How Congregations Create Worship Visuals
As Catherine Kapikian and other Christian artists have discovered, understanding the visual arts process is key to creating church imagery that builds community and deepens worship. A feature story exploring how congregations create worship visuals.
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Worshipers entering Tualatin Presbyterian Church on All Saints Sunday saw two sets of banners.
Banners hung from the sanctuary ceiling were covered with “names of folks who have gone ahead of us—from people who established local adoption agencies to great historical leaders like Martin Luther and Mother Theresa,” says Ellen Van Schoiack, visual arts director for the Oregon congregation.
Two plain banners were suspended on either side of the cross. As a prayer of thanksgiving, worshipers were invited forward to write names of people who had influenced their faith. “I was able to write the name of my mother. It was touching to look at the banner and see an old person’s handwriting next to a child’s scrawl,” Van Schoiack recalls.
The newly-inscribed banners were raised by drop lines while the congregation sang “For all the saints who from their labors rest…”
As Tualatin Presbyterian has discovered, art created by the congregation can profoundly affect worshipers—especially when leaders take time to understand the essential process of planning visuals for worship.
Start with Scripture
Van Schoiack says that art in her congregation “is intended to help set the tone of the service or guide the participants’ attention or response.” That’s why Tualatin Presbyterian’s pastor and music director work with the art team to plan visuals.
“Rather than bring an artistic concept into the room with us, we start with a scripture. We go in to look at the passage, usually a lectionary reading, and see what flies out. Connecting artists with worship planning helps us focus on the community’s spiritual needs and avoid spiritual expressions that were our private expressions,” she says.
At Grace United Church in Sarnia, Ontario, “pods” gather to study Scripture, pray, and seek spiritual discernment before creating art for worship. The pods include people gifted in theology, worship planning, or art.
Christine Jerrett, minister of spiritual direction, urgesGraceWorks pod members to approach Bible passages asking “Who is this God who calls us to worship?” and “Who are we in relation to such a God?”
Studying Scripture and creating art together helps pods experience themselves as “a people of God, alive with the energies of the Holy Spirit, joyfully living in and witnessing to the liberating victory of Jesus Christ to the glory of God the Father,” Jerrett says.
Be open to the Spirit’s leading
Beginning with the Bible leads to amazing visual insights from the Holy Spirit. “God has far more eclectic ideas than we do!” Jerrett notes.
And, as Van Schoiack and her team have discovered, being open to inbreakings of the Holy Spirit sparks “fearless confidence and humble trust.”
The Tualatin team thought the 2005 Advent lectionary readings had too much Lenten imagery, hardly the way to prepare people for Christ’s coming during Oregon’s endless dark winters. Identifying the lectionary theme of God’s abiding presence helped them choose new texts about biblical images of light.
They used strong but lightweight materials—drop line, strings of light, fabric, photo backdrop paper—to create and hang an Advent installation from the sanctuary’s highest space.
“Till we hung it we had no idea how the fabric would shift and create patterns of light and shadow. No matter where you were, you were aware of this big looming thing, a reminder of God’s abiding presence and the goodness of light,” Van Schoiack says.
Include many perspectives
Trusting the Holy Spirit’s leading prevents art teams from making snap decisions.
“Once you have a team, you have to trust the team and their process. Bad ideas usually go away on their own. But five or six ideas down the line, that bad idea will make someone think of an idea that works,” says Steve Caton, director of worship and the arts at Covenant Life Church in Grand Haven, Michigan. He advises creating teams that are as diverse as possible.
Stephanie Pals, a professional hair stylist, says, “I feel like the designated non-art person on Covenant Life’s design team. I think Steve asked me to join to make sure the art ideas are relatable. There’ve been meetings where I’ve said, ‘I’m not sure worshipers are going to get this.’ ”
She estimates that about 40 percent of Covenant Life’s visual art is presented as an interactive worship option. At Christmas, people wrote prayers and hung them on the walls. Another time, worshipers could select a cup, scoop ashes into a garbage can, and then wash the cup to symbolize Christ’s offer to cleanse their lives.
“Worshiping God is not just singing. Doing art is sometimes a more comfortable way to say, ‘I want more of him,’ ” Pals says.
At Cornerstone Christian Reformed Church in Ann Arbor, Michigan, all ages are learning the same faith vocabulary. Preschoolers through fourth graders draw pictures that get posted to the church’s devotions weblog on Vertical Habits.
The youngsters worship while the adults have Bible study. During adult worship, the kids work on devotions and journals. Hee Lee, the children’s director, says it’s easier for most of them to express themselves in pictures than in full sentences.
“I thought the habit of lament might be difficult for the kids. But they drew what they were going through, like waiting for an adopted sister. Their parents and friends look at their pictures online. And we refer to the art during the next week’s worship, like what does it mean to say ‘I love you, God’ and did you practice that habit of love,” she says.
Catherine Kapikian on helping churches transform worship spaces
Congregations often create their own visual art for temporary uses, such as for a single service, sermon series, or liturgical season. Yet congregations can also handle large permanent projects—if they understand how art, artists, and church communities work together.
In her new book, Art in Service of the Sacred, Catherine Kapikian describes how creating visual art together helps churches build community and deepen worship. Kapikian teaches required visual arts courses to seminarians and directs The Henry Luce III Center for the Arts and Religion at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C.
Pinpoint the change you seek
When churches commission Kapikian, she worships with them, meditates in their worship space, and asks why they’ve called her. “I listen for the felt need internal to the community. What’s most important is finding out what they want to change,” she explains.
Like many historic churches, Metropolitan Memorial United Methodist in Washington, D.C. had a dossal cloth (a.k.a. reredos) on the wall behind the altar. When removed for cleaning, the dusty brocaded velvet disintegrated. So the church’s felt need was to replace it.
Other churches have asked Kapikian to help them refresh a sanctuary wall without removing a donated cross…to symbolize a new congregational purpose…to visually warm a stonewalled sanctuary…or to correct a spatial imbalance.
Identify leaders
Despite her artistic and teaching credentials, Kapikian never takes over. “Every congregation has informal leaders. There are always at least one or two people who understand dynamic process and know how to communicate through nonverbal means,” she says.
Whether congregations choose projects that require drawing, needlework, carpentry, or technology skills, leaders emerge.
Kapikian also looks for members who are good at organizing. “There’s always someone in church who knows a lot about the art required and decides to run the project. Thank God for that,” she says.
Educate to build momentum
Kapikian teaches church leaders—both pastors and art committee members—how to “read” their worship space. She describes the nuances of art product and art process. “Creating art in community is like an iceberg. The 75 percent you don’t see (the process) underlies the 25 percent you do see (the product),” she says.
She waits to suggest design solutions until the congregation has given informed views on what’s important.
When the congregation settles on the visual arts project, Kapikian designs—with their input—and encourages them to take over as much of the fabrication as possible. Churches often run classes on how to draw designs on canvas, sew, cut, build, or whatever.
While embroidering panels to replace their 10-by-25-foot dossal cloth, Metropolitan Memorial sometimes cleared tables after the fellowship hour, spread out panels, and invited children to add stitches (under supervision).
Meanwhile, some members prepared bulletin inserts to explain the symbols in the needlework while others built scaffolds and figured out the optimum panel widths for vertical hanging.
“People go home and tell their family and friends. It starts a momentum. People far from church, spiritually, ask to help. The spiritual dimensions of the design take hold and some start attending worship,” she says.
Completing a visual arts project often takes a few years—which also helps build community. Afterwards, people remember which panel or banner or cushion they worked on. The power of this experience explains why Kapikian also advises churches to eventually replace art. “Every generation or two needs to recreate its visual proclamation,” she says.
Integrate art into the worship space
Throughout any project, Kapikian helps people see how to do art in service of the sacred. “I as an artist do not feel that this space is an arena for my private projection. The art has to amplify, not compete with, what’s already in the sanctuary. And although the symbolic content is usually given forth in an abstract way, it’s still accessible and readable,” she says.
When Abiding Presence Lutheran Church built a new sanctuary in Beltsville, Maryland, Kapikian helped them design kneeling cushions to line the communion rails. The cushions use the ideas of transparency—seeing one scene through another in the salvation story—and water. She says the design is not immediately apparent, but worshipers see how the design flows from watery chaos to flood, exodus, and beyond.
"As we kneel we see God's plan of salvation and his abiding presence with us. Embroidering the cushions was a labor of love. One of our members, a cartographer, counted every stitch he took. He said a standard rectangle took 176,000 stitches," says Pastor Art Hebbeler.
Oddly enough, during hard storms, the roof leaks—but only next to the Noah's ark cushion. Rather than repair the rain-stained section of communion rail, Abiding Presence has decided to see the stains as another mark of God's presence, Hebbeler says.
Its sanctuary placement of entrances, pulpit, and organ created visual imbalance at Westminster Presbyterian, a fast-growing church in Greensboro, North Carolina. They went with Kapikian’s suggestion to construct a wooden form, opposite the organ, that mimics organ pipes’ lines and silver paint. Each liturgical season people hang a different set of banners from the structure.
“Westminster chose the ancient form of the circle to symbolize our engagement with the divine. So the Advent banners are about the inbreaking of God’s Spirit. Christmas shows the earthly and spiritual realms colliding in Christ’s birth,” Kapikian says.
Learn More
Listen to audio clips of Hee Lee and Stephanie Pals telling how visual art has enhanced worship in their churches.
Order Catherine Kapikian’s latest book, Art in Service of the Sacred. Read her advice on discerning the difference between visual noise and visual enrichment. Here’s an interview with Kapikian on why art and theology belong together…and a story about the seminary artists-in-residence program she organized.
See worship art made by GraceWorks pods.
Consider joining a group of Christians active in the arts, such as Christians in the Visual Arts, Episcopal Church and Visual Arts, or Imago Dei. Attend a summer workshop on faith and the arts in Illinois, Massachusetts, New Mexico, orTexas. Adapt one church’s spirituality and arts camp toyouth in your community.
This visual arts resource directory includes downloadable images, artists’ websites, and art events. Browse dozens of websites about Christian modern art, including A Broken Beauty.
Learn the story behind biblical and Christian symbols in Elizabeth Steele Halstead’s new Visuals for Worship, which includes downloadable images on CD. It’s designed as a companion to The Worship Sourcebook.
Broaden your visual vocabulary by browsing Eyekons, a digital marketplace where art meets spirit. Gather a group to watch and discuss the DVD With One Voice: Artists in Christian Community.
Congregational Resource Guide recommends several resources on art, architecture, and worship, includingChurch Architecture Network, Built of Living Stone: Art, Architecture, and Worship, which gives guidelines for renovating or building Catholic churches, and Patricia S. Klein’s Worship Without Words: The Signs and Symbols of Our Faith.
Browse related stories on aesthetics, art that preaches, church renovation, and how congregations are incorporating visual art.
Start a Discussion
Feel free to print and distribute these stories at your council, worship, or arts committee meeting. These questions will get members talking:
- Art at Tualatin Presbyterian Church is often specific to a single service, sometimes to a sermon series or liturgical season—but not repeated the next season. How long is a given artwork used in your worship? How did you decide this?
- Every congregation has people who’d rather figure out art for themselves and people who have trouble understanding visuals. So how much—and when—do you offer an explanation?
- Steve Caton, a church director of worship and arts, says, “The arts send messages far deeper into people than you could ever talk into them.” What are your congregation’s primary ways to deliver worship messages?
- Catherine Kapikian explains how long-term art projects build community and deepen worship. Which permanent worship art projects might make sense for your congregation?
- Brainstorm about new ways to experience art in worship. What risks and rewards do you see?
Share Your Wisdom
What is the best way you’ve found to shape the visual arts process as you plan for worship? Please write to us so we can identify trends and share your great ideas. Whether you do these or any other things, we’d love to learn what works for you:
- Have you documented how you made certain artworks, along with how you used them in worship, so you could share this knowledge with others?
- Did you develop a system to inventory the ways you use art in worship—so you could see which themes, liturgical seasons, or worship service elements are paired too often or too little with visuals?
- What’s the best way you’ve found to involve a wider range of people in planning and creating visuals for worship?
- Which resources or strategies have helped people work together to create art for worship?