The Gallery Wall
A New WFMC Ministry:
The Gallery Wall – A Visual Offering of Worship
Works displayed on the Gallery Wall in our foyer, changing with the liturgical season or current worship theme, celebrate the profound beauty and mystery of creation that reveals glimpses of the divine, inviting viewers to encounter God’s presence in moments of transcendent wonder. Each display, and the works therein, serves as a bridge between the seen and unseen, drawing hearts toward the ultimate source of all beauty and creativity—Jesus Christ, who deeply desires an intimate, transforming relationship with all who seek Him.
Why Do This?
• We believe that God calls us as divine image-bearers to imagine, think, and create together in a shared journey of discovery and understanding.
• We believe God takes joy in our wonder, and we look to the artist and their “urge for transcendence;” that which drives them to want to write, paint, sing, sculpt, or dance in the first place, and to locate the wonder through moments of awe.
• We join C.S. Lewis, who wrote in Surprised by Joy that his imagination was baptized before the rest of him could follow.
• We produce an offering because artistic activity was set in motion very early in scripture when the LORD chose Bezalel to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver and bronze, to cut and set stones, to work in wood, and to engage in all kinds of artistic crafts (Exodus 35:30-33).
What Is Gained?
We hope to create moments where persons encounter the mysteries of God through realistic and sometimes abstract images meant to stimulate the mind to see anew. The art mediates where we have failed to perceive God “crying in the child, the nail driven cleanly into the wood, in the ordinary dawn sun that merely to see clearly is sufficient prayer and praise” (Wiman). Perceiving beyond ourselves helps to clear the clutter from seeing more fully that God is with us in the wilderness so we may learn to follow through his moments of surprising deliverances.
How Is God Glorified?
This modest display reminds us of the need to hear and see together what has been written down, spoken, sung, built, and played by others – composers, writers, poets, arrangers, architects, animators, and performers – to bring into consciousness the thing that is oftentimes found only in the arts, which is…we are not actually in control.
The first installation, from artist Delro Rosco and following the World Mission Week’s theme, Come and See, will be on display beginning September 7. Future displays will also feature conversation / talk-back times with the artists.