Real Christian Art

I visited two cathedrals on Saturday. The first was St Stephen's in Nottingham, which was the church that William Booth, founder of The Salvation Army was christened in (hence, the reason for the visit). It was so beautifully ornate in side, and had some of the most wonderful Christian artworks, decorations, 14th century choir stalls - very beautiful.

Then to Coventry and the Coventry Cathedral, re-built after the old one was bombed and destroted in World War 2. A magnificent modern cathedral, breathtaking in it's structure and furnishing and stained glass and stunning sculptures and artworks.

I visited two cathedrals - but to me I didn't visit any churches.

A favourite author of mine, Mike Yaconelli puts it like this, "churches are not glistening cathedrals filled exclusively with beautiful Cinderellas. Churches are noisy rollicking madhouses, filled with yelping, dancing, odd people who follow the real Cinderella wherever he goes."

These cathedrals can be beautiful places of worship, and I enjoy worshipping in these surrounds from time to time, and God is present. But we know that the church is not the building, it's the people. And people make things complicated and messy, they leave fingerprints and spill cordial. They have warts and pimples and big hair and no hair and they can be loud and yeah sometimes really annoying.

Ss long as I live, my ambition is to continue to bring together a group of people who come as they are, with all their oddness and variety and colour, with their difference of opinion and different clothes and their own unique way of expressing themselves, who have their eyes fixed absolutely on Jesus, who are so filled with God's love that amidst the rollicking madhouse that happens when they come together the love and glory and light of Christ shines brilliantly bright.

Now that's art!