the breakfast table at A Rocha BC.

Barn.

Leah Kostamo and her beautiful girls.

Gobble, gobble.

"What?"

Horse tails.

Markku (director of A Rocha Canada) and Leah.

Pike Place Market, Seattle.

"Would you like some olive oil with your gluten free pasta?"

Piano man.

Man's best friend: 1.

Man's best friend: 2.

Man's best friend: 3.

Man's best friend: 4.

Man's best friend: The end.

Driving back to one of the most beautiful airports in el mundo.

An Interview with the Trinity Artists Blog

2011-08-02T09:55:00.000-07:00

In preparation for my visit to Atlanta and the arts conference that Trinity Anglican Church will be sponsoring, I gave a little interview for their blog. Below are sample questions I answered. The rest you can find here. Info about the conference can be found here. Photo above is from our trip into the Blue Ridge Mountains (Lustre Pearl is this kickin' place in Austin). Photo below is from our brief stop at the (very curious) On The Edge Saloon, which did in fact sit perched on a mountain ledge.

Q: If you were an animal, what animal would you be?

DT: That’s easy: a wolf.

Q: How do you stay motivated and disciplined as an artist in our distracting society?

DT: Ritualized practices make a world of a difference. And I make sure that somebody knows and cares what I’m working on and has permission to ask me how I’m coming along. That person can ask me at any time why I’m allowing myself to remain distracted and can pull out the BS meter whenever I start making repeated excuses.

One Word Commentary

2011-07-29T13:35:00.000-07:00

This is my bits and bobs blog entry. I'm going to give a one-phrase commentary to each article or curio I link, which I realize is not the same thing as a one-word commentary per the blog title. Mainly, however, the challenge is to keep it lean.

Here are things that have caught my attention in the world of the arts with respect to everything else.

1. Andrew Garfield: "Spiderman saved my life."

Did he now?

2. The Art of Worship: Paintings, Prayers, and Readings for Meditation (Yale Press: 2011).

Ocularcentricity at work? Maybe.

3. Interview with Vera Farmiga, director of forthcoming movie Higher Ground.

Very curious to see how she renders Carolyn S. Briggs' memoir, This Dark World: A Memoir of Salvation Found and Lost. See here and here too.

4. Marcus Mumford's parents work for Vineyard UK.

I didn't see that one coming. But glad to see charismatics generating a fine one. See this too.

5. Video games are not what they used to be.

Dumbfounded after watching the 20 minute "promo" of BioShock Inifinte.

6. The Band that Played On.

A review of Steve Turner's latest book about the musicians aboard the Titanic.

7. Baby Boy Idols.

And I quote: "In this manner, Justin Bieber was unleashed on our world to sing about things he has absolutely no familiarity with" (Christopher Yokel over at the Curator).

8. Violent Video Games and the Cathartic Kid.

That's one way to look at it (which at the very least deserves an honest hearing).

9. "Why not hack our bodies?"

A nice essay by Matthew Lee Anderson with reference to a theology of the body. And this is pretty creepy too (courtesy of Wired Magazine).

10. How to kill email before it kills you.

I'm listening.

11. America's first zero-packaging grocery store.

Where? No less than in the city that's keeping it weird: Austin, Texas.

12. Hilarious (for those of you who have ever found yourself in a foreign country and weren't exactly sure how to say the right word, fearing you might offend with the wrong one).

Liturgy, Formation, Mission and Art: A Conference

2011-07-21T09:27:00.000-07:00

“Liturgy is not play acting, but [rather] the evocation of an alternate reality that comes into play in the very moment of the liturgy.” -- Walter Brueggeman, The Message of the Psalms

I'm very excited to announce a conference taking place in Durham, NC, on November 8-10. While its primary target audience is Anglicans and Episcopalians, the topic of the conference does not, to my mind, exclude others, whether high-church Reformed or traditional Catholic, liturgical-charismatic or Oxford Methodists, or anybody else who might want to join in.

What occasions this conference?
The first thing that occasions this conference is a concern over the way in which the Anglican liturgy is often (mis)perceived along with the role of the arts in it.

The liturgy, as the case may be, is perceived as stuffy, archaic, formalistic, benumbing, insensitive to the requirements of contextualization and therefore both unintelligible and irrelevant to your average western citizen. It is opposed to spontaneity. It is ritualistic rather than personal. It occludes the gospel rather than illumines it. And if art appears in the liturgy, it is of the safe or stiffly traditional type.

My response to that perception? Yep. You're right. It can be and has been all of those things at some point or another, and possibly worse.

But it needn't be. Form need not be pitted against freedom, nor tradition against innovation. In fact the form of the "classical Christian liturgy," at its very best, is a refreshingly freeing thing. And because it's an organic rather than a mechanical thing, it "lives" and is able to respond supplely to the contingencies of time and space--indeed across time and space.

What about art in the liturgy? While I may not represent the majority on this point, I believe all the arts can fittingly serve the different actions of the liturgy. I believe this is possible in such a way that our experience of the gospel expands rather than diminishes. I believe that this kind of experience of the arts can intensify and deepen our worship rather than distract or merely titillate our encounter of the triune God in the liturgy.

The second thing that occasions this conference? A confidence that the classical or traditional form of the liturgy and the role which the arts can play in it have much to offer contemporary Christians. It is a confidence that believes the Anglican liturgy is good for us, and good not just for us but also for our neighbors, whether they are of the nominal or irreligious kind.

Joining forces
Quite a number of exciting conversations along these lines are afoot (here, for example) and this conference is simply another effort to add clarity to one part of this conversation and to inspire folks with a hopeful vision of what could be.

I've included here a summary of the conference along with links to Anglican 1000, our primary host, where you can get registered for the event and, eventually, find a longer explanation of the talks, workshops, travel, etc.

Intended Audience: pastors, priests, ministry leaders, church planters, music leaders, liturgists and artists of all types. And students are most welcome to join us too.

Overall Goal: to equip us with an understanding of the formative power of the Anglican liturgy and so to bring to light the possibilities of its doxological, theological, ethical, missional and artistic beauty.

The Four Plenary Talks that frame the conference:

1. “The Compelling Logic of Anglican Liturgy”: The Rev. Dr. Sam Wells, Dean of Duke Chapel and Research Professor of Christian Ethics, Duke Divinity School

2. “Liturgy as a Counterforce to the Prevailing Cultures”: Mark Galli, Senior Editor, Christianity Today

3. “Liturgy, Music and 'Participation'”: Dr. Lester Ruth, Research Professor of Christian Worship, Duke Divinity School

4. “The Visual Power of the Liturgy”: David Taylor, Candidate for Doctor of Theology, Duke Divinity School (editor of For the Beauty of the Church: Casting a Vision for the Arts)

Other details
The conference will include three workshop sessions, Q&A following each plenary talk, two meals so that we can share significant time together, lots of white space and, best of all, four worship services--Compline, Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer, and Morning Prayer with Eucharist. Each worship service will be led by a different team and will allow us to practice what we're hearing and saying.

The contestedness of "togetherness"

While I'm excited about the whole conference, I'm especially keen to hear Lester Ruth's talk. In it he will consider how the different kinds of music which occur in the liturgy—from congregational singing to instrumental music, from “service” music to choral song, and possibly even "singing in the Spirit"—form us. In particular he'll look at the ways in which these musical forms enhance rather than foil our experience of “togetherness” in worship.

Cost
General cost of the conference $99, but for students, artists and church planters the cost is $49.

Video Invite
Here is a video invitation that Father Steve Breedlove and I shot on July 14. (My forehead is wrinkled half the time because of a wicked sun that kept bearing down on us.)

>

If you know anybody who might be interested in joining us, please pass along word of this event. Thanks so much!

(And thanks to Erik Newby for the excellent poster design. And thanks to Daniel Adkinson, fearless director of Anglican 1000, for his good partnership.)

The Rule of Storytellers

2011-07-15T15:36:00.000-07:00

"When you can state the theme of a story, when you can separate it from the story itself, then you can be sure the story is not a very good one. The meaning of a story has to be embodied in it. . . . A story that is any good can't be reduced, it can only be expanded. A story is good when you continue to see more and more in it, and when it continues to escape you." -- Flannery O'Connor, Mystery and Manners

IN THE BEGINNING
If Plato was right, that those who tell the stories rule society, then J. K. Rowling deserves more than an Order of the British Empire. She deserves a small country. To rule. Benevolently.

In the spring of 1990 Rowling began to write a little story. That little story was completed six years later, and she would follow that by writing six more little stories. (The last little story, which some thought long, was half as long as Tolstoy's War and Peace and Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, so it really wasn't that long and most of us didn't mind either.)

Eventually her little story would be translated into 67 languages, including Khmer and Ancient Greek. Her little stories have sold 450,000,000 thus far, and if the experts are right that her protagonist will achieve the eternal fame of Winnie the Pooh and Mickey Mouse, then our children's children will quadruple that number.

One day her little stories were made into movies. So far, and we've still a stretch to go, her movie stories have grossed approximately $6,459,205,142. It appears that the words "millions"and "billions" most accurately characterize the effect that her stories have on those who experience them.

If we add the tie-in merchandise, then her little stories are worth a solid US$15 billion, which roughly equals the GDP of Honduras according to the International Monetary Fund.

Universal Studios Orlando decided to create a theme park so that all human beings could experience Ms. Rowling's little stories for themselves, could exist inside of them, could indwell their favorite characters.

"Muggle" made it into the Oxford English Dictionary, to the delight of many.

For the release of Goblet of Fire, FedEx used 9,000 trucks with no other purpose than to deliver the book.

Eight video games in addition to Cluedo, Scene it? and Lego Harry Potter have been created to entertain adults and kids from dawn to dusk.

A few devoted followers of the little stories created a convention called LeakyCon. Included in its efforts is The Harry Potter Alliance which raised more than $123,000 for the people of Haiti in the aftermath of the earthquake. The Alliance has also donated 88,000 books to kids in underprivileged countries.

This is all because they read and believed in the story of Harry Potter.

The literary critic A. N. Wilson praised Ms. Rowling's stories in The Times, stating: "There are not many writers who have JK’s Dickensian ability to make us turn the pages, to weep—openly, with tears splashing—and a few pages later to laugh, at invariably good jokes ... We have lived through a decade in which we have followed the publication of the liveliest, funniest, scariest and most moving children’s stories ever written."

Ms. Rowling, to bring my litany to a sharp economic point, has become the first billionaire author "thus far." It strikes me that she will be the only billionaire author far longer.

Somehow, someway, not altogether un-mysteriously, the little stories have quite literally changed the world.

IN THE END
J. K. Rowling believes that her little fictional stories have something to do with the fact that she believes in God, and not in any God either (and not because her parents were all that keen on Joanne going to church as a child). It is the God of Jesus Christ, whom the Spirit mysteriously makes to known to us, even in the secret places of the heart, that she believes.

If Stanley Hauerwas is right, that "both love and great art show us our world with a clarity which startles us because we are not used to looking at the real world at all,” then perhaps Rowling has disclosed something true about the world which God so loves that we would not have seen otherwise.

Perhaps the world has discovered something about love in the little stories which has awakened a yearning to know the source of all true loves.

Perhaps what is needed then are a few brave parents who will not only encourage their children to read such stories, and others like them--many others like them--and to appreciate such stories, but also to nurture their children to become storytellers themselves. Would that we had a few brave parents who, when they saw signs of giftedness, opened up all the stops and emptied the coffers to help their children to become storytellers by vocation, because they saw it as an important facet of God's economy of abundance. My hunch is that many such parents exist. May God bless their tribe.

It's just a little story, they say, a fictional one at that. But it's a story that will continue to rule the world, more powerfully I'm afraid than our best sermons or our most clever essays. Why? Because, like all good stories, the story of Harry Potter and the community of friends that surrounded him for seven years has captured our affections and our imaginations.

They say it all ends tonight. Yet it's really only just beginning.

Here's to going to the movie theater one last time in order to watch J. K. Rowling's final little story.

Questions of the preacher

2011-07-11T13:38:00.000-07:00

“His throne is the pulpit; he stands in Christ’s stead; his message is the word of God; around him are immortal souls; the Savior, unseen, is beside him; the Holy Spirit broods over the congregation; angels gaze upon the scene, and heaven and hell await the issue. What associations, and what vast responsibility!” -- Matthew Simpson, Lectures on Preaching

I've been thinking about preaching lately. This past Sunday, while listening to David Hyman preach on John 5, I was struck by the art that's involved in preaching a good sermon. At the very least, preaching involves the art of rhetoric and the art of oratory. The one relates to the way in which words are organized and speech is persuasive. The other concerns the manner in which speech is delivered to an intended audience.

Doing both well requires a lot of hard work, specialized knowledge, years to hone the craft, a love for your hearers, a bit of talent and the humility to recognize that you can always learn something new, no matter how many times you've done it. (Then of course there is the Spirit of the God.)

This last element reminds me of the two things for which I am most grateful during my later years at Hope Chapel. As a member of the preaching team, I had two gifts: the gift of a team that helped me to discern what I was to preach in the Sunday to come and the gift of a list of questions.

The first gift was invaluable. It reminded me always of John Stott's experience at All Souls Church, which he recorded in Between Two Worlds: The Challenge of Preaching Today. It reminded me that wisdom occurs best "in the counsel of many," as per the Proverbs. It reminded me that before I could speak on behalf of the community, I needed to listen to the community. And in addition to my weekly meeting with Geno, Jack and Steve, I would often send emails to the congregation requesting their input so that the "word of the Lord," which the Spirit might speak to us, could become a word that took seriously the people in whom the Lord was already at work and in whom the Lord would put that "word" to continuous work.

The second gift is a list of questions that Geno and I hammered out together. We can't claim much originality. Both of us had been influenced by countless other preachers. But these questions served to order the discussions which occurred before we preached and after we preached, as both anticipatory and evaluative exercise. Rarely, in the aftermath, did we give ourselves high marks. We certainly kept trying, though. We at least knew what we could aim towards and we knew that we had each other's constant prayers and even last-minute-Saturday-night-revision-suggestions help.

I offer these questions, then, in the hope that they might encourage present and future preachers. They're the kind of practical questions that enable the preacher to cultivate the arts of rhetoric and oratory. By no means are they comprehensive. Nor do pretend to serve all ecclesial cultures. Nor of course do they substitute for the humble heart and the utter dependence upon the Spirit that a preacher requires for the sermon to begin to be effective. Yet if we wanted to become better preachers, these were the questions that kept us "training" toward that goal.

QUESTIONS FOR THE PREACHER

Evaluating the sermon already given:

1. Were you open and personable with the congregation? Were your gestures, body movement, posture, eye contact "fitting" or haphazard?
2. Was the task of your sermon clear?
3. Did the people understand clearly what you were calling them to live out? Was it concrete and simple or was it vague and complicated?
4. Could your sermon walk? Could the people envision throughout the week one thing they could be living out in discipleship as a result of your sermon?
5. Did you comfort and disturb?

Structure:

6. What was the one thing you were trying to communicate? Not two things, not three or seven things, but the one thing?
7. Was your introduction strong? Did it capture attention, evoke need, relate clearly to the body of your sermon?
8. Was your conclusion strong and appropriately summarizing?
9. Was your use of Scripture sufficient and effective?
10. Did your illustrations serve the purpose of your sermon? Were they vivid and particular or were they fuzzy and distracting?
11. Were your transitions strong and clear? Was the movement from point to point clean, smooth, strong, natural? Or did you stumble or meander from point to point?
12. Did the form of your sermon serve the content?
13. And again: What was the one thing you were trying to say?

Use of Time:

14. How was your pacing?
15. What was your total time?
16. Did you try to say too much?
17. Did you spend the appropriate amount of time preparing?
18. Did you pray? Did you ask others to pray for you?

As you look ahead:

19. In what ways do you feel you are growing as a preacher? What areas do you wish to give attention to in order to grow stronger?
20. Did the message serve the mission of the church? Did it serve both the short-term and long-term discipleship of the church that God has made clear to the leadership?
21. Did you do a good job of connecting this sermon to the series which you're currently in and/or to the season of the church's life?
22. Have you helped the people have a clear sense of the big picture, of where things are going, of continuity?
23. Are you living what you're preaching?
24. Have the people seen the gospel transforming your life too?

Exercises in Mystery

2011-07-01T14:33:00.000-07:00

"The mystery of God's life (Geheimnis) is strange to us (unheimlich) because we are not at home with it (daheim)." -- Bonhoeffer, Predigt am Sonntag Trinitatis, May 27, 1934

A GOOD STORY
There are two basic elements to any good story and they are this:

1. That your audience keeps asking the question "What happens next?"

2. That the characters in your story, whether "man vs. man" or "man vs. society" or "man vs. self" (as per your 8th grade English class), are marked by substantial and believable wants in conflict. What the "man" wants is in conflict with what the "machine" wants. What you want is in conflict with what your destiny wants for you, which both "nature" and "supernature" play a role in determining.

A story that possesses neither of these elements is a story badly in need of rewriting. Or of scrapping altogether. Or it's simply a very, very bad story that somehow got published. A story that possesses only one of these elements will bore its audience. And a story that possesses both finds itself at the starting point of a good story, though nothing more. Between a starting point and a "classic" of storytelling is a lot of hard work, insight into the world, trained skill, generous but austere feedback, patronage, talent and a little bit of luck.

What makes me think of these things is the 18-minute talk J. J. Abrams gave at the TED conference in 2007 (see below). It's a pretty funny talk, too. I do recommend it. But the piece that captured my attention was Abrams' repeated emphasis on the importance of mystery to a good story. All good stories, he suggests, involve some component of mystery, some sense that a deeper reality lies beyond the audience's capacity to grasp yet leaves the audience feeling fuller rather than emptier because of it--fuller both because of the audience's encounter with mystery as well as because of its inability to finally or comprehensively grasp it.

A GOOD MYSTERY
His comments remind me of a sermon Dietrich Bonhoeffer once gave on the Trinity. He says:

"Mystery is not about things we do not know. It's not the star that is farthest away from us that is the greatest mystery to us, rather the opposite, the closer something comes to us, the more we come to know a thing, the more mysterious it becomes for us. Not the person who is furthest away from us is the biggest mystery, but rather the nearest one."

Our tendency as human creatures, Bonhoeffer continues, is to resist the kind of mystery that marks God's world. We prefer to (scientifically) know things in order to use things. We employ the language of "the mastery of knowledge," because it helps us feel like we're still in control. Because we don't like the way it makes us feel small, we shrink from mystery. We construct physical and conceptual, relational and habitual apparatuses to shield us from it.

"The dearth of mystery in our modern life," he writes, "is our destruction and our poverty," and for Christians who allege to worship a God who exists mysteriously as three persons in one essence it is a shame that both our worship practices and our artistic practices resist or reject the mysterious character that marks our lives as creatures made in the image of this God.

Let me rephrase that sentence, in order to put it in a more personal context. It is a shame that conservative Protestantism exhibits such an allergic tendency to mystery. It is a shame that our corporate worship often makes the most minimal space for mystery. We prefer to hear sermons that explain things definitely. We like to sing songs whose meaning we can account for on rational grounds. The architectural and artistic shape of our sanctuaries, whatever they may be, err on the utilitarian side, and if symbols are employed they tend to be safe ones--that's a fish, that's a cup, that's a flame. End of exchange.

This is a generalized broadside, I recognize. It does not describe all conservative Protestants. I happily acknowledge the many exceptions.

EXERCISES IN MYSTERY
The more interesting point for me, then, is a practical one. If the large majority of our life as Christians is engaged in practices--whether liturgical or artistic, whether occupational or relational--that habituate us away from mystery and towards the pragmatic, rational and technical, how will we become a people who indwell the mystery of Christ, as saint Paul describes it? How do we become a people at home in the mystery of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit if the habits of our lives build muscles that make us averse to this mystery?

That's where I think what we do weekly in corporate worship matters. That's where I think that the kind of art we create and ingest matters. It matters not so much theoretically as concretely. It matters for the kinds of persons we in fact are, not for the kinds of persons we wish we were. Unless we are engaged in practices, daily and weekly, monthly and yearly, that cultivate an appetite, or to use Bonhoeffer's language, a sense of being at home with mystery, then we will remain the kinds of person who shrink from mystery rather than delve deep into it, rather than revel in it and thereby find ourselves becoming simultaneously smaller and bigger, more ourselves.

When we inhabit good stories, we acquire a "feel"for mystery. That feeling does not automatically translate into faith in Christ. Such faith requires conversion, and conversion usually involves a long and complex process if we're talking about the conversion of our whole lives towards Christ, which the Scriptures describe as discipleship. But good stories still have their place in our conversion stories. To the extent that they help us to imagine what we could become, or to allusively warn us against a more vicious version of ourselves, they serve the work of the Spirit. To the extent that they form in us a sense for the mysterious quality of God's world and for God himself, they serve a good role (and of course they do so much more than that).

It is for this reason that stories like the kind for which J. J. Abrams is responsible, such as LOST, ALIAS, "Cloverfield" and "Super 8," can be, quite literally, good for us. Whether he self-consciously seeks to accomplish this goal, Abrams' stories, which (often maddeningly) keep us asking the question, "What happens next?", serve as exercises in mystery; small "m" mystery perhaps but never far from large "M" mystery. In the talk that he gives at TED, Abrams both winsomely and perhaps again unknowingly serves as witness to the patterns of God's kingdom, and for that, as I plow through season 5 of LOST, I am grateful.

(Here below I include a video of Abrams' talk as well as two other artworks that caught my attention over the past week.)

1. J.J. Abrams' Mystery Box

2. A very funny take on artist's statements.

3. Malcolm Guite's "Love's Choice: A Sonnet for the Feast of Corpus Christi"

This is a beautiful sonnet by my British friend Malcolm Guite, who also happens to remind Phaedra and me of Tom Bombadil. The last line of this sonnet is especially stirring. Do yourself a favor and click the audio link so you can hear Malcolm reading the poem himself.

The rhythms of a flourishing artist: Or "how I get things done"

2011-06-25T13:50:00.000-07:00

The Good Samaritan

My friend Jim Janknegt is one of the most prolific visual artists I know. This is not because he's got a stash of pirate gold sustaining the lifestyle of a landed gentry, nor because he lives in New York City or London in the thick of the high art world, nor because he works full time as an artist. He's prolific because he retains a careful rhythm of life and work, and has done so for many years.

Flight into Egypt

The fact that of late he's able to work extra hours a day owes to the fact that he's semi-retired. Even when he worked full time at the University of Texas's PAC, however, he produced an uncommonly large amount of work. Why? Because he (implicitly) takes Tony Schwartz's advice seriously, as we all should. According to Schwartz, courtesy of the Harvard Business Review:

“The best way to insure you’ll take on difficult tasks is to ritualize them—build specific, inviolable times at which you do them, so that over time you do them without having to squander energy thinking about them.”

This is a way of saying that our will and capacity for discipline require the aid of daily rituals in order to serve the ends to which we apply them.

Recently Jim wrote an essay called "How I Get Things Done." It includes ten things he does, simply because that's what an artist does. He kindly allowed me to reprint it here. While his circumstances include plenty of contingent factors, many of us as artists have good reason to read and heed.

HOW I GET THINGS DONE

1. Blew up my TV. Not literally, but I did disconnect it from everything (cable, satellite, antenna) except a DVD player. Now we only watch TV intentionally via Netflix.

2. Get enough sleep. I go to bed between 10:00 and 11:00 (usually closer to 10:00) and get up at the same time everyday except for Sunday at 6:00 am. I set my alarm. That is close to eight hours of sleep.

3. I start my day with quiet. Everyone else in my house is a night owl. So when I get up at 6:00 I am the only one up. I start the day with a good breakfast, coffee and some spiritual reading. After breakfast I pray the Divine Office. As an example, the last year I have read The Imitation of Christ, The Divine Comedy and am currently reading the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Judas Kiss

4. Have a schedule. During the week I keep the same basic schedule. After my quiet time, I feed the chickens and dogs and do a few other chores. I then proceed to my studio and paint from 8:30 to 10:30. I eat lunch, get ready to go to work and drive from Elgin to Austin. I work at the HRC from 12:30 to 5:15, then drive home. My lovely wife usually cooks (she is an awesome cook) and we eat supper around 6:30. After supper we visit, walk around the farm, swim, watch Netflix or read until bedtime.

On Saturdays I usually work on projects around the house from 9:00 to 5:00 with lunch and a nap thrown in. Sundays: no work. I fix breakfast for the family, teach religious education and go to Mass; then rest.

5. Show up. I generally stick to my schedule even when I don’t feel like it. 90% of getting things done is just showing up. If I show up and just sit in a chair and stare at my painting or fall asleep I have not lost my momentum. Inertia is hard to overcome. Once I get started, I don’t stop.

6. Plan ahead. I always plan what I am going to do at least a day in advance and sometimes more. Especially if it is a project and I need supplies or tools. I never wait till the day I am going to do a project to get the materials and supplies I need. I try to do these errands on the way to or from work. That way when Saturday rolls around I can immediately start to work. If I have to go to the hardware store or, worse yet, drive to Home Depot, I can write off half the days work. I try and be a good boy scout and be prepared.

7. Make a list. I keep a running list of things I need to do. Right now I have 72 items on my list. All but 18 of them are done. I add items to be done in black (blue if they are urgent) and I change the color to red when I have finished. One thing I wish I had done is put the date by the item when I add it to my list and the date when I finish the project. I am going to start doing that.

8. Have a designated place to work. This is a luxury not everyone can afford. I am fortunate to have a studio set aside for my painting and a barn with a space for working on projects. I can leave everything set up. To start painting all I have to do is sit down, take the lid off my turpentine and paint.

Temptation #2

9. Enjoy working and finishing projects. I happen to be an extreme “J” according to the Myers-Briggs test. I think this part of my personality goes a long way to making me as productive as I am. I like to make decisions and I like to see things finished. I am not a perfectionist, but I believe this saying to be true: “If you demand perfection or nothing, you will always get nothing.” I am also pretty far to the “I” side of things in the Myers Briggs test which means I am an introvert and enjoy being alone. Most of the work I do, I do by myself and enjoy being by myself. If I was an “E” or extrovert, I can see that it would be much harder to spend so much time working alone. But it really suits my personality.

10. Work for the Kingdom of God. I am motivated to work because I believe I am an instrument whose purpose is to further the Kingdom of God. Whether I become successful, famous, wealthy or appreciated has no bearing on the work that I do. I hope that my work furthers the Kingdom and I order myself to that end. Especially with my painting, I realize, that much of the effect of my work may not be fully realized until I am dead. And that is OK. It basically means that I paint for an audience of one, the King of Heaven, and if he is pleased then all is well.

"St John Reconsiders Modern Epistemology"

DT and Artists in Atlanta, GA

2011-06-21T09:25:00.000-07:00

I have been invited by the good people at Trinity Anglican Mission in Atlanta, GA, to help lead a conference for artists. The date for the event is August 13. All artists from any church (or no church, as the case may be) are welcome to attend. For details see here. To register go here. Cost is only $35 (which I think is a steal).

The event will include poetry readings by Anya Silver (one of Image Journal's "Artist of the Month") and the music of Micah Dalton (check out the PASTE mag quote below).

My two talks will explore ideas surrounding the identity and vocation of artists. It'll be great fun.

If you're within driving distance of this zip code--30318--do feel free to join us. Jeff Guy is heading this thing up and that means it won't be even a teeny bit boring.

“He may sound like an earthier, cleverer Ben Harper, but musically Dalton suggests mid-’80s Prince in the way he defiantly straddles so many styles, requiring an enormous musical arsenal to get his point across. These juxtapositions of sounds and style rarely feel forced or even deliberate, courtesy of Dalton’s soulful vocals and incisive songwriting.”

-- PASTE MAGAZINE

Church & Art: 2 Recommended Websites

2011-06-15T06:17:00.000-07:00

2004 Compline service at Hope Chapel, Austin, Texas

1. Visual Arts and the Church

Pamela Nelson in the background

I've yet to find a print or digital product as useful as this one for thinking through the practical considerations of marshaling the visual arts on behalf of corporate worship: "Hope and the Visual Arts." Yes, I've read the "large cathedral" books. Yes, I've employed the booklet that CIVA (along with Sandra Bowden) produced a few years back.

Yes, I own Catherine Kapikian's Art in Service of the Sacred, Bill Dyrness' Senses of the Soul: Art and the Visual in Christian Worship, Mark Torgerson's An Architecture of Immanence, and I've seen CICW's "Visuals for Worship." (No, I haven't yet bought Nancy Chin's Spaces for Spirit: Adorning the Church because it's a really expensive book for 72 pages of material.)

And, yes, I'm sort of biased.

Jason Haskins

Still, I think Kate Van Dyke has produced an immensely helpful resource for churches interested in the visual arts. It will be most useful to churches looking to integrate visual art in a substantial, thoughtful fashion. The site includes essays related to the curating and exhibiting of visual art, jurying, displaying the work, writing artist statements, matting and framing, and presenting artist's talks.

It will not of course answer your every question and that's why you may wish to acquire the resources I mention above. If you have any questions, feel free to contact Kate. She'll be more than happy to respond to your questions and to take feedback on the site, as she looks for ways to make it even more helpful.

2. Church and Art Network

I met Luann Jennings for the first time two years ago at the Laity Lodge. Since then we've corresponded at length and shared a mean tea on the Lower East Side in New York City. Having spent the better part of six years overseeing Redeemer Presbyterian's arts ministry in NYC, she now divides her time between teaching at St. John's University and leading the Church and Art Network.

I hopefully pay her a compliment by saying that I'm envious of this work. It's an incredibly important one and I pray many take advantage of her wisdom and savvy, as together we all seek to serve the church with excellent and compelling works of art as well as with artists who both live well and love well.

Shaun Fox et al

What exactly is the C&A Network? "Church and Art Network is a gathering of arts leaders who are extending our capacity to serve God in our creative work, by sharing resources, making connections, and advocating together for the importance of our work to the church and the world."

I'm glad to know Luann as a friend and I'm the beneficiary of her hard labors. I highly commend this effort to you. And I hope that both of these websites serve ultimately to edify the church and to bless the world, as I imagine they surely will.

The "Art & Church" track at the CIVA conference
Lastly, you will find here a description of the three sessions that I'll be leading at this week's CIVA conference. If you're going to the conference, I hope to see you and I'm sure we'll have a fantastic time together in breezy, shiny, lively Los Angeles.

Sights and Sounds of Pentecost

2011-06-12T09:04:00.000-07:00

Bruce Benedict over at Cardiphonia asked if I'd write a brief reflection on the Pentecost album which he recently produced. I was glad to and I continue to enjoy listening to the music created by the different songwriters included in the project.

All I'll add here, in honor of Pentecost Day, is two things: a book recommendation and a video. The book is by my friend Steve Guthrie, titled Creator Spirit: The Holy Spirit and the Art of becoming Human. I cannot more highly recommend it to church leaders and artists and to anyone who cares to discover the decidedly exciting person and work of the Spirit. Steve's book is both critically and constructively important. The church is certainly better off because of it.

The video comes courtesy of another friend, Erik Newby. Watching it reminds me of a few things. It reminds me of a place I love dearly, the Laity Lodge, which in turn reminds me of the state I love dearly, Texas. It reminds me of the painstaking labors that artists endure in order to produce 25 seconds of beauty. And it reminds me of the peculiar work of the Spirit, the Creator Spirit, to free creation to be particularly itself.

As Colin Gunton says in The One, the Three and the Many, all material particulars of creation are real--what they are and not another thing--by virtue of the way they are held in being by the Holy Spirit. For Gunton the Spirit’s peculiar office is “to realize the true being of each created thing by bringing it, through Christ, into saving relation with God the Father." Because creation and all its parts have been loved by the Spirit, they possess their own glorious haecceitas or thingness.

Erik's photographic video magically highlights all the particular things that occur over Laity Lodge between 8 and 10:10 pm. I don't recommend watching it on a small screen, though. Pump that video up to full screen and enjoy the stars at night which "are big and bright." For that matter, watch it twice so you can catch the details.

All honor and love to the Holy Spirit, today and all year long.

(Art credit: Makoto Fujimura, "May Hour Pentecost")

Laity Lodge Time lapse from Erik Newby on Vimeo.

Thomas Hobbes + Digital Animation = Horrific Beauty

2011-06-08T12:49:00.000-07:00

(Thanks to Tanner Capps for passing this along. I don't advise watching this after a meal. Do wait the recommended two hours.)

Loom from Polynoid on Vimeo.

CIVA Conference: June 16-19 in Los Angeles

2011-06-07T08:10:00.000-07:00

You never know, but it always leads somewhere.
Even if I hadn't just agreed this morning to accept an invitation to join the CIVA board, I'd still be writing this entry. My first exposure to Christians In the Visual Arts occurred in the (very hot) summer of 2001. The location was the University of Dallas, a private Catholic college in, yes, you guessed, the concrete habitat of Dallas, Texas. I had only recently begun my full-time work at Hope Chapel and this was an opportunity to get in on the action due north.

Five Hope Chapelites made the three-hour trek up what my friend Jeff Fish lovingly calls "the minotaur," Interstate Highway 35: David Hernandez, Aubrey Klingler, Kim Garza, Katherine Brimberry and myself. Keynote speakers that year included Jeremy Begbie (my present supervisor) and Joel Sheesley. I saw Mako Fujimura from a distance. I heard Scott Cairns' poetry for the first time. And listening to conference musician, Charlie Peacock, became the seed of an idea for the 2003 HopeArts Festival. I believe this was also the year that the Trinity Arts Conference functioned as an official co-sponsor, so I would have met there the remarkable Dr. Jim Parker as well as the always elegant Kim Alexander.

Needless to say, it was a great experience.

For a newly minted "arts pastor," in fact, it was an intoxicating affair. I felt both like a kid at the grown-ups table and like an NFL scout--beholding up close "real" visual artists and simultaneously scouting their talent. It was at the UD conference that I met Anita Horton and Mary McCleary, future guest artists at Hope Chapel's arts festival. Not bad for a scouting trip.

"Serious art, serious faith"
Ten years later I've yet to wane in my appreciation for the work CIVA has done to support the endeavors of visual artists and to serve the needs of educational institutions, professional societies and the church. I've been asked to give attention to CIVA's relationship with the church and you could hardly bend my arm a millimeter to make me say yes.

(If you're a church leader of any sort or an artist who cares about your local congregation, I'd love to know what you sense as needs with respect to the visual arts and its place in your church.)

If you've seen their brochure material lately, you've noticed a new branding: Serious art, Serious faith. I couldn't agree more.

2011 Conference: "Art and Belief in a Digital Age"

According to the web description, the upcoming biennial conference will explore the ways in which "hard" and "soft" technologies enhance and challenge our understanding of art and belief. "This exploration will be framed by an examination of how matter and materiality shape our understanding of both art and faith. Following an arc built around the major acts of the biblical narrative, our keynote sessions explore three major themes:

1. Why Matter Matters: Technology and the Created Order
2. The Problem of Matter: Technology and the History of Art-Making
3. The Future of Matter: Technology, Art-Making, and Hope

One exciting development is the concerted effort to get artists under 30 at the conference. So if you're under thirty (or thereabouts, I imagine), check out the scholarship opportunities, which I believe might still be available.

As someone who spends a great deal of his time in the discipline of pneumatology, I'll be keen to hear what folks have to say at this conference about "matter and spirit."

Church, Art and the Wife
The conference organizers have tasked me with the responsibility to lead an "art and the church" track. It should be fun. I'll also be leading the worship service on Sunday morning, June 19, along the inimitable Brian Moss. That'll be a hat trick for us this year: together at Regent College, together at the Laity Lodge, and now this.

My wife is a visual artist and one from whom I learn a great deal about the craft. I look forward to serving on the CIVA board, knowing that she'll be my constant partner, advising me, challenging me, praying for me and continually reminding me of the kinds of things that visual artists perceive in the world.

I'm impressed with the quality of men and women who serve on CIVA's board and hope to assist the organization in its mission as much as possible in this season of life.

Here's to plunging into a tribe of artists who will teach me to see the world in a way that I've yet to see it.

(Image credits: At top, "Ethical Wash" by Emanuele Caccioatore; at middle, "Baptism" by Phylis Gillie Jaffe; at bottom, "Called" by Bruce Herman.)

Our Laity Lodge Retreat: In Photos

2011-05-30T08:20:00.000-07:00

What a beautiful, beautiful time we shared out at the Laity Lodge this past weekend. When I return to Durham I'll try to take a moment to jot down a few reflections. For the time being, here are a few photographic memories of the good people that made up a fantastic retreat.

Morning session (with Brian Moss fist-pumping in the back.)

David with Father Gregory Matthewes-Green

Emily Adams dancing for Sunday morning Eucharist service.

5 Minutes Max: "What do I say?"

5MM: "I kid you not. The armadillo rested in my hand like this."

DT: "Jay, you have 1 min. left." Jay: "OK."

Teaching on four virtues of an artist.

Scribbling.

Frederica Matthewes-Green and Co.

"Have you ever ... eaten horse or a dog?"

"Have you ever ... shook hands with a president of a country?"

Shannon and Phaedra lead encaustic workshop.

Debra Fung putting the heat on.

Brooke Waggoner playing magically cinematic melancholy music.

Brooke saying something mischievous.

Brooke above and below.

Interview with Father Gregory and Frederica.

Sharing many fabulous meals.

Windy hug.

Brad and Brooke, PJ and DT.

Jumping over water.

The fabulous 50.

On Friendship, capital F

2011-05-19T19:52:00.000-07:00

"It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Chuy's (aka: "apodo para todos los que se llaman Jesus")
I've been thinking about friendship a lot in the past few months. I'm not exactly sure why. I wrote a bit about it recently. I've preached on it. But I don't think that explains the strong undercurrent of feeling that has accompanied my daydreaming of late.

Last night I hung out with Nate Sanford. Phaedra and I ate dinner with him at Chuy's in the Woodlands, north of Houston, Texas. It'd been ten years since I saw him last.

I'd come to Houston in September of 2001, just days before 9/11, to take a six-day silent retreat with the sisters of the Villa de Matel Convent. At the end of my retreat, I drove over to Northland Christian School, where he had just taken up a post as history teacher and head football coach. I knocked on his classroom door and gave him a fine surprised. Our hugs, in front of a room full of teenage kids, were a loud, laughter-filled, body-pummeling affair.

Before that surprise visit it had been the summer of 1992, when he got married, that I saw him last.

Twice in nearly twenty years. Pretty sad.

A record of capital F friendship

As I anticipated our dinner last night I began to recall the close friendships in my life. During my elementary school years, living in Guatemala, I had one MK friend and two or three Guatemalan friends. By "friend" I mean capital F friend: the kind of friend who will hunt you down no matter what, who calls you on the phone for no reason and who, when he misses you, which is at least once a week, feels it as an ache.

During my teenage years I had one bosom buddy: Nate Sanford. I had other good friends, sure, but Nate was special. He loved me with a Jonathan-like love. During my twenties I didn't have a single close guy friend, not of the capital F kind, and mostly I think that was my fault (see second to last paragraph for why). It grieves me to look back on my behavior, on my pride, on my suspicion of others, on the impossibly high standards I kept for friendship that essentially barred entrance into the deeper places of my heart.

I was angry, driven, lonely and disoriented during most of my twenties, outward appearances notwithstanding.

The forging of capital F friendship
As I mention in the Comment magazine article, "The Art of Friendship," "It took the gracious but fiercely determined love of two guys to expose my broken thinking and to re-introduce me to the fabulous world of male friendship." Those two guys are Mike Akel and Jeffrey Travis, and the kind of friendship I forged with them came only through hundreds and hundreds of hours of shared experience.

I firmly believe that you've not crossed the threshold into capital F friendship until you've faced, and pressed through, conflict with each other. It's the moment I dread the most in a friendship. I secretly, and perversely, keep wishing for idyllic, conflict-free friendship, which is to say that I wish for things to be easy. But conflict is also the moment I know will prove the mettle of a friendship. I've lost count how many times Mike and Jeffrey have lovingly confronted me--and loved me through it.

Last night Nate and Phaedra and I laughed loudly and repeatedly. A woman nearby, whom we'd asked to take our picture, actually thought Nate and I were inebriated. We laughed at this too.

We laughed at each other's mannerisms, which have remained un-changed twenty years later. We both teared up, because we're both, at bottom, sentimental kind of guys. And as we hugged each other goodbye, long and fiercely, with kisses on the cheek, after we'd shared a prayer in the middle of the parking lot, we promised each other not to be idiots and let any more time go by without regular check-ins.

Signs of capital F friendship
You know your friend is a capital F friend when he says to you, while dipping a chip in creamy jalapeño, "Last year I pulled a muscle just east of my rectum." (The context for this of course is pertinent: he pulled it during a decathlon competition.)

You know your friend is a capital F friend when half of his enthusiasm at sharing your company involves him standing up from the table in front of the restaurant patrons in order to make an assortment of gesticulating points.

You know your friend is a capital F friend when you realized he's forgiven you many wrongs, tossing them "as far as the east is from the west."

It's hard to forge a capital F friend. It takes a long time, a good deal of grit, faith, shared space, a combination of both serious and silly shared experiences, and a determined intention to make it a priority. The world in which we live frustrates this kind of effort. In fact, both the pace of our North American culture and the constant devaluation of the term "friend" make it nearly impossible to find, let alone cultivate, kindred friendship.

That's why I'm so grateful and still a little sentimental today that I got to share dinner last night with Nate.

The cost of capital F friendship
My friend Jeffrey Travis said something to me once that I'll not forget. He said:

"David, if you have the opportunity to move, I want to challenge you. I want to challenge you, when the time comes to move to a new city, to move not just because of job opportunities. I want you to consider moving because of relationships. Consider that it might be just as important for your well-being to move near the people you love and who in turn love you--that is, your friends--as it might be to move for a propitious occupational opportunity."

Those are words are take more seriously now than I ever have, even if I'm not always exactly sure how that's supposed to happen practically. But who ever said a capital F friend was easy business?

It's worth it, though, and I can still hear Nate's laughter ringing in my head.

David ("the Bean") and Nate ("the Bird") -- Fall 1989

David and Nate (with coincidentally similar haircuts) -- May 2011

Last Retreat Update: 5 Minutes Max

2011-04-29T10:42:00.000-07:00

A month from today I'll be living large in the Frio River Canyon. Our retreat for ministers to artists, occurring May 26-29, will be under way and frequent dips into the river will be a mainstay of our life together under the warm Texas sun. I can't wait. For info see here (on Frederica) and here (on Brooke Waggoner) and here (on the vocation of the artist) and here (on the virtuous artist, which will be the theme of my talk), and see here to register.

As I anticipate our time together I wanted to mention something new that we'll be doing. In addition to the talks that Frederica Mathewes-Green and I will be giving, I want to make space in our official program for an information-dump of sorts.

I'm calling it 5 Minutes Max.

For those of us who find ourselves in the business of shepherding artists, developing arts ministries, coordinating on-campus and off-campus art events for our churches, functioning as liaisons with the arts councils of our cities or serving as college chaplains or art teachers or cross-cultural missionaries, the one thing we ache for is wisdom. We want to do our work well and for that to happen we know that we need both information and knowledge which might somehow translate into wise living.

With a room full of people working in a similar field, it seems a crime not to share what we've learned along the way. To facilitate this possibility, I'm going to invite those attending to prepare a five minute reflection on something they've learned, positively or negatively, whether in success or in failure, alone or with others, over the past year.

If already know that you're attending the retreat, I welcome you to begin thinking of what you might share. We'll figure out the details at the retreat, but for now think of one thing that you'd like to share that pertains either a) to your pastoral work or b) to your practical work. The first category would cover such things as pastoral care, discipleship, counseling or leadership. The second category would cover any activities or programs that you've supervised.

The key will be to pick one thing only. The temptation, naturally, will be to want to share everything. But because we'll only be working with 5 Minutes Max, prayerfully consider what one thing you might want to communicate to the group and trust that over the course of the retreat you'll have ample opportunity to explore a whole range of ideas and discoveries together.

Ok. That's it. I'm proctoring an exam at the moment. Duke Divinity students, all of whom are graduating this year, are scribbling brilliant answers in their blue books, I don't doubt. Myself, I need to get crackalackin' on my paper for Jeremy: "Spirit and Beauty in Catholic Theological Aesthetics." Good times.

Good times indeed.

Taylor Labors Disclosed

2011-04-26T16:30:00.000-07:00

We went to the friendly people at UNC medical the day after my birthday, April 17. This is what the ultrasound screen revealed to us. Three words: we're supersonically thrilled. Taylor labors continue joyfully forward.

5 thoughts on pastoring artists

2011-04-19T12:41:00.000-07:00

I've copied here the contents of a handout of a presentation I gave today to the seminary students at Duke Divinity. I commented on each point as I moved down the list. I also took questions to clarify things. As per usual, things are more complicated than a simple handout can convey. But, still, it's a decent summary of tendencies I've observed over the years.

The images scattered below, excepting the shepherd pic, are from work that Phaedra made for a wedding recently, including wreaths made out of book pages.

“Five Thoughts on the Pastoring of Artists”

1. “Isn’t it obvious what it means to be an artist? Aren’t you either a dancer, actor, musician, painter, architect, writer, poet or filmmaker?” No, it isn’t obvious. The kinds of artists and the different interests that they investigate in the fields of art are as varied as the members of the Body of Christ. Point for pastors: Pay attention to the details of an artist’s life. And be careful not to assume that the categories which either the art establishment or church present are the only ways to be an artist.

2. “What do you mean you want to be a painter? I thought you were a dancer?” Artists figure themselves out differently in different seasons of life. They don’t stay static. Point for pastors: pay attention to the station and season of life in which an artist finds him or herself and be careful not to narrowly pre-define an artist’s life. Keep listening to the Spirit along with your artists. (EX: Rick Van Dyke.)

3. “Why do we need arts pastors? Why not engineering pastors? Or business pastors?” Good question. One possible answer, among many and not all equally persuasive, relates to the way in which art is implicated in every dimension of human life and then equally much shapes every dimension of human life, influencing people for better or worse. This dimension of human life requires shrewd, humble shepherding. Point for pastors: you’ll want to commit to regularly communicating a careful understanding of the aesthetic dimension of your community’s life. (NB: David Ley's tour of the history of ideas in the architecture of Vancouver. NB: in principle we don't need arts pastors on a church staff. Much better is an aesthetically informed pastoral staff all across the board.)

4. “Why are artists so special?” This is another way of asking, “Why are artists so moody and volatile and needy?” Because a) at some level, unique among human occupations (though not exclusively), artists are working intimately with the data--as well as the forces--of matter, affectivity, imagination and with the ways that these shape individual and communal self-understanding, and b) the requirement to remain intimately connected to the wildness of matter, affectivity and imagination causes artists to have to remain vulnerable--vulnerably open, vulnerably attentive--to these forces, i.e. moody, volatile and often needy. Point for pastors: the good pastoring of artists is not that different from good parenting. (See Barbara Nicolosi's chapter in my book.)

5. “What does it mean to pastor the artist as a person?” This is another way of asking, How do we shepherd their identity in terms, for example, of their nature and ambition? Point for pastors: help clarify for artists a vision for their life, an intention to stay steadfast in that vision, and a method for sustaining that vision in health, i.e., open to the Spirit so that artists will learn to flourish in whatever season or station of life they might find themselves. (See Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart.)

Voltaire

2011-04-13T12:53:00.000-07:00

If you publish a book,
a parish curate accuses you of heresy,
a college sophomore denounces you,
an illiterate condemns you,
the public derides you,
your publisher renounces you,
and your wine dealer cuts off your credit.
I always add to my prayers,
“Deliver me, O Lord, from the itch of bookmaking.”

-- Voltaire, Alphabet of Wit

Lately I've felt drugged by the amount of books I've been ingesting. Doctoral work is beastly business some days. A sense of humor goes a long way to keeping one sane.

9.5 Theses about beauty

2011-04-07T11:03:00.000-07:00

The past few months Jeremy, Bo, Brian, Tanner, Jacki and I have been working our way through a series of texts. The texts, which come primarily out of the Catholic tradition though also include representatives in Radical Orthodoxy, have focused our attention to questions surrounding art, aesthetics, beauty and such. Our discussions have been consistently stimulating, and at times rollicking. Lots of laughter, I find, is good medicine for conversation around difficult ideas. Coffee is never far from hand. Pumpkin bread, apples, power bars, fresh orange juice, good tea and chocolate have kept us company throughout. I can't remember when I've had more satisfying discussions than these, and, yes, I feel very lucky.

The territory

The whiteboard in our study room has borne the marks of diagrams, sketches, categorizations, arrows, circles and any other geometric shape that might help us to keep the lines of thought clearly apprehended. While exhausting on some days it has never been boring (could it ever be?), and we are all aware, increasingly so, of the very demanding territory that this discussion entails. As I mentioned a while back, our readings have come from the works of von Balthasar, Aquinas, Maritain, Viladesau, Theological Aesthetics after Von Balthasar, Pope John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI, John Milbank, Graham Ward, Keith Johnson, Edith Wyschogrod, The Cambridge Companion to Hans Urs von Balthasar, bits from The Beauty of God, and I've rummaged around Etienne Gilson and Flannery O'Connor as well as David Bentley Hart, Wolterstorff, Sherry, Seerveld, Chaplin and Frank Burch Brown.

The texts have not only provoked our minds, chiefly for good, they have also at times confounded our minds with the most elaborate non-sequiturs and distressing lines of logic. My provisional conclusion is this: the centuries-long discussion about art and beauty, specifically about art's relationship to beauty, is a dizzying mess.

So to keep a few things clear, I have begun to write out a series of theses. The danger of a thesis of course is that its distilling character masks "a tissue of circumstances" (to quote Maritain) and a tangle of arguments behind them. They're intended to be simple, but in actual fact they're anything but.

Still, I thought I'd share a few things that I've learned along the way. What I've learned principally is to slow down--to read things three and four times if necessary, to look and to look again, to understand the author carefully before I make judgments (a basic requirement of charity), and to not be afraid, as hard as it is, to keep asking simple questions, however "obvious" or "silly" they may seem, and when I feel overwhelmed to not panic but to recognize that these authors deserve the respect of careful, slow, patient study.

A fun assignment
My assignment to you, dear reader, then, is a fun one: Next time you hear someone speak, teach or preach about beauty, ask yourself: 1) Have they bothered to define what they mean by beauty? 2) Have they told you the specific context(s) in which their treatment of beauty is meant to make sense? 3) Have they explained to you the goods that they believe beauty will yield as well as the ills that beauty might protect us against.

If they haven't done this, then chances are that they aren't clear about beauty themselves, and therefore in actual fact have not helped you do your work better. That's a bold statement, I recognize. But it's also one that qualifies all previous statements I've ever made about beauty, which unfortunately have been burdened with a considerable measure of fuzziness. (This includes the nervous relationship I hold to the title of my book.)

Here then are 9.5 theses, a tenth of Luther's number, in no particular order and by no means comprehensive. And a good cheer for not giving up on beauty altogether, because the world would be much poorer without it, theologically as well as actually.

9.5 Theses about beauty

1. Every discussion about beauty is necessarily a contextual discussion. There is no purely objective or abstract or general way to talk about it. The kinds of contexts, or traditions, that come into considerable play include:

a. The metaphysical tradition, whether in Orthodox or Catholic circles
b. The Continental philosophical tradition (Kant, Hegel, et al)
c. The Dutch Calvinist tradition
d. The contemporary ("high") art tradition
e. The popular art tradition

2. Because a human person is a complex being, he or she can be simultaneously beautiful in one faculty (say, the intellectual) but ugly in another (say, in his or her relational or speech habits). That’s how physically unremarkable saints can be described as uncommonly beautiful or how Hollywood actors can be gorgeous but morally debauched. Here I am using beauty in one of its “classical” senses, as harmoniously unified, richly complex and attractively splendid. This also, by the way, brings to light the kind of complicated issues that come up in an aesthetically excellent but morally repugnant work of art.

3. While beauty began as a conceptual sub-category (e.g. to mathematics: Pythagoreans; political theory: Plato; practical reason: Aristotle; rhetoric: Horace), it eventually became a supra-category (with comprehensive, all-encompassing powers of explanation), and then receded to become a sub-category or even sub-par-category (for 20th/21st century contemporary artists and critics).

4. If you ever stand up in public to speak about beauty, you should do three things:

a. Define what you mean by beauty.
b. Define the context you have in mind.
c. Define why exactly you think it's important.

5. Because beauty in the contemporary world is often regarded as equivalent with standards of taste or mere appearance, it is rightly rejected as shallow, as “mere form,” and rightly found to be “a bit of a bore” (Somerset Maugham, Cakes and Ale).

6. Your average Christian assumes that art and beauty self-evidentially go together, much like he or she assumes that God is self-evidentially beautiful. This is a problem, because the meaning of neither of these is self-evident.

7. Your average American believes that beauty putatively designates “feminine” qualities, which is why in common practice we feel more comfortable calling a woman beautiful than a man.

8. When beauty is separated from goodness and truth, it suffers. While it matters how we construe these “transcendentals,” the axiom stands regardless of our construals. The point is a dynamical one, that is, how they are interrelated, not a static one.

9. Five contexts are significant for discussions of beauty, to the extent that each in its own way normatively determines the meaning of the term, and when these contexts are not kept clearly distinguished, discussions of beauty quickly become muddled :

a. God/the divine
b. Creation/nature
c. Art/aesthetics
d. Culture/marketplace
e. Piety/church

9.5 Discussions of beauty have been accompanied by a litany of bifurcations. Some of the more common ones include:

a. Art vs. craft
b. "Fine" art vs. the “people’s” art
c. Formal vs. expressive
d. Taste vs. vulgarity
e. Disinterested vs. interested
f. “art of glory” vs. “art of the cross”
g. Aestheticism vs. moralism
h. Invisible vs. visible or Infinite vs. finite

(Here below is something I found quite beautiful from Mothlight Creative. It's a video homage to Pittsburgh comprised solely of still photos. Artwork above represents some of Phaedra's new work. Three hours from now I'm headed here.)

April (For Pittsburgh) from Mothlight Creative on Vimeo.

1 Year Anniversary of the Book

2011-03-30T16:15:00.000-07:00

When I say "the" book I mean For the Beauty of the Church: Casting a Vision for the Arts. Yep. On March 2010 it saw the light of day. Twelve months, a couple score reviews and a handful of very entertaining radio interviews later, I remain grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with so many amazing people along the way.

The critically good
Most of the feedback, thankfully, has been constructive. Some of the critical feedback has had a prodding but generous quality about it. For example, Greg Scheer wrote me this note yesterday, with reference to my chapter:

"In the 'contextually relative' section, I wish you hadn't used children as an example. Kids are cute and young, so nobody's going to complain about their lack of skill. But what about the adult choir, artists or dancers at a 200 member local church? They rarely compare to trained professionals, but within their limitations and context they work hard and achieve good results. It always bugs me that some of my church's sophisticated parishioners will pay $50 for symphony tickets on Saturday and then speak disparagingly of our music on Sunday morning.

Or the guy I was talking to who compared Sufjan Stevens ("what worship should be") to worship in the local church. The context of the touring/recording musician is completely unlike the level of music you can make from a pool of 100 or 1000."

I appreciate this concern and I'm glad Greg brought it to my attention. This is the kind of stuff that can make or break a music director's/pastor's day.

The critically cranky

I've had a few crabby reviews. It's not that I mind a thorough laundering of bad ideas or poor construction that the book might exhibit. Trust me. I know where the book gets it wrong. Like many of you I wish I had Hermione's time turner, so I could revise. Sometimes, though, you can't do much with a criticism. Sometimes you get the feeling that a person has read the book a wee (carelessly) fast.

One lady at Goodreads chided it for celebrating "the beauty of a United States, mostly White Church." Well, whaddya say. Fair enough? Or maybe not or, well, ok, so what then? If I were cheeky I'd respond by telling her that she had massively underestimated my sin of omission. Not only did I fail to use more Baptist women of color, I also neglected to include a single Brazilian, Native American Indian, green architect or Mennonite church elder. The list goes on.

To criticize a multi-author book for not including the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church--and to wit, saying nothing more--is like criticizing my favorite restaurant (Chuy's for the record) for excluding shark fillets and durian fruit. It sure does. But a restaurant can't be "all things to all men," unless you count Denny's as a brave but foolhardy effort in that direction.

While the concern she raises points to a serious issue, in practice two things have to be considered. One, I worked with people I knew. I built the symposium on the basis of relationship, not simply name- or talent-picking. The relational method mattered to me. Two, publishing houses won't likely publish an 89-author-volume, whose goal is to give voice to every conceivable constituency.

If I get another crack at planning a conference, trust me, I'll do my best to include other voices. It's one symposium, one book so far. Hopefully we'll have more to come. (That's me on a horse saying: "I'm on it.")

The critically friendly
The most friendly review I've received this past year was from Hearts and Minds Bookstore. I couldn't ask for a more happy estimation of my book than this. May the good people at H&MB prosper and live long (see review below).

A few thank yous

For all of you who have bought the book: thank you. For all of you who have read the book: thank you. For all of you who have shared the book with an artist or pastor or friend of any sort: thank you. To all of who have taken the time to write a review: thank you. To all the good people at Baker: thank you. To the other seven authors: I was a lucky guy to get to do this with you. To Phaedra for bearing with me through the whole process: I owe you a hot date at our favorite Indian restaurant.

(The photo at the bottom represents the last days of editing on the book. Good times.)

From Hearts and Minds Books:

"From the forward by poet Luci Shaw to the final chapter ("My Hopes and Prayer" by Taylor himself) this is a truly splendid collection. The pieces are relatively short, not overly demanding, yet thoughtful and rich and varied. Makoto Fujimura notes that it is "pragmatic and theologically astute at the same time" and he is correct. There is foundational, thoughtful, and inspiring theology and perspective here, and there are practical pieces, clear-headed proposals and positive suggestions. It is encouraging, if honest, and a wonderful example of how a wide variety of authors can contribute to a single, over-arching vision.

Unlike, say, our very favorite anthology of this sort, edited by Ned Bustard, It was Good: Making Art for the Glory of God (Square Halo Press), this collection is not necessarily by and for artists. Here we have John Witvliet on worship, Lauren Winner teaching us about art patronage, Eugene Peterson on the role of the pastor to encourage artists. (If you are an artist whose pastor does not encourage you, perhaps you could give this to him or her. Or, read this chapter for yourself, allowing Peterson to mentor you through his good words.)

Barbara Nicolosi, a fabulous Roman Catholic leader in the film industry offers an insightful chapter about the inclinations of the artistic types (and how to shepherd them.) There is a chapter for practitioners and a wise essay on the dangers of art-making in the local church. Jeremy Begbie's last chapter is a call for further scholarship and practice, offering good hope for the recent renaissance in Christians working in the arts.

Of course it has long been our position that artists----like bankers or teachers or counselors or engineers---don't have to do their work in the church, or in service of the gathered community in worship. Yet, there can be a vibrant relationship between artists and the local church, and this book has catapulted that conversation a light year ahead in the right direction.

What a fun array of authors, an excellent array of ideas, a good array of suggestions. Get this book, give it away, keep the conversation going."