Visuals are everywhere in our culture and woven into our daily lives, and we are literally surrounded with media. I truly believe that we as the Church have the means, and the responsibility, to use visuals to bring glory to Him and do so in a fresh, creative way.
However, it has been my experience that many of our worship spaces are simply white or beige boxes devoid of any rich visual imagery that point to God.
Now, in that past couple of decades we as the Church have gotten a little better—our walls might be mocha instead of white with stained concrete instead of green carpet, but overall the concept is still the same: our worship spaces generally do not convey the richness and beauty of the Lord.
It wasn’t always this way—the Church used to be REALLY good at using visuals in our buildings and worship services, and I think we are just now seeing the pendulum swing the other way back to the use of culture-leading visual art in the Church.
Think about a cathedral you might have seen a picture of, or even stood in—the building itself is a palette full of color, imagery, emotion, and story. The architecture itself was art, the ceiling was a canvas, and the walls were both literal and figurative windows to God’s creation. Tapestries, paint, mosaics, and of course stained glass were used to convey the message and truths of the Bible and glorify God.
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