Lately I have been thinking more about the role of Christian artists as I read through Andy Crouch’s amazing book Culture Making.
Specifically, I keep going back to the question what is the role of the artist in the local church? I’ll start with the easy one, one I participate in, which is worship music. No matter what church, all churches have music and musically talented people that lead the congregation. There is a culture in any church or denomination that has a specific mode of worship music, whether the millennia old worship of Eastern Orthodox or the current, cutting edge shredding of a guitar virtuoso during an Evangelical service.
One of the pieces of Scripture that continues to stick out to me concerning this is the last Psalm in the psalter:
Praise the LORD.
Praise God in his sanctuary;
praise him in his mighty heavens.
Praise him for his acts of power;
praise him for his surpassing greatness.
Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet,
praise him with the harp and lyre,
praise him with tambourine and dancing,
praise him with the strings and flute,
praise him with the clash of cymbals,
praise him with resounding cymbals.
Let everything that has breath praise the LORD.
Praise the LORD.
There appears here a great license to basically make any type of music that can lead the congregation in praise of God. A license for both the old and the new. The worship of the congregation is cosmic, in that everything that has breath should praise the Lord, and the Church does that together in thousands of different ways each Lord’s Day. There is true unity in diversity found within this psalm, both a connection to all who praise the Lord as well as the opportunity to sing to the Lord a new song, songs that can include everything from orchestras and Bach to guitars, drums, cymbals, and U2.
I play the drum set at an evangelical church. I often wonder about how the music should be connected to the universal church in all of its diversity, as well as to the culture we find ourselves worshiping within.
For me it is not as much a point of what instruments are used as to how does the worship music at my church tie into the cosmic worship of the Church Universal? Do we present ourselves as unique or as part of something bigger? Do we seek to mimic or be creative? Do we approach worship music as a mode of emotion or as a unifying spiritual practice?
I think these are questions you and me need to be asking.