Ministering to artists ministering through the arts.
And to trigger your creativity. Art really can be made anywhere and using nearly anything, witness what this artist/photographer does with paint a camera and an electric drill.
Go for it and let us know what you create in the comments.
The theme of this session of the Creation Station Vacation Bible School is God Created Everything and in it we look at one of God’s most unusual creations, the duck-billed platypus. For more on Creation Station, contact Dave Weiss.
In our quest to be Christ-following artists, there are many questions we need to ask ourselves, and to me this question must be first and foremost. I remember early in my career, and my walk, I wanted desperately to be a professional artist/cartoonist. I was laid off the day my youngest son was born and thought I would just become a full time freelance. It did not go well. The pressures of being a stay at home dad, combined with the fact that I wasn’t that good yet, made things quite difficult. We were going broke.
Then one day I answered an ad for a cartoonist. The job would pay $10,000 and the temptation was huge! The problem was the cartoons were dirty (bordering on pornographic) cartoons. I’d like to tell you I rejected it as soon as I found out what it was, but that would be a lie. My rationalization skills went into full effect and for a short time I tried to convince myself that this would be okay. (I really thought I needed the money)
Thanks to God for a strong, godly wife and a stronger Holy Spirit, I eventually did turn it down, otherwise there would be some pretty ugly stuff floating around out there with my name on it. Answering the question “Does it honor God?” would have been really be helpful.
Now, I’ll be the first one to admit, I was being stupid and greedy. The answer to the honoring God question in that case was obvious. Sometimes it’s not. There are times where it’s not so clear, so there are some subquestions. The first one is still pretty obvious, “Does what I am about to do involve sin or the glorification of sin?” If the answer is yes your answer to the project MUST be “no.”
The next question is, “Will anyone be hurt by what I am about to do?” This one is a little harder. Notice I didn’t say “Will anyone be offended…?” If we, as Christians, shied away from every project that might offend someone, we wouldn’t be able to do anything for Jesus. To some, our very existence is offensive. This is not to say we go our of our way to be offensive. We can cover that by following the biblical admonition to speak the truth in love. I am talking about doing damage to people’s lives or reputations, causing needless hurt. Is it putting people down rather than lifting them up? Let the love of Jesus be your guide.
Does it damage or deface property? I love graffiti. I think it is amazing as an art form, however, we believers should never, ever do it anywhere uninvited. God is not honored by crime no matter how good the art is.
Finally will it be a blessing? At the end of the day, we honor God best, we demonstrate His love best when we bless and encourage, build up, and urge people toward repentance and toward Christ.
We can honor God in every aspect of our lives and art whether the subject matter is “Christian” or not, so this isn’t about me wanting you to paint pictures of Jesus. It’s actually much deeper than that. The Bible calls us Christ’s representatives, His ambassadors, which means whether or not we paint pictures of Jesus, we ARE pictures of Jesus. When we honor Him, we represent Him well.
I am in the process of creating a vacation Bible School curriculum which I will be presenting at Coneqwago Church of the Brethren June 10-14, 2013 This is the promotional video I created for them. I hope you like it.
Over the weekend I participated in a fantastic event called The Pursuit. It was held in Montgomery, AL for youth, mainly college students, pursuing a call to ministry or looking for ways to use their gifts to serve the Lord. I met a lot of fantastic young people and their leaders. It was an amazing time and my prayer is that these young people will all follow God into the amazing plan he has for their lives.
You can check out a few photos of the events here.
As I look back on the weekend, I realize it is in doing events like this one, calling people into their gifts and demonstrating how I use mine, that I have found my call. Things like this are what I was created and uniquely gifted to do. When I am doing these things, I am in the zone and I praise God for it. I have found my call.
Have you found yours? I can’t tell you what it is, but I can tell you where to find it. It’s at the intersection of your gifts and your godly passions. As an example, I have a gift for art and speaking (I say that not to boast, but simply to acknowledge what God has done). I have a passion for helping people find their savior and their God-given purpose. Draw those as lines and AMOKArts is right on the intersection. What’s your intersection? Chances are it’s there that’ you’ll find your call, now go pursue it.
By the way if you’d like to help me pursue my call to help others find theirs, please consider recommending my program, Pictures of Jesus, to your church.
This video is a little lengthy, but it is a wonderful demonstration of techniques of washes and glazing. Artist Michael Lang takes you step by step to a fantastic final piece.
Check it out, then go try it yourself.
One of the things of which I have become aware lately is that I don’t do a lot of art for art’s sake, preferring instead to create for the purpose of telling stories and spreading the Gospel. That being said, one of the truly great ways of maintaining your skills and creativity, not to mention learning new things is with experimentation. Working in different genres and different media.
One of the things I have been doing lately is working in the various aspects of modern and pop art. I’ve put together a little gallery over at deviantart.com (please note, I’m not sure shy they chose the name deviant for their site, but rest assured all of my content is G-rated). This isn’t my art ministry work. Most of it will not go beyond this point. It’s merely there to stretch my creative muscles. You can see my gallery at http://daveweissamericanpop.deviantart.com/gallery/
What have you done lately to build your skills and expand your creativity? Share some links here in the comments below.
Yesterday we had a freezing rain wintry mess. I’m never a fan of winter weather and ice is the worst. I was out scraping my windows when I looked at my front tire, it was going flat, I was not happy but I’m not writing this post to whine. God is good all the time. I write this post to tell you about great service I received. I go to this place called Kantner’s Tire Service in Shoemakersville, PA. They are the only people from whom I buy tires, ever. The reason is simple. When I pull into their garage, they ascend on my car like a NASCAR pit crew. I was in and out in a very short period of time with a tire as good as new. When I talk to other customers of theirs, almost to a person, they have the same response. These people have developed a great reputation for quality work, quality products and affordable prices. That’s a great reputation for any business and any person.
Look at your own life and your own work. What’s your reputation? How could you improve it?
Proverbs 22:29 says Do you see someone skilled in their work? They will serve before kings; they will not serve before officials of low rank.
We can tell a better story by always delivering our best. What kind of story are you telling?
On Saturday, I participated in the Snowflake Gala at the Mulberry St. Gallery in Lancaster, PA. It was a great day. I displayed five of my paintings in the gallery, did a live painting and brief message in the “performance” area and had a vendor table to introduce AMOKArts to a wide variety of creative people. It was a wonderful event and I had a great time.
That’s not to say I was without some trepidation. The performance time slots were all either five or ten minutes. I had never done the painting I did there in under 12 minutes, always set to music and then spoke afterwards. My original intent was to cut the music and just speak while I painted, but at the last minute, I decided to add the song “Like A Lion” by David Crowder. It’s just a little over six minutes long. My wife and I prayed before I went on and by the time the song was over, I was finished with the painting and it was one of the best renderings I’ve done ofthat image to this point. I had about four minutes left to present the message and the Lord ordered my thoughts. I finished on time and really felt blessed, the feedback I received also seemed pretty favorable.
Am I sharing this to boast? No. Anyone who knows me will tell you self confidence is hardly my strong suit. No I share this to tell you I had no idea if I could finish this piece and present it well in the allotted time. I just knew I felt led to do that piece, and I gave it to God. That verse that says I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me is true. So when you pray and you feel God leading you to do something. Don’t look at your limitations. Trust Him and do it. He will allow your work to accomplish precisely what He intended it to do.
My guess is if we have Christ confidence, maybe we don’t need self confidence.
Something to consider.
P.S. God answered my prayer on the weather for that day too.
