A few more shots from the opening of ‘The Oasis‘ in High Kirk Church last week
and the lighting? Did i mention it? Its pretty awesome – below is the range of colours that filter through – an amazing job by Brian Adams, genius!
All the images above ©navyblur
This happens to me ALL the time……
I have shared with many people that the thing Christians call ‘worship’ is a struggle for me. Its not that worshipping God is a struggle, just that doing so as a result of, or as influenced by a formulated and rather repetitive song is tough for me. We should all know that ‘worship’ is not exclusively a musical thing but i find myself wondering if many of us do know that. But this post isn’t about that particular issue…..
Anyway, music stirs up ‘unexpected moments of worship’ within me, music by ‘secular artists!’
This post is inspired by an article in Relevant magazine – you can read the full article here – you should. Reading it helped me gather my thoughts on this subject and pushed me to blog this. I say ‘pushed’ because for some people, this is controversial or risky ground.
A couple of weeks ago i mentioned a need to pause and NOT sing during Church and to assess in my own heart if i was singing the words truthfully. As the Relevant article points out; ‘So many songs seem to address lots of the bright and shiny emotions we feel about God, but sometimes, we can be left feeling detached when trying to worship.’
I don’t want to just re-blog everything the article says so i’ll just say that for a long time i have experienced more ‘unexpected moments of worship’ than i could possibly count. So much so that id say they are no longer ‘unexpected.’ Moments of ‘worship’ during singing in Church are slightly more unexpected if i am honest!
There are many examples in the U2 back catalogue. Seriously, have you ever heard a song of ‘worship’ as amazing as Yahweh? Crumbs from Your Table? I am only thinking of one album with these two suggestions, i could quote U2 for days on end!
A more recent example for me is Josh Ritter’s album So Runs the World Away, it provides a few amazing moments – in the song ‘Lark’ he sings;
“I am assured, yes I am assured yes
I am assured that peace will come to me
A peace that can yes surpass the speed yes
Of my understanding and my need”
I could rattle on here and quote song lyrics all day but my point really is that we can & do limit our worship experience by assuming God only shows up in the words of songs written by Christians who are in the ‘Christian music industry.’
Much of the music i hear within the ‘Christian genre’ is really bad. Outside of the confines of that industry, the music is better – it just IS – but also, the so-called ‘secular has more chance of inspiring ‘worship’ in me. Perhaps thats due to the honesty of the artists? Perhaps because they are spilling out the emotions of their heart into a song and not trying to create the new worship hit song?
God just does NOT define and categorise things like we do & an industry that is boxed in and confined to ‘Christians’ only making Christian music might just be very silly sounding to God – He works outside of all the rules we make!
A little while ago i was asked to contribute to the ideas for the renovation of our Youth Hall in Church
So, i won’t disturb the visual aspect of this post too much.
Upon being given the new name for the Youth Hall i created this logo
This following 4 images are presented as shown and are 600x600mm prints of photographs taken by Navyblur - all the images are places within our Church building – so technically that has nothing to do with me but we love the images so i need to show them…
The following two images were created by Cherith and I – she built the paper house you see below, genius!
Our initial thoughts were to use 2 verses/passages of scripture that could resonate across all age groups in our congregation, and reflect them graphically in some way without it being too cheesy or cliche’d – we hope we achieved that. These are 1200x800mm prints and are side by side on a wall at the coffee bar.
I need to thank those who involved us in the process, it’s been a blast but also to our friend Laura who appears in the above image.
There will be good images of the opening coming soon from Navyblur, promise!
“What is church? It’s people, broken people … pretending not to be broken … and that’s what breaks it…”
The quote is from Phil Groom’s blog post – here / The clip is from Rev, a new BBC sitcom – here – its profound!
I think what’s so great about Rev is, its not making fun of God but it is highlighting how absurd people are.
This clip exposes the ‘Jesus is awesome’ mask brilliantly – if you can watch the full episode on iPlayer, you must do so! It highlights so much of what is wrong with our “21st Century Church” but also shows a beautiful and genuine Christian reaction to such false behaviour. Like i say, profound stuff!
Superbly funny video from The Black Keys – go get their new album ‘Brother’s’ – tis a good’un!!