{"id":9394,"date":"2016-09-15T21:01:06","date_gmt":"2016-09-16T04:01:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dminlgp.com\/?p=9394"},"modified":"2016-09-15T21:01:06","modified_gmt":"2016-09-16T04:01:06","slug":"a-place-of-redemption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/a-place-of-redemption\/","title":{"rendered":"A Place of Redemption"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Hyatt Moore - The Last Supper With 12 Tribes\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/0cWbGxH3DxA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Have you ever walked into a cathedral filled with statues depicting the life of Jesus? Have you ever seen walls covered with gold as they display paintings of biblical themes? I have often seen it throughout Latin America. In most cities rooted in Spanish colonialism, there are Catholic cathedrals that display beautiful art. Yet, the beauty of the art is suddenly overpowered by the idolatry that surrounds it. You see people praying to the statue of the Virgin Mary, placing money with written prayers in the boxes conveniently located next to the statues of a famous saint or a suffering Jesus. Next to these statues, there are displays of literature, including short booklets that talk against evangelical theology and warn readers about the eternal consequences of purgatory if they leave their allegiance to the Mother of God.<\/p>\n<p>Some of the most amazing visual art inspired by Christianity in Latin America is commonly used to encourage people to practice idolatry, not to point them to freedom in Christ. The majority of born-again believers in Latin America come from this background. Therefore, it is easy to understand why the visual arts can be downplayed in the evangelical church as it was during the Reformation.<\/p>\n<p>In the book <em>Visual Faith: Art, Theology, &amp; Worship<\/em>, professor William Dyrness reflects on the historical relationship between visual arts and Christianity. He concludes that the Evangelical church needs to rediscover the powerful role that the visual arts can have in ministry and calls us to embrace a fresh relationship between the visual arts and the church. He argues, \u201cthe contemporary generation has been raised and nourished by images; it has an inescapably visual imagination. Regardless of whether one considers this good or bad, for this generation, aesthetics counts more than epistemology.\u201d (Kindle, 346).<\/p>\n<p>I find the assertion about epistemology alarming. Yet, Dyrness has a point. It is wise to remember that we live in a consumer culture. And as Vincent Miller discovered in <em>Consuming Religion<\/em>, aesthetics is an important factor in a consumer culture because it communicates a message. If you have ever opened a new iPad or MacBook you know what I mean\u2014beauty can inspire trust.<\/p>\n<p>Dyrness causes me to discern the relationship between the message and the means. I am moved to ask, <em>what does the physical environment communicate? What is the experience that it provides? Is my message magnified by the environment I create or does it contradict my message?<\/em> According to Dyrness, embracing the visual arts into the ministry environment can help us better connect with a visual generation. And there are some wise ways of doing this.<\/p>\n<p>When art flows out of the mission, it has a unique power to create organizational alignment. Author Jim Collins points out that total alignment is an important sign of a healthy organization&#8211;e<em>verything<\/em> in the organization must point to the mission and vision. According to Collins, this alignment must be so tight, that even if strangers walk in, they should be able to discern what the organization is about just by looking at the space around them. Collins causes me to ask, <em>how does the physical environment communicate our mission and vision as a church? What can we do about it<\/em>? The answer to this question can take us to unexpected places.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><a href=\"http:\/\/dminlgp.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/The-Last-Supper.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-9396 alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/dminlgp.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/The-Last-Supper-300x74.png\" alt=\"The Last Supper\" width=\"353\" height=\"87\" \/><\/a>In my experience, one of those unexpected places was a conference in California. There, I met Hyatt Moore, a powerful artist and former president of Wycliffe Translators (see his short video on top of this page. It is worth watching). Among his paintings there was one in particular that caught my attention. It was the <em>Last Supper<\/em> as I had never seen it before. I found it captivating because it had theological depth and captured the essence of our ministry vision at Ethnos without words. I ended up buying a large print of it and it is now displayed in our main entrance in order to reinforce our message. It was encouraging to experience Christian art without the context of idolatry, and it reminded me that there are gifted artist in the Body of Christ that were called to create visual art.<\/p>\n<p>Giving Christians a context to minister with their creative gifts has become a sign of a healthy church.\u00a0 One of the pioneer leaders in the multiethnic church movement is pastor and author Erwin McManus, founder of Mosaic. This thriving multiethnic church in Los Angeles, California, has a large concentration of artists.\u00a0 In his book <em>The Artisan Soul,<\/em> McManus reflects on the importance of embracing the creative call that God has given the church, echoing the message from professor Dyrness.\u00a0 McManus causes me to ask, <em>how am I encouraging the artistic expression in the Body of Christ?<\/em> This is an example that I hope to imitate in my pursuit of a healthy multiethnic church, even though I must recognize that I have a long way to go.<\/p>\n<p>It seems to me that with the fall of humanity, Satan has hijacked everything that God made beautiful. He has managed to distort life into death, sex into immorality, and art into idolatry. But God has redeemed a people to Himself. He has turned death into life, immorality into sexual purity, and art into celebration. Whether we use art to connect with this generation in new ways, create organizational alignment, or give artists a platform to create, I pray that God can use Ethnos Bible Church to be a place of restoration and redemption for all.\u00a0 Even if I have a long way to go, I want to to make the most out of this journey.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Have you ever walked into a cathedral filled with statues depicting the life of Jesus? Have you ever seen walls covered with gold as they display paintings of biblical themes? I have often seen it throughout Latin America. In most cities rooted in Spanish colonialism, there are Catholic cathedrals that display beautiful art. Yet, the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"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":[289,689,688,702],"class_list":["post-9394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dyrness","tag-ethnos-bible-church","tag-pablo-morales","tag-pastor-pablo-morales","cohort-lgp6"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9394","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\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9394\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}