"While English is Jamaica's official language, most Jamaicans speak patois. But it does not yet have a standard writing system. Those opposed to the translation project have argued in the country's newspapers and other media outlets that formalizing a written standard for patois would undercut efforts to promote Standard English." --"Translation Tiff," Christianity Today (Jocelyn Green).

When establishing a new church in an established space a group must re-create the architecture from the inside out.  The building looks same on the outside, but on the inside the room must take on the shape and purpose of the community inhabiting it, even if it is only for a few hours a day.

Architecture has been well explored as a function of liturgy and worship, even in evangelical churches, where the focus of most new buildings is to place every seat so it has an uninhibited view of the podium and the projector screen.  

Interior design has little significance for established churches, who have chosen a particular design, contemporary in its day, that is kept for the life of the church.  This stability is a good thing.  You can tell how old a church is by looking on the inside and seeing the design.  A church with orange carpet was made during the 1970s...that's a give in.

Art is needed weekly when setting up and taking down a church on a weekly basis.  Most church interiors are like one great painting: they are designed with great care and then preserved as best they can.  In the rental space my church plant uses, we have to recreate our group's space each week, and as we grow move things around and re-organize our space.  Our church is maleable, a new piece of clay that can be molded weekly. ... more

Karl Giberson, a scientist at Eastern Nazerene College and director of the Forum on Faith and Science, wrote in his recent Salon article "What's wrong with science as religion" about the necessity (whether biological or not) of constructing narrative, consequently pulling the new athiests cat out of the bag:

Rational arguments for the truth of theism are no longer supposed to work. Some Christians therefore advise that we should simply share our narrative and invite people to participate in it.
This sort of thinking is guilty of a disastrous misdiagnosis of contemporary culture. The idea that we live in a postmodern culture is a myth. In fact, a postmodern culture is an impossibility; it would be utterly unlivable. People are not relativistic when it comes to matters of science, engineering, and technology; rather, they are relativistic and pluralistic in matters of religion and ethics. But, of course, that's not postmodernism; that's modernism! That's just old-line verificationism, which held that anything you can't prove with your five senses is a matter of personal taste. We live in a culture that remains deeply modernist.

---William Lane Craig, from "God Is Not Dead Yet", published online at Christianity Today

According to Craig, we do not live in a post-modern world, but a deeply modernist one. In this type of world, where things are suppose to be rational unless creativity is involved (religion and ethics are creative, or in need of non-analytical thinking, so to speak). If creativity or art is needed it means we are dealing with something there is no data or computer code to replicate, meaning irrationality ensues.

The fact is, the Christian community participates in art, creativity and irrationality, day in and day out. Our community is a narrative we invite people to participate in and learn from, as a person gazing at a painting finds more and more meaning. A person may not believe in a painting's value until he or she reads an essay that explains the artist's approach and the meaning behind the work. So to, a person in church may need to be persuaded by a good sermon or a caring, loving, and sharing friend, but those actions are the minority of the Christian community's life. The majority of the community's time is spent in the irrational, the creative, the order of service, the liturgy, prayer, song, dance---all things that are part of a narrative and not in the analytical or scientific.

Every time we go to church we participate in something that is irrational. ... more

Liturgy, in the everyday, broad sense, is the public work of the Christian and the Christian community.  It is the work we do inside the walls of our home or church, as well, and maybe even more importantly, the work we perform outside the walls of home and church.  Specifically, the sacramental attitude we have in corporate worship and in the home should be the same ethos we bring into public.

The Word, in becoming incarnate, became public in the rawest, most earthy sense.  Jesus became Man.  He was Creator now created in the womb (as David writes of God forming us in our mother's womb).  Like clay before the potter, God called to God, and the Christ-child became Word-in-flesh. Art, the product of our creative faculties, is at the center of the Christian liturgy, with its focus on incarnation at Christmas and resurrection at Easter (or Pascha).  

I am going to be taking some time to write shorter, more introspective posts on the subject of Art in the Liturgy, focusing on how aspects of the liturgy we keep inside the walls of the church can become our public work. In other words, how does our liturgy become incarnational or missional? ... more

I gave up on Christian radio a long time ago because it was the sugary and sappy equivalent of Top 40 radio. The same song over and over. The same lazy games and quizzes over and over. Boring!!!

As I began to think that being a Christian means being creational, of doing something new, different, and beautiful, Christian radio seemed like it was Christian in name only. Music is primarily about art, not about a "safe family environment." Good Christian music made by artists, not pop music copy cats, are about as far apart as the Metropolitan Museum of Art is from Disneyland. Disneyland is so contrived and pop induced it is gag worthy.

My father made a similar, equally justifiable comment when we toured the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. He posed the question to me of whether Warhol created art at all. I offered that my father's reaction was the whole point of Warhol's work: consumerism had devalued art so much that people were finding artistic value in his paintings of soup cans, but it is hard not to just accept that it wasn't really art at all but cool copy-cat derivatives. People liked his art because he was a celebrity, not because he necessarily made amazing art work. He was contriving the contrivers, and people got a kick out of seeing beautiful consumer goods. Warhol captured the modernist paradox of the lowest common denominator: the devaluation of art into something so bland it can be marketed to every demographic. Lamentably, I think Christian radio has gone the same way.

Not to be alone, Chad Hall wrote a great essay on why he is Tuning Out Christian Radio. A great quote:

"I’ve noticed Christian radio becoming, for me, a sort of faith vending machine. Need some encouragement? Just push a button! I suspect that too frequent exposure to otherwise fine music hackneys that music and causes spiritual satisfaction to become one more commodity in my life. This makes real corporate worship feel like an imitation of the canned radio versions of the songs. Plus, it keeps me from developing truly nourishing habits. After all, who needs real corporate worship and challenging formative disciplines when I can just tune my radio dial and get a quick God fix?"

What is so destructive about Christian radio and TV is the wall built between congregation and individual. The whole media of worship as radio or TV disconnects one from the body. Paul has written that we are tied together as one body in community, and these ties should be made of hand-shakes, holy kisses, hugs, tears, singing, prayer, silence, and communion. None of those things happen over the radio or TV.

Media is a tool that can be used in a corporate setting. But when media forms a barrier between relationships and fellowship, when it becomes a "little bird" in our ear telling us what we want to hear (like in Fahrenheit 451), then media begins to distort reality and encapsulate us in our own contrived, individualistic worlds. ... more

When the above painting was first exhibited, there was a gigantic uproar. To a twenty-first century audience, John Everett Millais' painting ‘Christ in the House of His Parents' would rarely raise an eyebrow in response. More likely it would be glanced over simply as a realistic, but uninteresting biblical scene. If one reads criticism from the time period, however, one realizes two points. First, viewers were genuinely angry and disgusted with Millais' depiction of the holy family. Secondly, there really was a reason for the dismay-at least to those writing the critiques. "We are presented with that which is merely disgusting," wrote the author of A Glance at the Exhibition of the Royal Academy, 1850, "forced and painful attitudes; elaboration of ugliness; expatiation on sordid or unimportant details; and all this to the contemptuous banishment of the mysteries and beauties of nature."[1] Another critic, Wornum, is quoted: "The dirty corrugated skin of an emaciated frame" should never, ...[be selected as ] model for sacred or historic character"; "The physical ideal alone", he went on, "can harmonise with the spiritual ideal: in Art, whatever it may be in Nature in its present condition, the most beautiful soul must have the most beautiful body; lofty sentiment and physical baseness are essentially antagonistic; even in the lowest sinks of poverty in the world, the purest mind will shine transcendent."[2] ... more

Paul Soupiset is an artist, musician, worship and liturgy leader, graphic designer, editor, typophile and armchair theologian. Paul and his wife Amy have four beautiful kids. He was born in 1969 in San Antonio, ten minutes before his twin brother, Mark.

Currently a graphic designer in San Antonio, Paul has served as the creative director and lead designer at Toolbox Studios since its inception in 1996.