Christian music over the past few decades has really come into its own niche and market. Some of it is decent, most of it isn't. As I was watching this short clip with Ken Burns talking about how he sees the importance and influence of music in film, I began to wonder if the Church could benefit from thinking along the same lines when it comes to Sunday morning.
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What if the Church began to think in such terms about the choice of music that it uses to compose Sunday morning? When I was at Durham last month, N.T. Wright took a segment of the class to play Bach's Passion According to John. He explained that what we now hear in this classical piece, is just classical music. But back then, what Bach was doing as a composer for the Church, was much more than that. Bach was trying to portray the Gospel in terms that would allow the Church to hear once again, the Gospel for the first time, and re-cover it's potency.
Now, the contemporary evangelical landscape may not have the genius that God gave to the Church through Bach, but it does make me wonder why this way of composing songs for the Church has not been considered in our churches. The artistic caliber that Bach represents makes contemporary christian artists look quite silly.
So how could the Church begin to encourage Christians in the arts? Recently, there have been many evangelical institutions like Regent College and Fuller Seminary that have been trying to forge this unknown territory for evangelicals. There have also been several evangelical publishing houses that have published books on this topic recently as well. These are hopeful signs that Christians may be taking the arts seriously once again, but only time will tell.
What are some ways or ideas that you have seen in which you or your church has tried to bridge the gap between the arts and the Church?
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