|
{ This post written in response to a statement by our pastor, concerning the power of our personal stories being second only to that power of the Gospel -- a statement with which I agree. }
In the recent HopeArts blog post entitled, “Why do we even have an Arts Ministry,” I contended that Art, by its very nature, is redemptive, recasting our human suffering in the light of the beauty and worth to which we are redeemed in Christ. With such being the case, it therefore remains an inescapable facet and dynamic of spiritual healing of members within a church for there to be an Arts Ministry. As healing is a process, and as Art plays a role, we might wonder how we as a community partner with the Arts Ministry in the processes of redeeming and healing. And, ultimately, this goes to questioning our very cultural mindset of passive receiver and consumer. Every work of Art - every poem, every painting, every film, every dance, every musical score, every sculpture, etcetera - engages the whole community in redeeming individual notions and experiences with a beauty both inherent to humanity and possible within humanity’s re-creation in Christ. It is not just that I see a beauty, say, in a suffering like my own, but that I see how we all share that same beauty and that same suffering. So, Art immediately “de-isolates” us, and what is more, it fixes us firmly within something beyond ourselves, and out of the narrow, tunnel-visioned view brought on by suffering. Thus it is our individual stories become beacons, expressions of hope: they (our stories) contribute to marking out the expansiveness of Beauty, and beauty’s ability to cover over, pervade through all of Life and human experience. Just as God’s face hovered over the waters when the earth was formless and void, so to His Beauty hovers over the expanses of individual lives. Christ’s sacrifice is worth every single story that can reveal His beauty (and ours) -- but all the stories combined do not equal the worth of His Beauty. Art is the music to the words of our lives, coalescing into the new song which is and is to be sung for (and unto) Him for the rest of Eternity. Each life, each story then, is not a retelling, but a telling a little bit more of the grand meta-narrative, the beauty of which we all share. To not engage in and with Art, then, is to not tell our story; to not tell our stories is to deny that about which Art speaks. So what does this look like, specifically, boots on the ground? Well, this is what a good Arts Ministry facilitates. In general it means artists “keeping Story” for the community, and the community contributing their stories. This means, in the very least, interaction, partnership, supping and relationship. And all that means another blog post.
0 Comments
Why do we have an Art's Ministry? We are told that Art is a part of the Hope Chapel DNA, but is that all? Simply because we are told it is so? That in no way helps us to understand where that DNA originated, or why art is important at Hope Chapel and the Body of Christ.
We have an Arts Ministry because Art is redeeming. Art goes beyond finding some singular or isolated experience of beauty, only to reproduce that beauty for the sake of brightening our walls. Art is about more than appeasing some consumerist urge, or an exercise in merely making some obscure point. Through Art we do no less than escape a slavery to what is bounded and bordered by Death. Through Art everything we experience isolatedly in our fallenness and brokenness is exchanged for a righteousness and a beauty universally shared by all in Christ. Through Art all the hurt and loss in our earthly lives is recast in the light of a beauty and a worth which can never be stripped away. Christ has redeemed us from Death, and Art then shows us the beauty and worth and fullness to which He has redeemed us. Christ has given us life, and Life in the fullest, and so through Art do we even come close to celebrating that full measure of Life. I would respond to the question with another question: if we believe and value our redemption, if we value the redemptive work of Christ in ours and others lives, and if we hold circumspectly to both the call of the Great Commission and to the Fourth Westminster Catechism (to delight ourselves fully in God, essentially), then I ask: how can we not have an Arts Ministry? How can we have any spiritual discussion or dialectic of any kind and not have Art anchoring our souls, mooring our minds and hearts? If Hope Chapel is a place of healing for the wounded, how can Hope Chapel provide healing without the salve and balm of Art? -- Kevin Daniel |
ContributorsOur blog features posts by several contributors. Have a question or idea for a post? Contact Us! Archives
July 2022
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed
