My “nourishing mother” (aka alma mater) is celebrating the arts this week with a week-long focus on everything artistic—from paintings to songs to books, the seminary is celebrating the visual and auditory expressions of faith and ministry. The week will culminate with Friday performances and featured bands The Edge Band, Tifah Phillips from The Autumn Film and Page CXVI. The free event will be held at 6 p.m.
In times past it would have been unusual for an evangelical seminary like GRTS to pay any attention to the arts, much less devote an entire week to celebrating it. When Christians have paid attention, they have often produced cheap knock-offs of scary secular art, like GIFTED (think American Idol for Christians) or the pablum of CCM. Thankfully that’s been changing for a bit now as younger evangelical Christians not only want to produce art, good art, but do so with the realization that it’s an extension of who they are as both an Eikon and Child of God.
A clear illustration of this sea change was at my own institution a few years ago when they commissioned one of our students, Bette Dickinson, to create a series of paintings depicting the Creation, Rebellion, Rescue, Re-creation acts of God’s Story of Rescue. The next year she even entered it into ArtPrize, where thousands of people in Grand Rapids saw that good art, really good art, can come from a Christian’s brush.
While I am no where near talented as Bette in the type of art she’s passionate about, I think I’m beginning to find my own strides as a writing artist, which is the type of art I’m passionate about. And while I’m excited about some of the written art I have planned for later in the year, I’m pleased that my newest “word painting” will be part of the exhibits. As I’ve mentioned in the past few weeks, my new book PRAYERS FOR MY CITY: A Fixed-Hour Prayer Guide for Grand Rapids seeks to recapture the ancient spiritual practice of fixed hour prayer for 21st century Grand Rapids. You get more info here, including a video that shares the story behind the book.
So if you’re from the Grand Rapids area, come on out to check out the type of art coming from students and graduates of GRTS. And if you’re interested, stop by my table and check out our new ecumenical prayer guide for Grand Rapidians!
