Growing up in the American church has a particular pattern to it. As a child, you have Sunday school, full of songs and activities to introduce you to the main Bible stories and the joy of Jesus. When you’re a teenager you have youth group, surrounded by mentors to help you really lock in your faith before going off to college. Then, once you become a spouse and a parent, you have a place in the family-centered activities you just experienced, just as a parent now. You talk with other parents about parenting. You talk with other married people about marriage. Over time, you end up an adult in the church, utterly alone and without purpose. How do we go from Sunday school to isolation? There are distinct holes in the American church, and it’s destroying people.

This article is the first installment of “Sunday Morning Misfits,” a series that addresses the people-groups in the church that have seemingly fallen through the cracks, and what we can do to bring them back.

We’ll begin with artists…

The church should be the safest place for an artist to use and refine their gift. Here, artists should learn how to incorporate their faith in God into their art creatively. This doesn’t mean cramming scripture into every song lyric or painting the face of Jesus on everything. The church has the wonderful opportunity to nourish artists by reflecting the ultimate creator and encouraging good art. Let’s teach our artists how to be sub-creators in this world with excellence and imagination.

How do we do this? First, we have to stop demanding that every work of art be a billboard for the gospel story. Being a Christian, your faith will inevitably overflow into your art because it’s a part of who you are. So stop worrying! "Secular" art does not equal sin. Not every story has to be an allegory for Christ’s death and resurrection. Not every song has to be congregational worship that explicitly sings about Jesus. Not every painting has to be an image of the last supper or heavenly angels. A story can have elements of good and evil and creatively be a witness to God's glory. A song can describe the nature of that artist’s relationship with God, even if it’s not always “happy.” A painting can be a visual interpretation of an artist’s reality crashing into their faith. These works of art are more complex than the church expects, but they’re good. They’re good because they’re made by artists; artists who are made in the image of the ultimate artist.

Art is emotional. Artists need to be taught how to confront emotion in the context of their theology. The church can help by making an effort to understand the mind of the artist, offer wisdom and then give them opportunities to serve with their art. Display their art inside the church walls. Play their music at church. Tell the congregation about the pieces they write. Raise awareness for the church to explore their own imaginations through the imaginations of their artists. Chances are, the congregation can learn a lot from an artist’s unique and creative perspective.

Also, compensate your artists for their work and their time. Art is not free, and it takes a good amount of time. The hardest part about being an artist is paying the bills. The church can’t stop at acknowledging these gifts, they have to value them just as they value the gift of a pastor or a worship leader on staff. We can’t expect our artists to work for free, just like we can’t expect our pastors to work for free. The work may be different, but it is still work. Artists feel convicted to live out their purpose just as anyone else in the church with a nine to five job.

Without art, the world would be a bleak, emotionless shell. God’s glory would be a fact in a textbook, unappealing and un-actualized. He himself is an artist. And how can we understand an artist without speaking his language? As the church, we must create space for our artists to work and discover the pieces of God's nature that we otherwise wouldn’t see.