The Launch of a Ministry
Mission: To cultivate and nurture artists from a Christian perspective, offering safe haven wherein to address their particular spiritual, aesthetic, and material concerns... seeking to help them discover and create the body of work God has gifted and equipped them to do, and to build bridges of understanding and compassion between the Church and her artists.
If you've been reading my blog at all over the past year or so, it should be obvious by now that I think a lot about the life of the creative as it relates to Christianity. I've been convinced for a long time that there is an enormous blind spot in evangelicalism concerning the nature and presence of the arts--and by extension, the artist--in the world. It is with both anticipation and sober reflection that I am taking the first steps toward launching a new ministry at the Northwest Church in Shoreline, a ministry aimed not at worship talent supply, but aimed directly at the heart of the artists.
The vision of this work is simple, grounded in the faith that God is interested in and involved in the gifts of our lives, and that the creative urgings that stir within artists are mixtures of divine and human energies. That the world is being made daily, and God--for reasons unknown--has enlisted his people to help him toward that creation. Some of those people are called to manipulate material, bringing form and order to chaos through the various artistic disciplines, expressing ideas, feelings, dreams, and intuitions, creating works of beauty that have in them innate calls of God to the human heart.
My faith is that the Christ is interested in the artists that work in his name, and that there are ways to shore them up (and by extension, shoring up the work of the church), that many churches--including the Churches of Christ--have not explored.
As a first step, the next year will be taken up in the creation of an artist community within the Northwest Church, and will be dedicated to inviting and welcoming people into that community, seeking a dynamic relationship with other artists, and with the church, centering our lives and work around the Cultural Mandate and the Great Commission. In other words, to live both culturally and spiritually in the center of the Lord's prayer, "Thy Kingdom come."
Just in case: if you're in Seattle, and wondering where in the world there might be a church who would welcome you as an artist, trying with all their hearts to partner with you, to stand by you as you work to bring your work to fruition, this ministry at the Northwest Church might interest you. At least the conversation will.
Stay tuned...I really am going to start blogging on a regular basis...
10:18:52 AM
