{"id":19664,"date":"2018-10-20T13:26:44","date_gmt":"2018-10-20T20:26:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=19664"},"modified":"2018-10-20T13:31:23","modified_gmt":"2018-10-20T20:31:23","slug":"art-and-discipleship-and-all-the-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/art-and-discipleship-and-all-the-people\/","title":{"rendered":"Art and discipleship and all the people."},"content":{"rendered":"

https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/BpGceYIBN5X\/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet<\/a><\/p>\n

As I write this blog, my house is full of artists: Musicians, song-writers, singers, creatives. Fifteen plus women and men from the Northwest and beyond, creating music in a retreat setting over three days. Four production spaces are set with groups of three to five people at each. The groups have eight hours to write and produce a song in its entirety each day. (The Instagram post above is the first full day, with one of the songs as the audio.) This is deep work at its finest, a pressure cooker with a presentation at the end of the day of all the songs. In a parallel way, this is also discipleship: people working in community to grow their skills through discipline, apprenticeship, submitting themselves to the work and one another, and seeing new creations born.<\/p>\n

For many years, my husband and I have lived in community with artists. My husband is a composer and producer of music and has created communities of both visual and performing artists wherever we have lived. While living in Los Angeles we started \u201cRevolution(626): An Open Forum for the Creative Arts,\u201d which was a community of artists from the local colleges who would gather in a live space each month to show and perform their arts for the public. This developed into Community(626) and Church(626) over time where artists found belonging and a community of Christians who loved them and recognized their creativity as an aspect of the incarnation of God in them, mimicking God\u2019s creativity in their own. Some of these artists owned this creativity as being given by God. They committed their lives to being disciples who made art as an act of worship to God and in reflection of God\u2019s presence within them and gifting to them.<\/p>\n

In William Dyrness\u2019 book, Visual Faith: Art, Theology and Worship<\/em>, he speaks of art in relation to discipleship.[1]<\/a> In creating there belongs service, suffering, death to self, and resurrection, following the pattern of Christ. The depth of truth of Dyrness\u2019 words depends on the artist. Will they follow this pattern and let the process be only as deep as the art itself? Or will they allow their good creation to have a multilayered dimension, recognizing their process comes from a greater discipleship model, being of the One who calls all to make disciples?<\/p>\n

A larger conversation looms with regard to art and the church. Set as one of the main themes of Visual Faith<\/em>, Dyrness addresses the tensions between the two. Deborah Sokolove explains this tension in her review, \u201cThe fact that much controversy attends the use of arts in worship, that artists in Christian communities continue to be marginalized, and that Christians still express confusion regarding their engagement with the arts indicates unfinished business. This “unfinished business” is, first, educating his audience about the historical connections between art and faith, and, second, providing a theological grounding for engagement with the arts.[2]<\/a><\/p>\n

Dyrness sees his task as a theologian to bring a biblical and theological foundation for reintegrating art with worship and spends a chapter on each of the topics. Recognizing the influence of culture on art over the centuries, he makes clear that the renewal of the art and worship comes through a lens of proper theology. \u201cClearly, this renewal in worship is itself being influenced by the surrounding popular culture, but this in itself is not a bad thing. Given a proper biblical and theological grounding, it is also possible that the renewal can in turn have an impact on that culture.\u201d[3]<\/a><\/p>\n

Dyrness is attempting to disciple Christians through his text, as one who has done the work of research and writing, to help Christians to rethink their perspectives and be open to the possibility of creativity as part of the image of God in humanity.<\/p>\n

One of the limitations of Dyrness\u2019 text is that he fails to recognize that his scope only involves a popular Western perspective and not a global perspective of history and current trends. The art recognized is primarily in relation to Europe and America and almost exclusively by men of Western European dissent. There is nothing wrong with this perspective as long as it is recognized by the author as one perspective of Christianity and not the comprehensive view of history and current trends in Christianity.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>With regard to Western limitations, consider the following from my own life this week. I recently viewed a map with China as the center of the world and realized, similar to Dyrness, that my own perspective is limited. My perspective has always been of the traditional map with the Americas on the left and Asia on the right. After viewing several variations on the world map this week my perspective shifted. Seeing the countries Great Britain has invaded and then noticing Europe\u2019s orientation on the map, I recognized Europe as the obvious center. My ignorance was simply due to what I have always known, without taking into consideration the perspectives beyond mine.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I mention the map illustration as it is so easily the perspective of Westerners to believe that much of the world, including art, orients from the West. The reality is that the places where the Industrial Revolution began were the places with the most influence, due to print. This effects not only print but the arts and worship as well.<\/p>\n

Both Dyrness and my own limited perspective relate to my consideration of my own doctoral research, in both direct and adjacent ways. My research has evolved some to focus on discipling leaders who are marginalized, although theologically given all the rights as those who are empowered. Specifically looking at those given the least opportunities for ministry leadership in the Wesleyan Traditions are women of color. Meeting with female pastors of color and hearing their stories reshapes my perspective and makes me look at texts written by Christians with a new lens of consideration. I am aiming to see the world discipled into the vision of the New Testament, with a multi-ethnic male and female leadership. Visual Faith <\/em>lays a biblical and theological framework with the development of the kingdom practice still to be built.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Dyrness, William A., Visual Faith: Art, Theology, and Worship in Dialogue. Baker Academic, Grand Rapids, MI,\u00a0 2001, 151-3.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Sokolove, Deborah. \u201cDyrness, William A., Visual Faith: Art, Theology, and Worship in Dialogue.\u201d Cross Currents. New York\u00a0Vol.\u00a052,\u00a0Iss.\u00a03,\u00a0 (Fall 2002): 418-420.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Dyrness, 23.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I write this blog, my house is full of artists: Musicians, song-writers, singers, creatives. Fifteen plus women and men from the Northwest and beyond, creating music in a retreat setting over three days. Four production spaces are set with groups of three to five people at each. The groups have eight hours to write […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[289],"class_list":["post-19664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dyrness","cohort-lgp8"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/105"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19664"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19664\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19672,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19664\/revisions\/19672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}