My heart did a little hop of excitement when I saw the news that millions of dollars (or euros) worth of art has been stolen from a Dutch museum today. That visceral reaction of delight surprised me. As a Christian, I don’t condone stealing of any kind, and as a human I’ve felt the distress of theft many times, in … Read More
“Imagine if the local church became the place in culture to experience creativity, transcendence, and beauty.” That’s one of the thoughts behind The New Renaissance Arts Movement that I’m part of. Honestly, these are things that are not often experienced in many churches. At least not yet. So, over the summer we presented The Creative Church Conferences in Indy and … Read More
I just finished reviewing a yet to be released book called Empowered Creativity from a fiery young author named Art Thomas. I particularly enjoyed this thought about working in the “family business”: In the culture of the Bible, as soon as a child reached the teenage years, he or she was considered a full-fledged adult. When a young man reached … Read More
In 1977 noted Christian philosopher Hans Rookmaaker wrote a small book titled Art Needs no Justification. His premise was that art, creativity, and beauty have inherent value simply because God gave them to us. In a general sense, art doesn’t need a reason to exist, any more than a tree needs a reason to exist. (I included a larger quote … Read More
This quote is lifted from Hans Rookmaaker’s 1978 book, Art Needs No Justification. I’ll refer to it in an upcoming post, and thought you might find it inspiring. I know I did. “God gave humanity the skill to make things beautiful, to make music, to write poems, to make sculpture, to decorate things. The artistic possibilities are there to be … Read More