“… I was having dinner at Johnny Cash’s house outside of Nashville. There were a lot of songwriters there. Joni Mitchell, Graham Nash, Harland Howard, Kris Kristofferson … Joe and Janette Carter … cousins to June Carter, Johnny’s wife.
After dinner, everybody sat around in the rustic living room with high wooden beams … We sat in a circle and each songwriter would play a song and pass the guitar to the next player. Usually, there’d be comments made like, “You really nailed that one.”
— Bob Dylan, “Chronicles, vol. 1”

     This is the kind of thing that I’d always wanted to be a part of: a community of musicians and songwriters. Michael Card writes about the importance of developing inner-communities of artists within the Church in his “Scribbling In The Sand: Christ and Creativity.” He stresses the Biblical basis and model for community, and out of that he develops an outline for a structure based on constructive criticism, apprenticeship, aesthetic accountability, freedom to experiment, and unqualified acceptance.

     Each of these areas has a faux counterpart in the world of commercial artistry. For instance, artistic criticism in the world usually comes after the fact, when it can’t do much good. And it’s usually provided by someone who doesn’t know, let alone care about, the artist. The criticism isn’t designed to be constructive, it’s designed to tell a consumer which product to buy.

     Concerning the freedom to experiment, Card writes:

“Artists must be free to try seemingly foolish things, experiments that at the outset seem doomed to failure, if for no other reason than to be able to discover … what does not work for them. When the dust from the debacle clears, when the cacophonies stop echoing, artists need to know that their acceptance, their value as a person, has not been damaged in any way. So what, try again. The community will always be there for them.”

     Card then proposes the creation of a Covenant Artist Alliance that is guided by these purposes:

“1. To provide a structure for genuine community.
2. To provide a covenant to which artists and their supporting resource people can commit themselves, uniting them in purpose and vision.
3. To provide a means of aesthetic accountability within the community.
4. To provide a place where apprenticeship can happen.
5. To support a speaker series and forum for the community at large.
6. To provide a retreat center for covenant members.
7. To place in community artists and resource people so the spirit of the covenant can be lived out in the day-to-day “business” of creativity.”

     These are ideas, values and purposes that we hold dear at Sojourn.  Some, we’ve been modeling for awhile, and others, we’re still laying the groundwork.  It’s not just about music-makers, either.  We are a home to many great visual artists and we’re making room for more.  Art exhibits and workshops are a major part of The 930 Art Center, as are regular live music shows featuring both national acts like Derek Webb and My Brightest Diamond and Louisville favorites from Will Garrison to Jamie Barnes.

     This is also why we love creating albums like Before The Throne with a large cast of singers, musicians and songwriters — a community, a family, a guild.  And the people who aren’t visible, who you don’t necessarily hear about in conjunction with the creation of these works of art, but whom we couldn’t do without: pastors, spouses, friends, community groups, other worship leaders, theologians, mentors, other artists … in Christ we are one body, and this gift — that we may all be the body of Christ — is one of God’s greatest gifts to us.  May we serve Him well with it, and may He keep us near the cross so that when we fail to serve Him well we will look and remember where our strength, forgiveness and healing comes from.

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