Art and artists are often side-lined by the church. As a result, there are entire churches that make Art (or beauty), not Christ, the center of their community. At Austin City Life we are beginning the process of cultivating a community of artists that renew artists, art, and the city. In order to avoid the two extremes of art-centeredness or art-exclusion, we will need to strive to keep the Christ of beauty (not the beauty of Christ) at the center of our vision. In order to fulfill our vision, we will have to do several key things:
- Understand and articulate a biblical-theological vision for the Arts.
- Recognize local art forms that we can engage and contribute to.
- Discern where the lines of truth, beauty and virtue begin and end within local art.
- Identify artists and media used in our own church community.
- Identify key artistic domains (music, photography, writing, etc.) that we can focus on.
- Encourage Arts in general through theological reflection and discipleship of artists.
- Dream of artist and city-renewing applications of our Arts vision.