Church for a changing culture: an introduction to alternative worship

10: Art

Alternative Worship has been greatly influenced by installation art.

A large proportion of the new art of the 1990s was of this kind, demonstrating the possibilities of designed or curated environments to convey meaning and affect how one sees the world. Most installation art has a narrative structure [explicit or implied], a 'story' or subject beyond formal abstraction or 'just-there-ness', and clearly such narratives can be relevant to spiritual growth or even worship. Some Alternative Worship events, such as labyrinths, are on the borderline between church service and art installation, partaking equally of both.

Not only can installations form the environment of worship, they can be created as part of the worship by members of the congregation.

This is a widespread and delightful practice which allows everyone to be creative and to join together in making something interesting - and often startlingly beautiful. This practice too has parallels in the contemporary art world. Many of those involved in Alternative Worship are artists, for whom it offers a far wider field for the exercise of their gifts than a conventional church service. Any format or medium can be incorporated. No prior rules will be imposed about doctrinal purity, or which styles are suitable for worship and which are unsuitable.

In contemporary conceptual art the real artwork is a state of mind, or thought, or insight rather than any artefacts that may be necessary to achieve it.

There is an obvious parallel with the creation of an act of worship as a setting for encounter with God. The job of the 'worship artists' is to foreground a condition so that we can perceive God's presence and receive God's voice in it. They attempt by selection to clear a channel of 'noise', so that the ever-present divine signal may be more easily heard. On the one hand they are saying to God, "Here is a mode of communication that we can understand, if you choose to speak through it" - a mode of communication that offers other words for God's use than the usual forms of religious discourse. Equally, they are saying to other people, "We have already sensed God speaking in these things, and have tried to clear some of the extraneous matter, the noise, so that his speech can be heard more easily."