Why does it have to be Art or Call

Why can't we understand that phrase as Art AND call. Many artists are called, many who are called to specific ordained ministry are artists. Why does one have to be mutually exclusive of the other.

When I started college I really wanted to pursue an acting career, but to keep my mom quiet I went ahead and chose a school that I could double major. So I double majored in Youth Ministry and Performing and Visual Arts with a Theatre Concentration at King College in Bristol, TN. So many people though it was a strange double major, I had to take more classes to keep up my schedule but it was important. Though I still didn't know what it meant to do art in my call. Then there was a drama ministry team on campus. But still my worlds clashed and collided. The youth ministry world was more about sports, mission trips, and education. When I got a call to do full time youth ministry I thought I had to set aside my art.

For my reasons I was miserable in my call, it became and job and part of that was not do what I was created to do: create. I was not able to create and as a Anna Owen's said in class, "a performer is an interpreter" so I also was able to interpret. I was able to find delight in many of the things I was doing but when I was acting again, I felt alive.

In seminary I have found ways to create, to interpret, and to live into my art in ways that enhance my call.

I have found the my art is my call and my call is my art. 

The following quote has stuck with me since undergrad, when I first heard it after we opened a Buechner Institute and it continues to morph as I discern my call.

"The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet."                     -Frederick Buechner 

Place is not just a physical space but also a mental and spiritual space. My art is part of that. Performance art has been a new doorway. It has opened up possibilities for how to do Christian Education or lead worship. 

So I know what my deep gladness is, what about the world's deep hunger

   What is the world hungry for? 

There is a hunger for art for ways to reflect or ways to express. Art can be therapeutic but that is not the only purpose of art. Art speaks in ways that words may not be able to speak.  

In my travels to Israel/Palestine there is artwork all over the country. The ancient art that speaks to the graces and ways to seek to understand God and their place in the world with God. The other art that is being created today is speaking to a whole other purpose, reaching visitors and others to be reminded of the conflict, the art that is on the walls of the West Bank. 

Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Old City of Jerusalem
- the traditional site of where Jesus was crucified and Buried 

 These are both meeting deep needs, I think for both the artist and for those experiencing the art.


These pieces speak in many different ways.
At the church, visitors and worshippers are looking at the art and seeing the importance of the place and the art brings expression to what the site means to them. The art brings those looking into the space.

Wall in Bethlehem- West Bank

In the West Bank the art is speaking to those who are oppressing and to the visitors as a plea and reminder of what is happening in that space. Bethlehem a place where people journey to see the birthplace of Christ is the place where men and women are oppressed by the Israeli government. The art on the walls is a way for them to express grief, pain, anger, and hope. 

Art is meeting the deep needs of the people. 

The artists have been called to say something and we are called to respond to that art. 

What are the responses to these two forms of art? 

How can we use various forms of art in our worship? In our Sabbath? 

How can we help others use art as a way to express our worship and praise of God? What will that look like? 

Many people hear the word art, these might be the responses: 

           Art can be: joyous, exciting, life-enhancing, fun-packed, insight-provoking, exalting

          Art can be: terrifying, frenetic, devastating, deadening, life-draining, mean spirited, illusion-shattering.

          When art is mostly all of the first category, it means the go ahead is on. When art is mainly all of the second category, it’s time to go dancing 

So in thinking about art and call and art and Sabbath we need to be free and allow ourselves---to dance.