The following is an excerpt from a Chapel Talk by Scott Cairns at Regent College in 2005.
I want to insist that the pursuit of art becomes worthless when it is pursued as a hobby…that the pursuit of art becomes worthless when it is pursued as evangelical apologia…and that the pursuit of art becomes worthless when it is understood as an expression of what you know.
I want to insist that the pursuit of art becomes vocation only when it is understood as a devotion to a medium of language or sound or pigment or clay or fabric, a devotion to a medium, a craft whose pursuit leads the artist into making something worthy of attention. And it means that we must not fear that our whole hearted pursuit of vocation will lead us away from our duty to God, to community.
On the contrary, whole hearted pursuit of vocation manifests a mature faith, genuinely trusting in the God who has called us. Whole hearted pursuit of vocation enables us concurrently to pursue fearlessly our duty to God and to community. So vocation comes to be understood less as a line of work and more as a mode of being, less as an expression of what is known and more as a way of knowing, less as something done to deliver a message to others and more as a way God reveals to us who we are, who He is, how we are connected.
I was not at Regent when Scott Cairns spoke there. I only heard it later courtesy of our digital age. (Download Scott Cairns' chapel talk from Regent Audio.) His focus was on vocation and prayer. The whole address is brilliant and worth way more than the 14 minutes it takes to listen to. I was caught off guard by the above excerpt. It is one thing to try and live out these words as an artist. It is another thing trying to live out these words as an artist in the church.
At this point I could go on about how I have personally struggled with vocation and pursuing art in a way worthy of the words above. And I could go on and on. My battle with art, vocation and the church has been raging for several years now. To be clear, this is not a battle with art or vocation or the church, it is a battle with the combination of the three. But I don't want to talk about that right now. Instead, I will switch gears and say something different about how we worship in the church.
What if we were to change around the wording a bit and read...
I want to insist that the worship of Christ becomes worthless when it is pursued as a hobby…that the worship of Christ becomes worthless when it is pursued as evangelical apologia…and that the worship of Christ becomes worthless when it is understood as an expression of what you know.
First, it is obvious we don't want our worship to be a hobby and it is not uncommon to talk about a lifestyle of worship. But how often does our worship really transcend the Sabbath. I think it is safe to say that any activity that is pursued for only a couple of hours during one day of the week could be considered a hobby.
Second, if our worship is solely about getting people in the doors then we're missing the point. Worship is for God. When we start adding our own agenda to the mix we're talking about idolatry. My boss/pastor/friend Bryan Burton loves to quote Karl Barth on this. And this is the paraphrase..."Anytime you say Jesus and _______, you're talking about an idol". This point needs further explanation which a blog post can't contain. Two books that speak into this are Reaching Out Without Dumbing Down by Marva Dawn and Worship Evangelism by Sally Morgenthaler.
Third, if our worship is only an expression of what we know then we're completely missing the point. God has many names, and one of those names has to be Mystery. We find the Mystery in the space between. In the gaps the story has left out in the telling. The bible is a gift to us, but it is not a simple black and white book. While it is most certainly truth and a witness to truth it is not the Final Word. For that we look to Jesus Christ, the Mystery I adore. To tie all of this together please read Seeker Unfriendly by Mark Galli (check out his blog). This article frames this conversation in the context of worship.
God is mystery. But the mystery has been, is being and will be revealed to us. And that leads me into worship!
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding, he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment—to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.
Ephesians 1:3-10, TNIV (emphasis mine)
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