I am writing from an air mattress at my coworkers’ house late at night. I just ate some fabulous fajitas around a table filled with laughter and shared stories after watching the sun set slowly from someone else’s backyard.  

I drove home from work last Thursday night jovially saying goodnight to everyone, knowing we would probably be “hunkered down” for the next few days to ride out Hurricane Harvey and his aftermath. It felt a little exciting at first, like anticipating a snow day when I was younger and growing up in West Virginia. But over the next days, which has now turned into a week, the excitement drained away with every tornado warning, every flood warning, every flash of tragedy that unfolded from the news reports and social media.  

I am back in the place of being the recipient of others’ generosity and overwhelming support. This is a familiar place for me, after living many years in Zimbabwe as a missionary and knowing that both my programs and personal finances depended on the kindness of others. When I could no longer renew my work visa and had to leave Zimbabwe, I somehow ended up at Chapelwood UMC, a large church community in Houston, Texas, as a Missions Director.  

All of a sudden, the tables were turned and I was now in charge, along with my committee, of dispensing funds to hopeful missionaries and programs around the world who were just as eager as I had once been to be good stewards of what they were given. When disasters happened around the world and closer to home, Chapelwood generously donated funds and manpower in whatever way was most needed.  

Over the last three years working here in Houston, I have been privileged to have other staff and members become my family. My family has also grown to include people from Haiti and Kenya and other parts of Texas. My family now includes people from Estonia and Louisiana and Costa Rica. When our family in Haiti was suffering from Hurricane Matthew, we were there. When flooding devastated Louisiana, we were there. When Kenya experienced famine from drought we were there.  

Now we are the ones who are in devastation. We look out our windows and see swimming pools where parking lots should be and boats where cars used to drive.  

And the emails and phone calls and social media posts pour in: from Stanley in Kenya, from Meeli in Estonia, Pastor Carlos in Weslaco, Texas and Paul in Haiti. And all over the U.S. they assure us: We are praying for you. We are sending support. We are coming.  

I had to evacuate my home this morning, to join the tens of thousands of others who are now displaced. But we will be okay again one day soon because of your prayers and your presence and your gifts, service, and witness.  

And because of the beautiful, compassionate, resilient people of Houston who have rallied around each other. We represent every tribe, tongue and nation here in Houston. Although we are in the midst of deep waters this week, we have also experienced a hint of heaven. 

A friend kindly directed my attention to a recent blog post over at Christianity Today, “Seven Evangelism Environments Artists Create: How the church can leverage the arts for evangelism,” by Dr. Byron Spradlin. I give a hearty ‘amen’ to what I take is Spradlin’s main thrust, which we find in the final line: “If you are a church or mission leader, invite the artists you know to help you take a fresh look at the way you think about, plan for, and implement evangelism.”  

The bulk of the post is aimed at offering some frameworks for how artists can aid the mission of evangelism by designing environments, creating community through shared artistic endeavor, helping to express the gospel, and so forth. All of this is offered with the modest disclaimer that these are just preliminary suggestions for getting started:

These seven environments mentioned above are simply a start in stating how artistic expression specialists (artists) bring powerful and beautiful resource to the Lord’s assignment of evangelism. In fact, when it comes to evangelism, the Church cannot do without them in the mix.

This is good. The church can’t do without artists.  

However, I do have some quibbles, though I’m reluctant to pillory a post whose main point I affirm. (Lord knows, I’m not eager for some smart aleck to nitpick all my blog posts.) In lieu of a very direct response, I want to offer two things to keep in mind as we try to thoughtfully integrate the arts into the church’s mission. 

1. The arts are already and always involved in the church’s mission.

Throughout the post, Spradlin relies on a common distinction between the message of the gospel and the mode of its expression. He rightly points out that without being able to “feel” and “imagine” the truth of the message, the news will not seem good. This is right, but could still mislead the reader into seeing the truth of the gospel as something distinct from its mode of expression.

What the study of theology and the arts reveals, however, is that our understanding of the truth is always mediated through aesthetic categories. Metaphor, the interconnection of two networks of meaning, fundamentally shapes all thinking. Encountering and explaining are inextricable. Imaginative intuition and artistic sensibility are necessary for accessing the objective truths of the gospel. Divine communication is already artistically shaped, because God himself uses artistic expression. Through parables, metaphorical language, and the medium of story, the Bible assumes that the arts matter. It is impossible to access the propositional truths of theology without relying on creative expression. Punching it a bit: God has already bound up the task of theology with the power of poetry.

With this in mind, we should approach the arts not first as powerful vehicles that amplify our expression and encounter with the truth, but as a necessary element in all theological knowing. A ministry that sees the arts as intrinsic, rather than instrumental, will already be two steps ahead in fruitfully integrating the arts in ministry.  

Perhaps this all still seems nitpicky, but many Christians hold to a reductively sharp distinction between content and expression. I once heard a famous mega-pastor exclaim that the “only thing that makes music Christian is the lyrics.” By this I assumed he meant that worship could work in all manner of musical modes, so long as it kept the same message. But this overlooks, of course, that the mode of expression mediates our understanding of the message. Transpose almost any song from a major to minor key (or vice versa) and the meaning shifts dramatically. (YouTube offers many, many examples.)

2. Artists are not special (or, at least, not in the sense we sometimes think).

Even among those who value the arts, there can be a temptation to put them in a “gilded ghetto”: a separate space of distanced admiration. The same happens with artists. They can be construed as specially gifted, yet also alien. More than one working artist I know has felt this simultaneous admiration-with-distance. Theseus’s lines in Midsummer Night’s Dream comes to mind:

  Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,

Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend

More than cool reason ever comprehends.

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet

Are of imagination all compact.

One sees more devils than vast hell can hold—

That is the madman. The lover, all as frantic,

Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt.

The poet’s eye, in fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to Earth, from Earth to heaven. (5.1)

For Theseus (though probably not Shakespeare) the poet, like the lover and the madman, is a frenzied genius who mysteriously sees more than reason can comprehend. Many people in the pews will likely hold a similar view.

Much of this is come by honestly. Plato seemed to distrust the artist as an irrational-yet-inspired creator, (cf. Ion). Likewise, Kant separated aesthetic judgment from the rationality. These ideas still haunt the Western mind, even among those who have never cracked the pages of Kant or Plato.

An important step for integrating Christian artists more fully into the life of the church is to honor their talents as meaningfully connected to the larger concerns of the church. Artistic making is often closely bound up with careful reflection on big ideas and cultural context. Spradlin goes a long way to suggesting how artists can be integrated. His generalizations are broadly true, but might also be misread to propagate the idea of artists as a special class of people touched by the muses with a mysterious gift:

Artists are hardwired to be curious about culture expressions and intrigued by and interested in culture’s ways. Through their curiosity—and a wonderful product of it: looking at familiar realities in fresh ways—they always create situations and places where relationships are formed.

Again, my goal is not to correct Spradlin’s notions, but to nuance their reception. Artists come in all shapes and sizes. Artists are people, no more trustworthy or untrustworthy in their powers than any other group. (Even here, there’s a danger in grouping artists together. A broad view of the arts accounts for the ad-man and the ballerina; the game designer and the book binder.) Those who wish to shepherd artists should plan to pastor the whole person, including the expression of their craft.

If this seems intimidating, it is worth noting that pastors are artists too. They shape sermons, and they also shape souls. As Hans Urs von Balthasar points out, the most beautiful work of art is the life of the saint.

***

Philip Tallon (PhD, St. Andrews) is an Assistant Professor of Theology at Houston Baptist University. He is the author of The Poetics of Evil (Oxford, 2012), and The Absolute Basics of the Christian Faith (Seedbed, 2016).

Our sermon today is preached by Dr. Matt Hook, Senior Pastor of Dexter UMC in Dexter, Michigan.

https://vimeo.com/220245689

This sermon, Living the Mission in Worship, from Rev. Tara Beth Leach starts at minute marker 42:10.

Regardless of your politics, but dependent on the plans of God, there will be a November 9, 2016. Do you know the day? It’s the day after the United States of America will choose between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Between now and then, there will be a lot of debate, discussion, and Tweeting. But that day will come and, regardless of the victor, the church’s mission in the USA will continue.

Do you have a vision beyond November the 8th?

It’s hard to imagine a more polarizing political atmosphere, but Methodism may have already faced one. John Wesley, no supporter of democracy, was a sharp critic of the war between the colonies and the crown. On the other hand, Francis Asbury was the only British-born itinerant minister to stay in the colonies during the war. Asbury then remained for 30 more years, dying this side of the Atlantic, seeing the Methodist movement become a powerful force; ministering while there were arguments for individual freedom and corporate unity and conflicts between people of Irish and English descent. (For more information, see Bryan Easley, “The Leadership of Francis Asbury,” from Leadership the Wesleyan Way, Emeth Press.) Asbury realized that in spite of the short-term conflict, there would be a long-term mission.

Likewise for any Christians in the USA, without minimizing the importance and efforts that will lead up to November 8, there will be a November 9. There will be a mission that continues. And it is vital that missional seeds are sown even before November 9. This essay tries to outline the current political atmosphere in order to create empathy across political lines to provide space for a November 9 mission, an Asburian vision of a mission beyond the conflict.

Let me begin with a quick historical recount, helping to frame how we have arrived at today. The Modern period is captured in the Enlightenment, the intellectual spirit of the age that reason was the highest authority. It championed critical thinking. The Enlightenment promised a better life through better government, greater personal freedom, medicine, and scientific discovery. It delivered in huge ways. It produced a lot of wealth, health, and possibility.

But not as much as expected. And at times it ran aground. There was WWI and WWII. There was a Holocaust. The great advancements of the Enlightenment also created the possibility for great conflicts and great destruction and death. In light of these derailments, a new spirit, a Postmodern spirit, emerged in the late 20th century. Whatever this age would be, it would not succumb to the arrogance of the Modern period. It challenged the big, bad rationalist account of the world. It saw that all our understandings of reality (even scientific ones) are from certain points of view. It is not that each perspective is not true, but that each is incomplete.

To avoid this arrogant, rationalist, outward turn, the Postmodern period turned inward. Discovering truth in the objective world had led to the control and death of human beings—Berlin Walls, Israels/Palestines, concentration camps, industrialized work and abuses. The inward turn would not let other people discover what it meant to be human; it would allow—even demand—that each person find what it means to be human for him/her/vem/xer/perself. Here was the beauty of Postmodern movement: If the Modern period had the Enlightenment where “rationalist” was the only lens, then the Postmodern period would apply multiple lenses to everything. Each person has a lens and each lens is valid.

The multiple lens approach meant that we would value every lens we could identify: the lenses of being a woman, being gay, being Black, being poor, being an immigrant, being native, and so forth. The more lenses, the better. Many lenses proved to sharpen focus and to examine things from multiple points of view, holding the potential for growth in knowledge, understanding, and progress. However, one unnecessary result was that the value of those sociological lenses that were previously established (wealthy, white, male) were now disregarded—officially, at least. Those lenses were to blame for violence, abuse, and control. Let’s bring this back to the political realm. In politics, the advantage of having a lens that was previously unconsidered was called being an “outsider.” If you weren’t part of the “political establishment,” then you brought a fresh perspective and a citizenry would benefit from such leadership.

Through all of this cultural development, four very important things (among others) happened:
1. Global migration
2. 9/11 and global terrorism
3. Social media
4. Seven Billion Cell Phones

Suddenly, things that were happening all over the world were brought not just into our homes, but into our faces; and not from a framed perspective by news media, but from multiple perspectives from various amateur videographers; and not only were these perspectives from other countries, but they were shared by other people who now lived up the road from us and who worked next to us and who received a burger from us at McDonald’s and who fixed our computer and who built our house and who married our Dad, daughter, or cousin; or who became our MP, Senator, Governor. Suddenly, diversity was not simply a theory that could help bring beauty, technological advancement, and new restaurants; it became a next door reality that became, at least for some people, scary. The world that was imagined in the 1980s and 1990s—a world of peace through multiple lenses—was being threatened. The promise that some had read into Postmodernism—a progressive peace through diversity—was being challenged. Rather than peace, there was more war, closer war, unframed war.

In light of this quick historical recount, let me frame the two political candidates who will be voted on November 8:

1. Donald Trump. The Republican nominee is the result of some who want to be heard again, whose lenses were discarded when others were rising in importance. President Trump represents for many the white, male voice. I know some think the white, male voice has never stopped being heard, but their perspective has lost all power. Remember the credit crunch? Don’t trust the bankers! Down with CEOs! Has anyone ever heard of someone studying “Masculine” or “Man Studies” in University? Mr. Trump is all of the things that capture what people thought stopped being important in the Postmodern turn—and he is a political outsider. Some people remain surprised he has a chance at being President. Quite the opposite is true. If he—the wealthy, white, male, political outsider—hadn’t become an option for President, we should have been surprised.

2. Hillary Clinton. The Democratic nominee is the politician who has moved with the spirit of the age. She works (very hard!) to use every lens that she might encounter—every gender, every woman, every sexuality, every economic sphere. But here’s the irony: The belief that one can hold every perspective means a rejection of those perspectives which do not believe certain lenses exist or that certain lenses are helpful or that holding every lens is advisable or that do not share desires that people with other lenses do. This conflict results in, say, a basket of deplorables problems. Suddenly, lots of people feel unheard, unconsidered, mistreated, and disrespected. Why didn’t they get to participate in what it meant to be human like everyone else did? Why doesn’t their lens count anymore?

Now, note the irony. Mrs. Clinton is herself a fresh lens—the first potential woman president—who purports to value multiple lenses, but she is also the consummate political insider. She is the archetype postmodern politician.

On November 9, the issues that were used to frame opponents, reject candidates, and solidify voting blocs will remain. The election will be decided; the mission will continue. Will we have any Francis Asburys who can see beyond the conflict, to craft the next 30 years of mission advancement? Will we have any Francis Asburys who ministered in the midst of conflict, gave up his status, “[e]mbracing humanity [by] being vulnerable in relationships, finding appropriate ways to connect and relate to others, and learning from their perspective”?

Let me offer several kinds of persons that Asbury might relate to in our day:

People whose previously strong, bustling city has turned to garbage and decay over the last 30 years, while no one has cared to listen to their opinion;

People whose home as a child was far better, safer, and joyful than the house they’re providing for their own children;

People who have started feeling increasingly heard and valued in the last 20 years but who fear it will all be taken away;

People whose life and meaning have been based on ancient values that are now increasingly threatened while they are called hateful and legally forced to separate their personal convictions from how they make their living;

People who have escaped cycles of poverty but who still see their extended family stuck in drug abuse and economic poverty; who worry that they might be drawn right back into these cycles once their playing career is over.

These are people often on different sides of the political fence, but who stand before God’s people for missional service. Will we have any Francis Asburys on November 9, people with a vision for a future beyond the conflict? People with courage of conviction that Jesus is raised from the dead, is the definitive word of God, and whose lives have been transformed and empowered by the Holy Spirit, yet people with humility to sacrifice their status, empathize with another, and relate to those whom God brings into their lives?

Asbury had a vision beyond the war and we are part of his vision bearing fruit. May we emulate his ability to see beyond out immediate conflicts, as well.

One month ago, an American couple herded three children into a men’s room in the Istanbul, Turkey airport. The wife visibly pregnant, they settled in for the night and texted to family members in the U.S., letting them know that their flight was being delayed indefinitely – keeping some of the details to themselves. All night the parents kept vigil as the children miraculously slept through the sound of explosions, reports of shooting, sonic booms from low-flying fighter jets and men coming in with blood-spattered clothing to wash their faces and hands for their ritual Muslim prayer time.

One of the protesters from a crowd of 5,000-10,000 men who, at the Turkish President’s command, had marched to the airport chanting in Turkish and protesting the military coup, saw the family camped in the bathroom and reassured them, “we are not here for you.”

Hours before, the couple had tried to get a taxi from the airport to the hotel after a long flight with young kids in tow when everything suddenly shut down: a tank quite literally blocked the way in and out of the large transportation hub. For a while, the family of five (and one on the way) was trapped in “arrivals” near the insecure glass doors that opened out onto the street, where people ran in for shelter from gunfire popping in the distance. Security officers and airport employees had disappeared from the airport at the news of a coup, leaving travelers to fend for themselves, helping themselves to bottled water and café food. A Frenchman volunteered to watch the family’s luggage. After hiding in a stairwell during a bomb scare (in which travelers nervously opened an abandoned bag), the family settled into the men’s room.

Throughout the entire night, as deep booms rumbled in the distance and the kids snored peacefully on, while the safety of team members spread throughout Istanbul was unknown and the promise of a flight out was evaporating, one Turkish man stayed steadfastly with the family of five Americans (and one on the way). He had seen them and given his promise: “I am going to stay with you until you’re safe. I am not going to leave you.”

And he didn’t. The man they had never met before stayed by their side throughout the long night hours.

Finally, at 5:30 in the morning airport workers began to return. By 7:00 a.m. the thousands of protesters began to empty from the airport. Roads opened and taxis arrived.

It would be another three days spent in an Istanbul hotel before they finally were able to board a flight out of Turkey to London, and from there, home. A few days after touching down on American soil, they were scheduled to speak at a church about life as missionaries in the Middle East. By the grace of God, they kept their appointment. I was privileged to hear their first-hand account.

Life in the country where they serve (not Turkey) does not usually hold the kind of danger and suspense they faced in the Istanbul airport, despite what many Americans would picture when they hear “the Middle East.” Even so, when I asked the missionary from a denomination based in North America what I needed to scrub from a piece covering their work, I got a wry smile.

“Either our names, or everything else.”

So here’s the “everything else.”

For this American missionary family working in a Middle Eastern region, the biggest change of the past few years is the arrival of refugees from areas taken over by ISIS. In the area in which they serve, NGOs and organizations are arriving to offer services to refugees. New shortages have emerged with the arrival of refugees – gasoline, the electric grid, on various components of the infrastructure, there is new strain from the ballooning number of people.

The new dynamic has affected people and their openness to Christ: for the local nominal Muslims, the Islamic State is causing secular Muslims to want nothing to do with Islam.This has nothing to do with real Islam, they think; we’re peaceful, obviously: so this is politics. The changing dynamic has led to openness to thinking critically about the loosely-held religion that has shaped their lives.

“If this is Islam, I don’t want it – so what is true?” One local young man began privately following Christ because of videos he’d found on YouTube. People who have begun to follow Jesus privately through the internet then quietly find a church and receive a Bible.

Compared to their first five years of missionary service in the Middle East, this missionary couple has witnessed more people come to Christ in the last two years than in the first five. Many of the young people choosing to follow Jesus aren’t accepting the faith through intentional relationships but rather are, in the words of the North American, “random people God drops in our laps simply because we’re there.”

One Arabic young man from a refugee family chose the Christian faith and was beat up and abandoned when his family members found out. Because of the ISIS conflict in his home region, and because of the anger of his family, he was kept from being able to take qualifying exams for university. In a new place, where he didn’t speak the local language, having moved away from his home because of explosions and violence, he eventually moved in with a pastor’s family, desperate for a way forward.

Yet many of the new Christians don’t quickly trust each other. Even in a culture of nominal Islam, they are cautious who and when they tell about their Christian faith. As that trust builds, they share with their friends; discipleship grows. In the region, there are now two local pastors in area cities, house churches of around 20 people – enough of a seed to start to have a small Christian subculture.

In a few months, the American missionary family will return to their place of service in the Middle East (though they will probably avoid flying through Istanbul – just in case). The family of five will be a family of six by that point. They’ll be going back to uncertain gasoline supply, unreliable electricity, strained infrastructure – and friendships and relationships with new Christ followers.

The family of five (and one on the way) asks for two things: first, that Americans will keep praying that people in their region will continue to have dreams of Christ (this is a recurring theme among people who seek out a church). And second, that Americans will consider that there are openings for single or married, young or retired missionaries that have remained unfilled; even missionally-minded Christians aren’t leaping at the chance to serve in the Middle East, and so this missionary couple asks fellow Christians to be open to follow where God leads.

Even if the path goes through a men’s room in the Istanbul airport.