A Silent Revolution!

I am currently enrolled in a liberal arts college for art education. You could say that the arts are rather liberal here, and often very difficult to handle. That being said, I know that I am here for a reason and that I have been placed in an envelope of time to be the most influential that I can be. This influence has caused me to take a very indirect approach to sharing my faith with the student body. I have had to literally reinvent the way to approach people who are anti-Christ by their own admission,or people who claim other gods all together. This environment has given me an ability to gauge the way I speak, act, and even love the fellow students around me.

The biggest issue that many of my friends who do not yet know Christ site as their biggest irritation with Christians are that we are not forgiving, honest, different, and most of all relevant. The idea of relevancy is something that I have been truly investigating in regards to my heart as an artist. Lately I have been communicating with my art and not as much with my words. The idea that we maintain credibility with our quality of work and passion for it still holds water among those who don't care about our Christian merit badge. Unfortunately this merit badge receives about the same amount of attention in the setting in which I have the privilege of being a part.

Inspired by Donald Miller's book Blue Like Jazz, I recently began a conceptual art sculpture piece titled "Confession." This piece was intended to be interactive with those who viewed it. For this work I had the student read a series of real life confessions that were gathered from my church family. Some of the confessions that were directed at the students themselves were incorporated into the piece as the interactive element. As the viewers were asked to read the confessions from the church, many of them were moved by the overwhelming self awareness of our judgmentalism, homophobia, lack of love, lack of truth, lack of a model that some of the students were moved to tears. Similarly as the 45 or so minutes passed for the presentation of the piece, it was followed by a completely spontaneous moment of silence for the classroom to process the event.

This moment made me keenly aware of our role as the church to consistently take a posture and indeed live a culture of forgiveness, honestly, humility, and holistic righteousness that is more than skin deep. We need to go soul deep in order to remain relevant. When we really love the world we rarely need our words. In fact if we resist the temptation to tell people about our savior and show them his miraculous intention among men, we will be the most relevant people on the planet.

I have included a short video clip and some photos of my latest project "Confession" as a sample of how I am trying to influence a generation through creativity inspired by a Creator. Pray for me, pray for those I encounter, better yet pray for yourself, and those you encounter...Those who seek an encounter with you because, well, you simply make them feel better. Lastly I want to encourage you to make those around you feel important, comforted, empowered, loved, and when you fail, and you will fail, Get up and ask for forgiveness. Live shamelessly!