Toward a Vision for the Arts

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:

  1. Understand and articulate a biblical-theological vision for the Arts.
  2. Recognize local art forms that we can engage and contribute to.
  3. Discern where the lines of truth, beauty and virtue begin and end within local art.
  4. Identify artists and media used in our own church community.
  5. Identify key artistic domains (music, photography, writing, etc.) that we can focus on.
  6. Encourage Arts in general through theological reflection and discipleship of artists.
  7. Dream of artist and city-renewing applications of our Arts vision.

Planters who Plant Too Fast

In this article, Mark Bjorlo lays out the danger of planting your church too rapidly or, better put, over-working as a church planter. Overworking is a real temptation and danger for planters, often an issue of unbelief in the gospel and, conversely, belief in their absolute necessity to effective church planting. The wreckage is everywhere—sexual failure, embezzlement, bitter wives, neglected children, failed churches, broken disciples, church splits, wrecked faith. No matter where you are on this, the article is worth reading. An excerpt:

The first year, I didn’t take a day off.  I didn’t work less than ten hours a day. I really didn’t know how to shut it off. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. More times than I am comfortable confessing, I went to sleep with the laptop open. Often, I would wake up several times a night to only pick it up and begin working again. I had breakfast meetings, lunch meetings, dinner meetings, evening meetings, and then would often work late into the night. Somewhere along the way all planters have to come to a conviction that God loves His church more than they possibly can.

Converge

You’ll definitely want to check out the new Converge website for church planting resources. Converge is the new iteration of Teamerica, a Church Planting Assessment organization that is group-based as opposed to behavior-based. With Gary Rohrmayer at the wheel of this new organization, you’ll get a lot of very practical help in planting, nuts and bolts. Gary is the author of First Steps, which I reviewed along with a few other CP manuals a while back.

Very helpful article on the Unsustainable Pace of many church planters.

The Economy and True Humanity

Here’s an excerpt from last Sunday’s sermon which addressed our economy, idolatry of information, and the plan of God in Christ for making people truly human:


Paul knows that we will drift towards finding our significance in what we know, not who we know. He knows that we will participate unwisely in culture, taking on its values, unless we have a greater strength and power, the strength and power of the Spirit of God. And what about our economy? What if we hit a depression and knowledge work becomes scarce? God promises the power and strength to endure any crisis. What if our discretionary income declines? We are promised strength and power to endure with joy. Why with joy? Because we know and obey the God who has the power and commitment to renew and restore the whole world. And because this God has used the power of his glory to rescue us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son.