Worship Arts Ministry

When we talk about the practical task of worshiping in an intergenerational community, it’s easy for all of this to get jumbled up. As such the Apostle Paul’s words to the Philippian believers serves as a model for how each of us as individuals are to engage in corporate worship: “Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too. You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had (Phil. 2:3-5 NLT).” Ultimately, worship cannot be about the individual’s preference but rather God’s glory. 18th century Anglican Bishop Stephen Charnock wrote, that “to pretend a homage to God, and intend only the advantage of self, is rather to mock him than worship him. When we believe that we ought to be satisfied, rather than God glorified, we set God below ourselves, imagine that he should submit his own honor to our advantage; we make ourselves more glorious than God, as though we were not made for him, but he hath a being only for us.”

Music, like any art-from must concern itself with communicating essential reality through honesty and beauty. Because of the self-evident brokenness of our world, a theology of beauty only makes sense in light of our eschatology–that is, our understanding of things to come–God’s ultimate plan for his creation. For this, we rely in part upon the prophecies of Isaiah and Habakkuk when they paint for us this picture of our future reality: “…for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Isa. 11:9b ESV), and “For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Hab. 2:14 ESV). In light of this, we understand our current world through the metaphor of a communion chalice: A thing that, though flawed, possesses immense beauty in and of itself, but whose beauty is overshadowed by the reality of what it is made for–the beauty of that with which it is to be filled. As Christian artists, our job is to celebrate the richness of the present beauty, struggle with the present pain, but do so with hope in light of the future glory which is to come. Email us HERE with any questions.