This is a new adventure for me. I'm am following God into this new life that I am almost completely in the dark as to what it's going to look like. Even the 10 years that I spent pursuing Youth Ministry was a time in which I had prepared myself that once I graduated from college and seminary that I was going to have difficulty finding a full-time, ordained position in a church, but I knew people who had found them, so I knew they existed.
But now, God is calling me to a new path. Maybe it's not so much a different path as it is a "I'm walking on the sidewalk instead of driving on the street" situation. And that sidewalk, that wandering, meandering, bumpy, cracked, covered in chalk writings, chewed gum and weeds breaking forth, that sidewalk is Arts Ministry.
What does Arts Ministry look like, you might ask? Your guess is as good as mine. It might be drawing your prayers. It might be finding theological implications and images in works of art. It might be recognizing God's art in Creation that we interact with everyday. I might look like spending time with others, working in different mediums of art that are based in Scripture. It might be listening to music that moves you to think about God and creating art, in any form, that expresses your communion with God in a way that you can't do with words.
This blog will be a chance for me to explore my experiences in arts and spirituality, looking into the uses of our God-given creativity, and exploring art as a spiritual discipline, something that I think is crucial in our worship experience and that I think is lacking in many, if not most, churches and worship centers today.
The following section is a blog post that I wrote a month ago, on the night that I finally acknowledged the call from God that I have been suppressing for over two years. Many things have come about in the last month as a result of this post, and I hope that there are more to come. Enjoy.
I'm Gonna Follow
I just had my life changed, minutely and significantly.
While listening to the awesome and amazing Bill Mallonee tonight, singing a song about Van Gogh and the trials of not realizing your potential in life, or rather never knowing that you have realized it, I recognized that I have been stuffing a part of myself down for the last few years in regards to the calling that God has placed on my life and the gifts that God has blessed me with.
At the age of 17, I knew that God wanted me to go into Youth Ministry, that that is where I was created to be, reaching out to youth at a time in their lives when so many people tell them that they aren't good enough because of their age, their awkwardness, or their ways of thinking. For the last decade, that call has not changed. I went to college and got a degree in Youth Ministry, then did Youth Ministry, and am now getting a Masters degree and going through the ordination process because of my sureness of that calling that God planned for me and has placed in my life.
Let me preface this next part by saying that I don't feel that I have lost that calling, or that I don't want to do Youth Ministry anymore. But I think that there is a part of me, a part that continues to get bigger and more pronounced with each passing year, month, and day, that I have been pushing aside and ignoring because I am terrified of it and what it might mean for my life to try and rework things when I am 11 days away from my 28th birthday and 7 months away from graduation.
I am an artist. I feel called to do Arts ministry. I want to do Arts Ministry. I feel that it is something that is under-appreciated, ignored, or simply not even considered in our churches and in our world today. We are beings that are created in the image of God. The Imago Dei. And because God is creative, we must, as humanity and as individuals, be creative too. Even though we learn from Scripture, from prayer, from hearing sermons and singing hymns, there is a crucial part of our being that is never touched in a common (or uncommon) worship service or time of meditation.
So many people in this world think that they are not "artistic", that they are "uncreative" because maybe someone, somewhere along the road of their lives told them that they weren't. Or maybe they were never given the opportunity to express themselves creatively. Or maybe they were told that making, creative, moving, touching, looking, were not "appropriate ways to worship".
This idea breaks my heart, the idea that people are squelched in who they are as beings created and loved and intricately known by God because they are not able to express themselves fully in worship, or that even if they are given that opportunity, that they doubt themselves in the same way that many people doubt their ability to pray because they feel they don't know all of the elaborate, flowery language that is represented in so many prayers.
Don't get me wrong. I think, I know, that people can and do connect with God through the reading of Scripture, through the writing and hearing of sermons, through all sorts of prayer, and through the hearing and singing of hymns, along with many other forms of worship, and that these practices are all vital to a healthy relationship with God. I have connected with God and had my relationship with God strengthened and deepened as a result of all of these practices.
But as surely as God gave us a mouth to speak and ears to hear, God also gave us hands to touch and create with and bodies to move around with. We are not complete in ourselves, in our created-ness if we are not utilizing all of our senses and abilities when we worship God and live our lives.
All of this being said, I know that God is calling me into something different than what I was called to 10 years ago. I do not feel that I am being called away from Youth Ministry, but that the ministry that God is going to have me embark upon in 7 or 8 or 10 months is going to look different than what I thought.
My life has been changed. I have been called by the Great Creator, by my Creator, and it is a calling that I can no longer ignore. I pray that I will be able to follow the path, with all of it's hills and valleys, with all the turns and twists, and to stay true to who I am, who God made me to be, and the faith and community that has supported me my entire life.
Amen.
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