Worship and the Arts in Ministry and Missions
page 1 of 3by Rev. Byron Spradlin
What God is Doing
Many readers might already be noticing well how God is making more of us aware
of the importance of contextualized worship and arts ministry specialists in
world evangelization. But in my role directing a mission board specifically
for creative Kingdom servants pursing Kingdom ministry through artistic methods,
I'm seeing these realities every week. Let me give you an example.
In July of 1999 - while giving a challenge to over 400 Christians-in-the-arts concerning the task of world evangelization - I looked to the Lord to provoke these Christian artists towards personal involvement in world missions with the following comments:
"Sometimes" says Dallas Willard, an evangelical believer and USC philosophy professor, "important things can be presented in literature and art that cannot be effectively presented in any other way." The arts are absolutely important to God and Christian ministry! And when our time together is said and done, that is what God wants you to know, feel, and experience.
Then I told these arts ministry specialists:
You are not strange - you are beautiful.
You are not crazy - you are passionate.
You are not eccentric - you are unique.
You are not bizarre - you are imaginative.
You are not rebellious - you are innovative.
God has hard-wired you that way, and He likes it - and He likes you. Look around. You are not alone. There's a whole room full of us!
And at that, they burst out in a resounding cheer!
Why do you think they did that? And an even more basic question: why were 250 Christians in dance, 75 Christians in music, 50 Christians in theatre and drama, and 25 others in visual arts, puppets and a few other artistic expressions - and most of them with some clear sense of God's tugging them towards ministry? Why were all those folks together there to cheer at my comments in the first place?
It was because God's Spirit is already at work shaping the ministry strategies for this coming new Millennium - theologically, strategically and tactically - towards the Father's intentions to win new generations of post-moderns to become His worshipers from every tongue, tribe and nation.
For this reason alone, though there are many more, I suggest to you in this paper several strategic reconceptualizations, reconceptualizations we've already been experiencing in the task of world evangelization. Specifically I urge that all of us in Christian ministry leadership:
1. reconceptualize the Great Commission in terms of "winning worshipers" from every tongue, tribe and nation (since worship, in its fullest sense, is what we will engage in fully when we move into our glorified everlasting state once we're done with our earth-bound assignments on His behalf);
2. more energetically embrace the new breed of missionary and ministry specialists God is training up - Kingdom servants specifically suited to reaching into the post-modern cultures of the world, those servants I labeled worship and arts ministry specialists; and in the process,
3. embrace a more biblical working definition of artistic expression, a definition that will release us to more proactively recruit and deploy these worship and arts ministry specialists in the development of ministry plans, budgets and projects; and do it because we realized God specially equipped them - like He did King David - to sling His Word straight to the hearts of the myriad of diverse and unique cultures of the world.
Unless otherwise noted, all materials on the urbana.org web site are Copyright InterVarsity Christian Fellowship / USA. All rights reserved.
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