Art as Witness

I came across the article “Worship and the Arts in Ministry and Missions” by Byron Spradlin and found some helpful ideas for those of us who are artistically gifted and yet care passionately about God’s mission in the world. While it’s not necessarily a new article (first presented in 1999), I still think that he puts forth some good questions and ideas for artists to consider.

First, there was this important quotation from one of my favorite thinkers of this era, Dallas Willard:

Sometimes important things can be presented in literature and art that cannot be effectively presented in any other way.

Second, Spradlin offers to us the following points within his article:

1) give you some biblical definitions related to the area of artistic expression,

2) briefly provide a snapshot definition of worship,

3) answer, at least briefly, the question, “Why are arts ministry specialists so needed in world evangelization?” and then

4) offer a few possibilities of what can be done to get in step with what God is doing in deploying contextual worship and arts ministry specialists for His mission of world evangelization.

I particularly found his work on