Nice article.

I had a wry chuckle at this – “whenever you see a church toiling to produce a mission statement or conceive of a new strategic plan or wondering if pastoral care is adequately given, there you see a church that has ceased to act out of its formation in Word and Sacrament.” My parish has been attempting strategic planning for the past 5 years with increasing desperation, and has recently set itself to revise its mission statement.

Plans and mission statements can actually be quite helpful, but only to a church confident in its reason for being and focussed elsewhere. We need plans in the same way we need plumbing or hymn books, to help us do what we’re there to do.

Authentic worship is indeed an antidote to self-obsession, but I think this is less understood than it once was. Many people seem to judge their churchgoing experiences either as audiences evaluating the capabilities of the clergy, musicians etc as performers, or by the subjective effects it produces – am I uplifted, renewed, challenged etc. While competent celebrants certainly help, and we often do feel an emotional charge from worship at its best, this is not what we’re there for.

"Let’s keep the old buildings but not what they represent."

Indeed - idolatory and "worship" are about as unchristian as you can get. Schools are more than sufficient to teach children that life is much better whe you treat others as you yourself would wish to be treated.

The theme of this essay is excellent---but the explanation was truly woeful---almost as though he hasnt really god a clue as to what he is talking about.

One of the baneful effects of the rise of scientism, and its "religious" equivalent of left brained Protestant flatland "reason", was the shutting down of the capacity to explore the depths of the psyche of each and every one of us, and our capacity to enter into free psychic participation in the world process.

No psychic depth allowed----it is taboo even.

These capacity to enter into the psychic depth of existence were always the wellsprings of the "creative" process in the making/doing of truly inspiring art.

As an antidote to his left brained verbalisms please check out this essay on Sacred Art.
1. http://www.aboutadidam.org/readings/art_is_love/index.html

The divine is to be found in the intricate interplay of sensibility and intellect. That is why art and the sacred go hand in hand. A Christian life is worked out in the tension between theology and spirituality, between contemplation and praxis.
Faith in Word alone is like a one-legged horse. Tradition, Inspiration and Worship are all needed to make the horse stand up.

Where faith is dispensed as a set of propositions Spirituality is lost like poetry reduced to prose. In Puritanism Word has been reduced to superstition as much as icons and sacraments were in the Medieval Church.

The great iconoclasm of the twentieth century was the closing of the churches as members finally had to admit to themselves that they could no longer give intellectual assent to the propositions that supposedly defined the faith. Faith is simpler than all that. It is the ability to live..... AS IF... God was watching, in spite of the doubts and anxieties and unbelief. Faith is total engagement with the world and NOT a mental contortion act to accept 10 impossible propositions before breakfast.

Sells correctly points out that access to faith and life can be broadened through the use of art, sacrament and word in some sort of balance but maybe the sensibility has already largely been lost.

I looked at http://www.aboutadidam.org/readings/art_is_love/index.html as suggested. Well, I certainly prefer Peter's much clearer "verbalism" about spiritual seeing and hearing to the inflated "verbalism" of Avatar Adi Da Samraj's Wisdom on Art.