Exprience>Information?

LIFETHEOLOGYARTWORSHIP

A pastor friend, Matt Prinz, recently gave me an article on The Art of Olafur Eliasson, "Seeing Things" from the New Yorker Magazine (11/13/06). I'm not as savy and conversant in terms of the Art World as Matt is. It turns out Oalfur Eliasson is quite the current (and recent past) sensation in the world of Art.

Eliasson seeks to create an experience through his art, to invite us to reconnect with the larger world that we often take for granted, through an intense and intentional exprience of the world through his installations. In the article he talks about a show he was installing for the Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in Chelsea. Commenting on the show in the New Yorker interview he said "A show like this comes out of the laboratory. It's not about foil and water. It's about how we feel about those things. The pool is a machine that can produce a phenomenon, but I'm very aware that it can come close to being a setup. ... Working on the idea of experience is something intimate. Speaking with you, now, will change the way I see when I return to the gallery." Of course for some critics the verdict is still out in regards to whether or not Eliasson's work (like dumping non-toxic substances in a river in Sweden in order for city residents to (re)become aware of the beauty and movement of the river in their midst) can really count as "art" in the traditional sense of the word.

Eliasson's comments and vision of art made me think about worship and the church. It also reminded me of one of the widely-published thinkers of the Emergent Church - or Post-Modern Circle of Thought - in Contemporary American Chrisianity: Leonard Sweet. Sweet talks about The epistemology of digital culture, offering an acronym for that in the word EPIC: E=experiential; P=participatory; I=image-rich; C=connective. His thought is that worship in a postmodern context has to prioritize the digital culture in which we live. One of the main aspects of his thoughts intersects with much recent philosophy (Paul Ricoeur for example) and the work of Eliasson (experience his art at the SF MOMA next Fall - it'll be a major survey of his work entitled "Take Your Time: Olafur Eliasson).

All this makes me wonder about Christian Worship. Often I've been to worship services which were much more about information than about experience. Worship was focused on what it intellectually means to be a Christian, than enabling me to practice my faith in discipleship. They were more like a "how-to-succeed" seminar or a group-therapy-session-of-encouragement, than some sort of communal gathering aiming to experience as a gathered community the presence, purpose, and passion of God. I think worship is more about providing consistent, intentional experiential celebrations of God's nature, purpose, desires, grace, and call to community - all hoping that God's Holy Spirit will show up to transform our best intentions into a living experience of God. The worship celebrations I remember were such experiences of hopeful anticipation, eye-opening celebration, and life-transforming revelation.

Some might say that like Eliasson's work, such experiential worship is more of a subjective or ego-driven stunt than a meaningful and meaning-making service of worship. Does experiential-ness trump information? Or is it just a gimmick?

What experiences of God have you had in a worship setting? How are/were they different than other experiences of the Divine that you've had outside of a formal worship setting (like in nature, daily life, or through art)? How do you think an emphasis on "experience" might be enriching or distracting to our traditional form of Worship in the Reformed Tradition?

(Image Credits - in descending order
1. The Kaleidoscope - Rostock, Germany
2. The Weather Project - London, The Tate
3. Double Staircase - Essen, Germany

More Images of his work at flickr