Sometimes we all need a little perspective. I am sitting in a nice little cottage at a camp in NY as I write this. This is a place that usually brings perspective for me. I am serving for the week as the speaker at a camp for adults with developmental disabilities and I can truly say I love this place and these people, but as I sit here contemplating the day, I wonder, “What am I doing?” You see, I spend a lot of time distracted and dabbling. After trying to give the church I serve as good of service as I possibly can, I spend a lot of my off hours in creative pursuits. Cartooning, illustrating, and on and on. Please don’t get me wrong. I love that stuff too, and I do feel that it helps me to build on my gift. It’s clearly not a complete waste of time, and yet as I look at this world, I realize I need to focus. Further, and this is a waste of time, I can get caught up in spending some of those precious hours surfing social media and accomplishing nothing but frustration, aggravation all the while knowing there is precious little anything I do on there can accomplish.
Our world’s not getting better. As much as I want to place blame at so many feet (politicians, the media, even certain sectors of the “church” etc.), the bottom line is, this world needs Jesus, and that is at least in part my job.
I feel called to creative ministry and I know my vision is too big to be a one-man “show.” This needs to be a movement. I need to be about the business of doing two things, showing the church the Kingdom impact that the arts can have on the church and the world beyond by ministering with my gift in churches and camps like this one, but also to replicate the effort by finding ways to equip the creative saints among us to use their gifts to the glory of God. This isn’t art for art’s sake. For me that ship has sailed. It’s about creating work that is faithful to our God and His Word. Like the church of the Middle Ages creating art that would help an illiterate culture to see the light, we too stand in a period of biblical illiteracy and we need to illustrate and illuminate to help people see the light of God’s truth. I want to create tools to be used to open doors to Gospel conversations in the church and in the world.
The prince of the power of the air is having a field day right now and his efforts are spilling over and effecting so many especially among the most vulnerable in our world. One way or another we creative Christians need to make a stand. The arts are being used masterfully by the enemy to change things for the worst. We who have been gifted by God to create need to rise up and reclaim. These creative gifts are given to us by the ultimate Creator and it is high time we put them to work so that society at large will see the light. I am reminded of James 1:17, “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” It’s high time this movement got rolling, so if you have ever looked at how you spend your time and wondered, “What am I doing?” maybe it’s time you come and help me start this movement. I’d love to see creative Christians running roughshod over the evils in our society. I’d love to see what happens when the creatives in the Kingdom of God Run A.M.O.K. Who is with me?
AMOKArts 