Last week St. John’s church (where I am currently serving) held a weeklong interfaith art exhibit. It was fantastic; we had an Art Exhibit composed of 48 artists from the East and West whose art reflected the theme of Harmony between the East and West. Spread over four different evenings, we had the Bishop of London Richard Chartres and the Grand Mufti of Al-Azhar Ali Gomma speak, we hosted a lecture by New York Times Best Selling author Tahir Shaw, Omar Sherif spoke as we screened the interfaith film Hassan and Marcos, and we had an Oud concert by one of the world best Oudists, Naseer Shamma. The whole week was great; we had over 2,000 people attend, including two nights that drew 700+ people.
As I reflected on the week, I found myself thinking a lot about the mission of the church. There is a David Bosch quote (that I can’t find right now) but goes something like this… ‘in a post-Christian world, the value of Christianity will be defined not by what the church does for the those within a Christian community, but those outside the Christian community’ When in seminary I really liked this approach and thought of it as a call for the church to be socially active and meet the physical needs of those outside the church. Yet as I watched the scores of people come to our church last week, my understanding of how the church should serve the world was broadened.
As I looked around during the Caravan of the Arts, I knew few of the people who were attending. Our church had spent countless hours planning and hosting these free events for people outside the church, but inside the community. And we weren’t holding these events as a means to get people to join the church or raise money- rather they existed so that people with different ethnic, economic, and religious backgrounds could come together to enjoy art, and enjoy one another. People who had rarely, or never, been to a church had a wonderful time- no strings attached.
I think that the Western church too often thinks of ‘service’ or ‘mission’ strictly in terms of meeting the physical/economic needs of those we want to serve. Meeting those needs is an essential part of the mission of the church, but if that is all the mission of the church is, I think we are missing something. I guess what I am driving at is that I saw the value of a kind gesture; I saw how people responded when the church treated its neighbors as friends, rather than those who need to be saved. People who had never been to a church walked away with a smile on their face, and we shouldn’t underestimate that.
A few Articles on the festival, and some photos...
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