Looking for creative depth, poetry, substance, thoughtfulness and leadership in both the culture and the Body of Christ, many believing artists have left evangelical churches and connected with higher liturgical ones. Others have stayed, and find great joy in serving the community of faith in worship leadership or in other expressions of creative worship leadership. Still others are on many places of a continuum in between. They feel like something is missing in themselves, in Christian worldview, in Church as they’ve come to know it, and yet they are tethered to the Body of Christ, knowing it is ultimately the only safe place to growth in health and faith over the course of a lifetime.
A Groaning For Growth, A Desire For Depth
A range of these glories and challenges have been met with the grace and self-reflection for which the ever-emerging Church seems to have a historical capacity. At other times, confusion has arisen in the ranks accompanied by stinging, salty tears, deep divisions and virulent language. Those internal twistings and turnings (much like in any family) have caused many to become quite theologically and culturally conversant in our time, eager to hear from the Scriptures, but also eager to shed extraneous theological baggage the unduly threatens our credibility in a cultural milieu in which adamant faith is increasingly marginalized.
Influencers within the Church who might be called “creative” or “artistic” in their way of being in the world have often led the charge in the quest for a faith that remains both biblical and orthodox, yet challenges the theologies and worldviews that marginalize us from culture, denigrate the dignity of all human beings, and stifle the wild edges of creative action that should inherently mark a Body made in the image of the PanCreator of all things.