Below you’ll find the fifth set of notes from Worship & Arts Pastor Mike Cosper’s three breakout sessions from the Acts 29 Network’s recent LEAD conference in St. Louis:
Art From The Church
The relationship between the arts and the church has three dimensions:
- Art For the Church – the artist as servant of the ministry of the church
- Art From the Church – The artist as missionary/prophet/worker in residence in the broad world of the arts
- Art Facing the Church – The church responding and reacting to the broader world of the arts.
In Art From the Church, the question for the church is ultimately one of spiritual formation:
Primary Question
How are we going to go about pastoring creatives so that they can use their gifts for the glory of Jesus in whatever sphere God has placed them?
Secondary Questions
How do we help artists discern their calling?
How do we help artists navigate the Christian liberty issues that abound in the world of the arts?
The Peculiarity of the Artist
“Artists in our society are in a very peculiar position. On the one hand they are regarded very highly, almost like high priests of culture who know the inner secrets of reality. On the other hand they are almost completely superfluous people. Respected, yes. But others are still quite ready to allow them to starve.” – H.R. Rookmaaker, from “Art needs no justification.”
The Unique Place of the Artist in Culture
- The Creative Impulse (a universal) + the desire to create for the sole purposes of entertaining, stimulating, confronting, or expressing.
- Compare the calling of Ansel Adams to a soldier, politician, plumber, teacher, pastor, or carpenter.
- Some inner sensitivity, some deep-seated love of creation, of the experience of the world around them drives the artist to want to capture and share that experience
- The Need to Make a Living
- The “art world” pushes one direction; the need for commercial success often pushes another.
§ Cormac McCarthy and Oprah Winfrey
- In general, artists are also thought of as weird, irresponsible, and hip – living life on that odd, outer fringe of culture.
- Is it possible that they live out on that edge, that they operate on a strange level because of the way that God has uniquely wired them?
Humanize the Arts and the Artist
(The phrase re-humanize comes from Makoto Fujimura, a New York based artist who is an evangelical Christian and founder of International Arts Movement.)
1.      Demystify the Arts
a.       Celebrate the Creative Spark in its many manifestations
b.      Build Bridges
i.     Teach, explain, and encourage engagement with the arts
ii.     For Artists – don’t assume people know anything about technique or tradition.
c.       Be Hospitable At Art Events
2.      Treat the arts as simply work
a.       Arts ministry should function like any ministry where we’re seeking to equip people to do their work for Jesus.
b.      Art isn’t priestly – putting us in touch with something holy that nothing else can. It isn’t a mediator.
3.      Treat People as More Important than the Quality of their Work
a.       Criticism with Character
b.      Our first concern with artists in our churches is to see them grow in grace. What they can do for us is tertiary to that primary goal.
c.       Don’t fear losing artists who are successful – be a sending body.
4.      Celebrate Creativity that Emerges in Your Context
a.       Avoid forcing an aesthetic ideal on your people, instead, cultivate a love for Jesus and invite artists to respond creatively to that love.
b.      What emerges – anywhere – is likely to be very diverse, from Comic book illustrations to kitschy landscapes.
5.      Teach Artists to Love Jesus
a.       For Pastors – Focus primarily on seeing Gospel-transformation in the lives of your artists, and step back to allow them to grow.
b.      For Artists – Reject any creative paradigm for your work that doesn’t find its center in the beauty present in God’s handiwork and the beautiful redemption of the cross.
continued next Friday here on sojournmusic.com
EXPLORE PART ONE OF THIS SERIES: “A THEOLOGY OF CREATIVITYâ€
EXPLORE PART TWO OF THIS SERIES: “BEAUTY, CULTURE, CONTEXTUALIZATIONâ€
EXPLORE PART THREE OF THIS SERIES: “THE DIVERSITY OF CREATIONâ€
I particularly appreciate the “Treat the arts as simply work” and “Treat People as More Important than the Quality of their Work” points.
I was wondering what exactly was meant by this point:
For Artists – Reject any creative paradigm for your work that doesn’t find its center in the beauty present in God’s handiwork and the beautiful redemption of the cross.
What does this look like?
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This comment is fundamentally about keeping our standards in the right place. Your Art will never save the world. Your art can be transcendent, but never more transcendent than a sunset or a rock formation.we need to avoid gnostiC ideas about art transcending substance and spiritualistic ideas that would give art some kind of redemptive power.
Thank you for the clarification