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Wise-Hearted Ones: Ministry of Imagination
202 Plays8 months ago
For so long art created by Christians has been limited to art for use in church. But have we as believers, especially in the West, undermined God’s true plan and responsibility for artists by keeping the scope of their creativity too narrow?
In this final episode of Wise-Hearted Ones series, Lisa dives into what is the “ministry of imagination” and how we as artists can be encouraged that God has called us to shape culture and point the world back to Him, our creator and sustainer.
As we wrap up our Wise-Hearted Ones series, we encourage you to go back and listen to past episodes if you missed any. Be sure to subscribe and follow Be.Make.Do. on Apple, Spotify, Google, or wherever you get your podcasts as we prepare for the next season.
Download the free Wise-Hearted Ones Study Guide
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Transcript
Introduction to the 'Wise Heart of One' series
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey, Lisa. Hey, Dan. This Wise Heart of One series is awesome. It's very packed though. If only there were a study guide or something to go along with it. Have we created one yet? We have actually created one, Dan. Yeah, we just created a study guide with lots of great questions, some word study, and a teeny bit of commentary so you can go deeper on your own or with a group of friends.
00:00:23
Speaker
So head over to soulmakers.org backslash be make do and download your free wise hearted one study guide.
00:00:42
Speaker
Hello, welcome to Be Make Do, a soul makers podcast where we explore what it takes to live out your call in the arts with spiritual wholeness and creative freedom. I'm your host, Lisa Smith here with my producer, Danny BH. Hello, everyone. And it is our passion to encourage you to become who you were created to be, make what you were created to make and do what you were created to do.
Season Highlights and Listener Engagement
00:01:07
Speaker
And today we have reached the final episode of our series on the wise-hearted ones in Exodus. And I'm so sad. Are you sad, Dan? Well, I was going to say I'm more excited. I could just keep talking about it forever. OK, so what's what's like a highlight from the season for you? Oh, wow.
00:01:28
Speaker
I think a big highlight for me was being able to interact and talk to some of our listeners from all over the world, which was really cool. That's always a dream when you produce a podcast. That's the dream, but then when you really get to do it and
00:01:45
Speaker
feedback has been excellent. And so being on the producer end of the show, I get all the compliments. So I really enjoyed, that was a big highlight for me. And I usually in kind of shy a little bit about that when somebody compliments how good something that we worked on, but I was very excited about it.
00:02:05
Speaker
I loved our guest. Yeah, I was going to say we've had some really wonderful conversations. Powerhouses, powerhouses. Yeah, we had Jennifer Allen Kraft and Deborah Sokolov and Elise Edwards. And then we had Steven Roach from the Makers of Mystics podcast.
00:02:24
Speaker
And Marlita Hill, you finally got to speak to Marlita. I know, it was great. It was awesome. Yeah, this has been a great season. Yeah. I mean, what's what's so fun in connecting with people is seeing how many people really are working as artists in this wise hearted way. And to be able to affirm that and to be able to give some tools to help people to live out their calling in that way is just so, so rewarding. That's why we do what we do. Yes, it is. So it's been great.
00:02:53
Speaker
So, okay, what's coming up next? We are getting ready to close off this season. Oh, right. Also, if you haven't yet, be sure to visit SoulMakers.org and download our free study guide. Maybe you can grab some friends, go back to some old episodes and use those questions and exercises as a guide to go further in all of this.
00:03:16
Speaker
And we're also hoping to add the transcripts from the shows from all of our episodes onto our website soon. So keep checking in, but be sure to go to SoulMakers.org and download that free study guide. Okay. So, all right, what have we got coming up next after we're finished with this series? What's happening next?
00:03:33
Speaker
Yeah.
Upcoming Content and Special Episodes
00:03:34
Speaker
So we're going to be sharing some unaired interviews. We're going to be re-looking at some stuff from season one. We're going to be doing a special episode and creating our new trailer for our upcoming season. Yes. Very excited to start getting into that. And we will tell you more about that soon.
The Spiritual Role of Artists as 'Wise-hearted Ones'
00:03:56
Speaker
Just a little teaser.
00:03:57
Speaker
But for now, we are gonna finish out this season of the Wise-Hearted Ones. And really this last episode is my hope and prayer for you. Because as I say in the episode, I believe that God is raising up artists, creatives, and makers as Wise-Hearted Ones for a similar task to the one in Exodus, to make his presence visible in a thousand particular ways.
00:04:25
Speaker
In Bezalel and Aholiyev, we have the prototype of artists ordained to serve, not as missionaries or pastors or anything else, but as artists, as wise-hearted ones. Let's get started. Let's do it.
00:04:51
Speaker
We like to say that all people are creative, but technically speaking, that's not really true. I mean, of course, everyone is creative to some degree, but statistically speaking, it's actually only a very small percentage of the population that is really creative, like artistically, innovatively inclined.
00:05:17
Speaker
Saying everyone is creative is like saying everyone can do math. It's true, up to a certain point. But there's no denying that some people are more inclined and gifted towards being astronauts and physicists, and not everyone is willing to take on the level of discipline and study required to hone that raw talent and develop the skills to be really good at it.
00:05:41
Speaker
What's essential for the average person, like balancing a checkbook, multiplication tables, et cetera, that's only the beginning for a virologist. And the same is true of creativity and art.
Art's Broader Cultural Function Beyond the Church
00:05:53
Speaker
There is something unique and special about this gift, which carries with it not status and honor, but responsibility, the responsibility to make.
00:06:07
Speaker
Just like those who study and serve in the maths and sciences, artists and makers have an essential role to play in our societies. What if that calling goes beyond mere self-expression to what artist and scholar Deborah Haynes calls the realm of prophetic criticism and visionary imagination? What if we, like Walter Brueggemann, saw artistic work as a ministry of imagination?
00:06:37
Speaker
Why does it seem scary to consider the mythical and prophetic power of artistic capacity? In spite of caution from religious critics against the slippery slope into idol making, the Bible encourages a vision for artists as tabernacle makers. Artists who create in concert with God to make the holy visible in our daily lives through beauty and wonder.
00:07:04
Speaker
I believe that the arts are a language, given to us as a gift, a way to connect and communicate beyond where logical thought and words can travel. God's creation of the natural world and even of the order of love is His constant communication to us.
00:07:25
Speaker
And Jesus' invitation is to develop the eyes to see so that we may take notice of God's kingdom in our midst. Conversely, we are given creative capacity to express the deepest parts of our hearts and to speak about the things which defy logic. To ask the questions we have only groans and no words for. The arts are the means by which we explore the deep existential questions of what it means to be human.
00:07:55
Speaker
Why am I here? What does it mean to love another person? How do I exist in pain and suffering?
00:08:08
Speaker
And the arts are also the way we express our deepest fears and our greatest joys, the things that move before and beyond logical language, that have the capacity to reach out and touch and connect with the lives of others. A biblical model of prophetic artistry imagines a humble capacity to hold up an image of the world as it is while calling forth visions for the world as God intends it to be.
00:08:33
Speaker
An artist committed to working in this way maintains the ability to hold incongruity, discord, and juxtaposition lightly in their being, and the capacity to make and create artifacts which draw our attention to something higher, or at the very least something beyond ourselves.
00:08:53
Speaker
They help us turn and tune our innermost desires and longings toward their ultimate goal, wholeness in God, our Creator and Sustainer. This is no ordinary gift.
00:09:10
Speaker
Such an artist sees their calling not as a means of building themselves up, of making a name for themselves, or even making their mark, but rather sees their gift as just that. A gift given for service to the people of God, for the glorification of God.
Integrating Faith and Artistic Sensibilities
00:09:29
Speaker
The trouble is, when we say things like this in Christian circles, we can often hear it too simplistically, thinking that what's meant is to create art only for use in church, or creating churchy art, or art that is only devotional, or apologetic, or evangelistic.
00:09:48
Speaker
But those are neither the limits of what glorifies God, nor are they always even the best examples of art that glorifies God. The scope has to be widened considerably to include every part of life, including and especially the public square. If it's going to have any effect on the larger culture, we are called to create and live in.
00:10:15
Speaker
I'd love to see Christians employing these artistic languages less as tools for didactic evangelism or teaching and more in their natural mode as signposts and evidence of God's kingdom alive and at work all around us. As an artist of faith, I have struggled my whole life to justify and integrate these two pieces of myself, not realizing that they were already woven together by design.
00:10:45
Speaker
My artistic gifts and more than that, my artistic sensibilities are intricately tied with a knowledge or a sense of God, of who God is and how he operates. It
The Divine Call for Artists in Modern Society
00:10:57
Speaker
is through my creative lens, my imaginative lens, my sensing lens that I've gotten something of who God is, something that doesn't quite come across in sermons or books or even in the daily life of the church.
00:11:15
Speaker
But I do find it mirrored back to me in the fictional writings of C.S. Lewis and in paintings and music, not usually the stuff of formal theology or doctrine. I also see it in the contemplative tradition of the ancient desert fathers and mothers, in the visions of Teresa of Avila, in the mystic sensibility of Ignatius of Loyola.
00:11:37
Speaker
Even in Mother Teresa, whose actions were driven more by a mystical sense of the reality of Christ in every person she saw in front of her, more than any ethical conviction to help.
00:11:52
Speaker
She re-enacted Christ's salvific work every day, calling it forth into being in a tangible way. This is the crux, the making the intangible tangible, the invisible visible.
00:12:11
Speaker
Today, I believe that God is raising up artists, creatives, and makers as wise-hearted ones for a similar task to the one in Exodus—to make his presence visible in a thousand particular ways.
00:12:28
Speaker
filling them with His Spirit, gifting them and calling them to discipleship and commitment to serve in the same way. In Bezalel and Oholiab we have the prototype of artists ordained to serve, not as missionaries or pastors, but as artists.
00:12:47
Speaker
If the Israelites desperately needed to be shaped by the tangible presence of God in their daily lives, why should we think that we're any different now? And if God felt it necessary to ordain artists for the purpose of making himself visible to them, wouldn't it make sense that God never stopped?
Church's Role in Supporting Artists
00:13:06
Speaker
And wouldn't it make sense that now, in the 21st century, when more than ever we are cocooned by images and media, that God would raise up an army of creatives, fill them with His Spirit, and make Himself known in ways that sermons and church services just don't even have the opportunity to anymore?
00:13:31
Speaker
I'm imagining that many of you who are artists and makers hearing this are having trouble even wrapping your heads around it. It sounds too grand and too self-aggrandizing to consider being called by God because we have forgotten the artist's call.
00:13:47
Speaker
We've forgotten what they were ordained to do. We've forgotten that they're not here at the end of the chain of command to be bridled into manipulating people to think or do something. We've forgotten that God speaks directly to them as well. We forget that God has called them to the ministry of imagination, helping us to learn to see with the eyes of our hearts, with the mind of Christ.
00:14:15
Speaker
I believe the church in the West today and the West in general is suffering, at least in part, because we have forgotten the call of the artist to work in the world as culture makers and shapers.
00:14:29
Speaker
and it would be wise for us as the Church to look around and identify the seedling artists and designers, makers, game designers, filmmakers, musicians, illustrators, authors, poets, dancers, visual performing, digital and community-based artists of all kinds that God has planted
00:14:52
Speaker
many times outside the institutional church, and is even now raising up and beginning to harvest so that we may prepare them for the work to which they were called. These artists are coming to fruit-bearing season. Will they be ready for the task?
00:15:12
Speaker
For you who are called, for you who were planted by God, often in inhospitable soil, I want to affirm your call. I want you to hear the story of Bezalel and Aholiah and see a way forward.
Living an Integrated Life of Faith and Art
00:15:27
Speaker
A way of faithfulness, humility, clarity, and extreme freedom and fulfillment. One that is deeply rooted in disciplined practice and accountable community.
00:15:39
Speaker
The point is, to be really good as an artist, as God intended, you must apply the wisdom of the heart. That is proper attuning and attention of your life and will to God's will in service to that which you were called to be about.
00:15:58
Speaker
So this is being who you were created to be, a child of God, and making what you were created to make, in this case, your art, in service to God for whatever purposes God puts in front of you to do.
00:16:15
Speaker
The way to wholeness as an artist and as a person of faith is to recognize that these two pieces of yourself are already integrated by God's design. One makes the other possible. And the fullness of your call comes to fruition only through living a deeply devoted, wise-hearted way of life.
00:16:42
Speaker
By wisdom a house is built, and through understanding it is established, through knowledge its rooms are filled with rare and beautiful treasures.
Season Conclusion and Farewell
00:16:54
Speaker
Proverbs 24, three to four.
00:17:12
Speaker
I hope you've enjoyed the wise-hearted ones. If you started listening somewhere in the middle of the season, I invite you to go back and listen to earlier episodes, and don't forget to download the free study guide. Thank you for listening, emailing, reaching out, and most of all, thank you for creating.
00:17:32
Speaker
Thanks for listening to Be Make Do, a Soul Makers podcast. If you want to go deeper, be sure to visit soulmakers.org and download our free Wise Heart at One study guide with questions for personal reflection or discussion with a group, plus word studies and more.