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An Introduction to Artists of the Way
27 Plays2 years ago
Jon explains what Artists of the Way is, what led him to want to start this podcast, and what we can expect from it in the future!
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Artists of the Way'
00:00:17
Speaker
All right.
00:00:17
Speaker
Hey, everybody.
00:00:18
Speaker
Welcome to this little introductory episode for Artists of the Way.
00:00:22
Speaker
I thought it would be a good idea to just kind of jump on here and explain a little bit about my heart for the podcast.
Theological Significance of Art in Christianity
00:00:32
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A little bit of my goals behind it, what it's going to kind of look like for you as we look ahead to the first episode launching in two weeks, just to give you an idea of what Artists of the Way is going to be.
00:00:45
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And then just share a little bit about myself as well for anybody who doesn't know me.
00:00:49
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just so we can kind of get that out of the way at the start.
00:00:52
Speaker
So my first big kind of goal and picture for what Artists of the Way is going to be, what I aim for it to do, is to be a tool to deepen our theological understanding of
Importance of Art Forms in Christianity
00:01:06
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art.
00:01:06
Speaker
I myself have kind of been wrestling with the question of the theological significance of art, what it means to be an artist for most of my life, and
00:01:18
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And I've always wanted just more resources on that.
00:01:25
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I think sometimes in Christianity, it seems like some forms of art are more useful than others, like music we use for worship all the time, but then what's the significance of a play or a movie or a...
00:01:37
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painting?
00:01:38
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Should it be used for evangelization?
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Is there some other element to it?
00:01:44
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So I want to explore a lot of those questions and just what ways God has used art in the lives of artists.
Understanding God's Presence in Art
00:01:53
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I'm really excited to have those discussions.
00:01:56
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I've already had a couple great ones, and I've got a couple great ones scheduled.
00:02:02
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And I'm hoping that as we sort of build out this catalog that
00:02:06
Speaker
As we have these discussions, as we just think about these things, we all can deepen our theological understanding of art, not in a way where we're going to necessarily have like a systematic theology.
00:02:16
Speaker
And if somebody comes up to us, we're going to be able to say, oh, well, theater does this and music does this and writing does this because I...
00:02:25
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I don't think we can really quantify art in that way.
00:02:27
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It's a more abstract, subjective thing.
00:02:31
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But the more we have these conversations, the more we think on these things, the more we're going to be more aware of God's presence in art and the ways he can use art so that we can build some sort of framework or even just somewhat of a deeper understanding of what God is doing and all these things.
Resources for Artists and Christians
00:02:54
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Secondly, this website will serve as a resource for people to go to.
00:03:00
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Again, through these conversations being built in the podcast and then through the blog posts coming out on those same topics, we're going to build this catalog of great conversations with artists of different disciplines.
00:03:17
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So if you're a singer-songwriter and you're not really sure
00:03:25
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what way you can use your art to serve God if you don't have a big platform, you know, or what is or isn't okay to write about in your songs.
00:03:34
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Hopefully, eventually, we can have a conversation on our podcast that addresses that.
00:03:40
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Or if you're a painter and you're thinking about, you know, if I'm just making a picture, how does that glorify God?
00:03:48
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Or what are some different ways that painters have seen God
00:03:54
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work in their art.
00:03:54
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Hopefully, eventually, we'll have a conversation for that posted.
00:03:59
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But then at the same time, when you visit our website, you're going to see a resources page, which right now is going to be empty.
00:04:06
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unless you're listening to this in two weeks.
00:04:09
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But every podcast, I'm going to be asking our guest, what's a resource that you would recommend as an essential resource for artists or for Christians, trying to deepen their understanding of art or their skill in art or deepen their faith?
00:04:28
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And on that resources page, we're going to keep a list of everything that is suggested there.
00:04:36
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We're going to have links to be able to buy them.
00:04:40
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If I'm familiar with the resource, I'll give a word or two about what I think is significant about those.
00:04:45
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We'll also include a word or two of whatever the guest said.
00:04:52
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And that page will probably expand as we have more
00:04:55
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More guests will probably categorize it and figure out a way to make that not just an overwhelming list of resources.
00:05:02
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But then that will be a growing catalog of things that you can turn to as you seek to develop as an artist and develop as a Christian.
Support for Christian Artists in West Michigan
00:05:11
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I see so many wonderful budding artists around me, people who either want to do it as a hobby, as a side gig, or people who would love to make it their career.
00:05:23
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But the resources aren't easily available or there.
00:05:27
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And so I really want to be able to create this platform and resource, first of all, just for my community in West Michigan, for the Christian arts world, to be able to draw on, to know, okay, here's some resources I can trust that I can go to.
00:05:42
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And I'm going to know what's in them, so I know I'm not going to compromise my faith as I go to them, but I also know they're going to be artistically enriching and challenging.
00:05:51
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So I just really want to provide that resource for people.
00:05:55
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And I just know so many artists, and hopefully we'll get to have conversations with so many more artists who have learned things from so many people, from books, from classes, from films, from specific painters or writers or actors or musicians.
00:06:14
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And I just want to be able to compile all that and have
Host's Artistic and Faith Journey
00:06:17
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that.
00:06:17
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readily available for you so that this can be a support so that this can just build up the artistic community at large but especially the Christian artist community so now let me kind of tell you a little bit about myself about how I got here to starting artists of the way and why it kind of matters to me in particular I've always had a passion for art storytelling in particular so you're probably gonna hear me reference theater or writing a lot
00:06:47
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when I'm speaking about art, but as well, music.
00:06:51
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Music has been another artistic love of mine for most of my life.
00:06:56
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As long as I can remember, I've been playing the violin, I've been writing stories, and I've been wanting to act in plays.
00:07:03
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I've been blessed now to have had a pretty successful sort of amateur theater career, I guess you would call it.
00:07:12
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I don't know if you can really call it a career, because I haven't necessarily...
00:07:15
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been paid for it, but I've been in upwards of 30 to 35 productions.
00:07:22
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I've played some marvelous roles.
00:07:25
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I've taught youth acting.
00:07:27
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I'm going to be teaching my first adult acting class this summer, which I'm very excited for.
00:07:31
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If you want more details about that, I'll go ahead and link that down below if you're interested.
00:07:38
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I've assistant directed several shows.
00:07:40
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I've directed one show, hoping to direct another.
00:07:44
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That's in very early planning stages, so we're not going to get too far into that yet.
00:07:49
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But I've had a lot of experience in the Christian theater world through Master Arts Theater, through Homeschool Performing Arts, through Arise Collective, which is a group that's touring the show Pilgrim now.
00:08:01
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They've toured several different states, just went on a mission trip.
00:08:05
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They're doing awesome things.
00:08:07
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And then, as I mentioned before, I've played violin for...
00:08:11
Speaker
Oh, gosh, 20 years now.
00:08:13
Speaker
That's weird.
00:08:15
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Played violin for 20 years now.
00:08:17
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I've written a bunch of stories, a bunch of scripts before.
00:08:21
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Currently working on a novel that I hope to actually publish or self-publish soon, but that's going to be a couple years out yet.
00:08:29
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And then for a time, I served as the executive director of Unmuted Arts, which was a small little Christian performing arts group that focused on performing just scripture.
00:08:41
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So we would take either a story from scripture or we would look at a theme in scripture and take several scriptures from that and create a creative performance.
00:08:50
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Yeah.
00:08:52
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That was a really exciting time in my life.
00:08:54
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And then COVID happened because I got that job in 2019.
00:09:00
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And we'd done an official relaunch at the end of 2019 and started rehearsals in 2020.
00:09:05
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And then COVID just killed it.
00:09:07
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We kind of did some online things through COVID, but it just never really bounced back.
00:09:12
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And so I left that position and that kind of went on in a definite hiatus for now.
00:09:19
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But that's some of my artistic background.
Balancing Art and Ministry
00:09:22
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Spiritually, and with my faith, for especially the last five or so years, I've felt a strong call to ministry.
00:09:35
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God very pointedly led me to attend Bible school.
00:09:40
Speaker
And currently, I am almost done with my bachelor's.
00:09:45
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It's been a slow process because of finances.
00:09:49
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And after that, I aim to attend seminary with the goal of pursuing chaplaincy.
00:09:54
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That's one of the ministry things I'm very passionate about, just discipleship, being there for people, letting them talk to you and just being God's presence in that moment with them, I think is a really beautiful and special thing.
00:10:10
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With these two strong passions, art and ministry, and things that I would call callings from God, I feel like I have to do them both.
00:10:20
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I've always been trying to figure out, okay, how do I reconcile them?
00:10:23
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Because I can't just do one or the other.
00:10:25
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Anytime I've focused more on the artistic path than the ministry path, God has always been like, hang on, I made you to minister to...
00:10:38
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Go into ministry.
00:10:39
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That's an important part of the calling I gave you.
00:10:42
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And then anytime I focus too much on the ministry side, when I've looked at just doing a traditional pastoral path or something like that, God has always redirected me back and said, hang on, I made you an artist that's really core to who you are.
00:10:55
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So I hold these two really important things that kind of don't exactly fit easily together.
00:11:06
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So I've been wrestling for most of my life with the question of the theology of art, of what it means to be an artist, how I live a Christian life that makes an impact for the kingdom, that honors God well and maybe matters in eternity, while at the same time creating these little works of art that I love and care for and am passionate about and that works.
00:11:32
Speaker
My life really needs to be able to flourish and to feel like I'm living out what God created me to do.
Creation of the Podcast
00:11:40
Speaker
And specifically in the last couple years, God's been leading me into an exploration of personally, what does that mean for me?
00:11:46
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What would I love to do with those things God gave me with that calling to ministry and that passion to art?
00:11:55
Speaker
And that is where the podcast kind of grew out of, where these couple years of just
00:12:02
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honestly just searching myself and going to God and figuring out, okay, God, what are the passions you gave me?
00:12:11
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what could I do that would be fruitful and life-giving to me and hopefully to others with these gifts?
00:12:20
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And one of the things I kept landing on was a podcast.
00:12:24
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I've done a podcast before.
00:12:27
Speaker
Myself and my good friend, Timothy Van Bruggen, who's the executive director, or sorry, managing director of Master Arts Theater, he and I did a podcast in COVID times, which was kind of a, started
00:12:41
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as a co-production between Unmuted Arts and Master Arts, because Tim and I wanted to be having some output for our organizations.
00:12:50
Speaker
And then it kind of became just a Master Arts podcast, and now that's kind of in a weird stasis, and we're not sure exactly where that's going to go.
Podcast's Potential Impact
00:12:57
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But I really enjoyed that, and I had a lot of ideas for where the podcast could go that didn't really fit with
00:13:04
Speaker
what the Master Arts Podcast was doing.
00:13:07
Speaker
And all these ideas coincided with these couple years of self-discovery, I guess you could call it, of trying to figure out exactly what passions God gave me.
00:13:18
Speaker
And so I was like, okay, I'm going to start a podcast.
00:13:20
Speaker
And that was a year ago, and I was ready to go.
00:13:24
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I was going to launch it last summer, and the timing just was not right there.
00:13:27
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God kind of
00:13:28
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just said no.
00:13:29
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He was like, John, you're too busy.
00:13:30
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And it's a good thing he said I was too busy because I was too busy.
00:13:34
Speaker
I would have died if I tried to launch it then.
00:13:37
Speaker
But now the timing just feels right.
00:13:41
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God's opened some doors here.
00:13:42
Speaker
And so I'm really, really excited to start producing this podcast to officially launch Artists of the Way and just to see what God does with it.
00:13:52
Speaker
There's a lot of passions there.
00:13:55
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that I have in my heart for where this could go.
00:13:58
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But really, I'm just so excited to see what God has in mind through the podcast, through the blog, through Artists of the Way itself, and what he wants to do with that, what it could grow into, or even if it's just some wonderful conversations.
Engagement and Schedule Details
00:14:13
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I am honestly so excited just to have these monthly discussions on art and theology today.
00:14:20
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and God with people.
00:14:22
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There's nothing I would rather be doing.
00:14:24
Speaker
And so I am so stoked to be having those conversations.
00:14:28
Speaker
Thank you for listening to this little intro podcast.
00:14:32
Speaker
Our first episode is launching.
00:14:35
Speaker
I have to get the date again.
00:14:36
Speaker
It's launching on June 2nd.
00:14:39
Speaker
That's...
00:14:40
Speaker
A Friday, I believe.
00:14:41
Speaker
I'm clearly very on top of my launch date.
00:14:46
Speaker
Yes, June 2nd, the first Friday of June.
00:14:50
Speaker
So we are going to be doing monthly podcasts on the first Friday of June.
00:14:54
Speaker
Every first Friday, tune in.
00:14:55
Speaker
There's going to be a new podcast episode.
00:14:59
Speaker
And then...
00:14:59
Speaker
two weeks after that, there will be a blog post accompanying that, that I will write that will be about the topic.
00:15:05
Speaker
So if you're not really a listening to podcasts guy, but you would rather read the blog, you can do that as well.
00:15:10
Speaker
It's going to cover a lot of the same ground, but just maybe have some more thoughts I've had while I've mulled over the podcast while I've been editing it.
00:15:19
Speaker
Um, and then the blog will also have some additional, uh, content, just not really scheduled just as I'm feeling it.
00:15:28
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Um,
00:15:29
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If there's a topic that I feel like would be good to talk about or would make a good blog post that I think would be interesting or that the audience would appreciate, then I'll be writing on that as well.
00:15:40
Speaker
So yes, come back to our website June 2nd.
00:15:43
Speaker
Subscribe to our email newsletter if email is the way that you want to do things.
00:15:47
Speaker
We'll be sending out a newsletter with every podcast post.
00:15:52
Speaker
and with every blog post.
00:15:53
Speaker
So you can subscribe to us through email.
00:15:55
Speaker
You can follow us on Facebook or on Instagram, or you can do the little follow thing on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or anywhere else that you listen to your podcasts.
00:16:06
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We're going to be on there.
00:16:09
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Thank you so much for tuning into this, and...
00:16:14
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Being here for the start of this, I just can't wait to see where God takes us on this journey as we have these conversations and seek to figure out what it means to be artists of the way.