Art as Mission: Becoming Missionaries of Beauty
People are looking for purpose and for the meaning of life and they are hungry for a spirituality that embraces all aspects of their person—including the imagination. This is a visual generation that is overstimulated by ever-present technology, endless news cycles, and the demands of social media.
Photo courtesy of Winfield Bevins.
But for decades Christians have tried to reach the culture without some of the church’s greatest resources: beauty and the arts. Art has the power to touch people’s hearts and minds. One of the ways that we can bring hope to our world that is searching for answers is through the arts.
Author Jem Sullivan asks the right question when she ponders, “Might Christian art serve as a visual Gospel for a visual culture?” We have tried to tell the gospel only, trying to appeal people’s minds alone, forgetting the power of the arts to touch people’s imagination.
The arts can open people’s hearts and minds to the gospel by lifting our gaze to God and restoring beauty to its proper place. A painting, film, or symphony may become a means of grace that points people to the transcendence of God. Theologian James K. A. Smith says, “It’s in literature, poetry, film, and so many other art forms that we hear echoes of a biblical understanding of humanity—that we are created in God’s image, animated by hungers and hopes, made to delight and play.”
Art As Mission
I want to challenge us to think of art as mission, or at least encourage us to think of the arts as one of the ways that we can further the mission of the church to a world that needs the light, love, and hope of the gospel. Christians are called to the arts so that the world may come to see the beauty of Jesus Christ. Christian artists, as servants of God and his church, are called to create works of beauty that reflect the glory and majesty of God.
Artists are called not to merely follow the ways of the modern world, but to create new works of art that embody the beautiful, the good, and the true, whatever their artistic style may be. This is the kind of art that uplifts the soul—art that is beautiful, good, and true—and it offers us a holistic way of engaging the world.
According to Bishop Robert Barron, “The best evangelistic strategy is one that moves from the beautiful to the good and finally to the true. Especially within our cultural matrix, so dominated by relativism and the valorization of the right to create one’s own system of meaning, commencing with either moral demand or the claim to truth will likely raise insuperable blocks in the person one wishes to evangelize. But there is something unthreatening about the beautiful. Just look at the Sistine Chapel ceiling or the Parthenon or Chartres Cathedral or Picasso’s Guernica; just read The Divine Comedy or Hamlet or The Waste Land; just watch Mother Teresa’s sisters working in the slums of Kolkata. All of these work a sort of alchemy in the soul, and they awaken a desire to participate, to imitate, and finally to share.”
Photo courtesy of Winfield Bevins.
I agree with Bishop Barron that the best way to reach our culture is by presenting a gospel that moves from the beautiful, to the good, and finally to the true.
For decades, many Christians have tended to view mission in narrow terms beginning with apologetics and propositional truths, rather than beginning with engaging people’s imagination through the arts. Art can be a starting point for evangelism in a highly visual world, one where people are looking to media and technology to bring meaning into their lives.
Beauty, goodness, and truth presented through the various expressions of the Christian arts can be one of the most effective ways to reach this generation with the beauty of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Let us once again embrace beauty by recovering the arts for the sake of the Christian life, for the sake of the church, and for the sake of the world.
Commissioning Missionaries of Beauty
I believe the arts can give us a fresh lens through which to view mission in the twenty-first century, one in which we are called to be missionaries of beauty. It is interesting that the word “commission” is full of meaning for both Christianity and the arts. When most people think of the word, they think of being commissioned to do something important, but in the art world, it refers to being asked to make a piece of art for a special purpose.
Photo courtesy of Winfield Bevins.
What if the recovery of the power of the arts was necessary and essential for the Christian life and for our mission in the world? What if God wanted to use the arts to help us fulfill the Great Commission by engaging people’s imaginations? What if you and I had a special role to play in the new thing God is doing in and through the arts?
It will take all of us, not just artists. So, artists, we need you to show us the way. Pastors and missionaries, we need you to lead us in the unfolding of a new renaissance of Christianity and the arts that must take place in the Church by giving congregations a baptized imagination.
At Creo Arts, we believe that beauty will save the world. It starts with making our life a work of art. This is your invitation to play your part and join the movement for beauty to save the world. Will you join me? Let’s do something beautiful for God. I want to end by commissioning you to be a missionary of beauty.
Winfield Bevins is the Executive Director of Creo Arts, which is a non-profit that exists to bring beauty, goodness, and truth to the world through the arts, and artist-in-residence at Asbury Theological Seminary. He is the author of several books, including Liturgical Mission: The Work of the People for the Sake of the World, Ever Ancient Ever New: The Allure of Liturgy for a New Generation, Marks of a Movement: What the Church Today Can Learn From the Wesleyan Revival, and forthcoming book Beauty Will Save the World: A Renewed Vision for Christianity and the Arts. He will be a plenary, workshop and MAP Talk speaker at the New Wineskins 2025 Conference: Hope for the Nations.
