Welcome - be known!

Hi, everyone. Welcome to our new blog, where we (Maria, Kenyon, and I, plus others) will be sharing each week about what we're reading, thinking about and working on at the intersection of art and faith.

In 2010 we're launching a new campaign (of which this blog is part) to help communicate the philosophy behind our ministry: Create/Be Known/Engage. These are the three things we want everyone to do - create to the glory of God, know and be known by Him and His people, and engage with the culture around us to be part of His renewing work. Pick up "Create" and "Be Known" postcards on the information tables at worship services, and you'll find an "Engage" flyer for Arts Month (February!) in your January 17 worship service bulletins and on info tables then. You can check out all of the upcoming Arts Month activities now here.

But in January, we're really focusing on "being known" - growing in knowledge of God and in our relationship with him and one another in the Body of Christ. InterArts Fellowship this month will be on the topic, and all of the vocation group gatherings will also be focusing on it.

Since we're thinking about community this month, I want to suggest an article published by our denomination's (Presbyterian Church in America) online magazine, byFaith. "Created for Community" is a great article by Paul Tripp, author of many respected books on counseling from a Christian perspective. (He is also a painter, and his wife, Luella Tripp, is an art gallery operator and has spoken on her work in the arts at Redeemer's Entrepreneurship Forum.)

Tripp talks about the importance of community, about how we are created for it and need it, but that our sin nature fights against it, particularly through two "seductive lies": first, that we are autonomous, and second, that we are self-sufficient. These lies "push us toward individualistic and and private lifestyles." He writes:

"We do tend to live with big barriers between our public personas and our private lives. We do tend to live in networks of terminally casual relationships. Most of the people we think we know we don’t actually know. Yes, we know things about them, but would probably be shocked if we knew the struggles that regularly take place in the interior of their lives. Most of what we call fellowship is not fellowship at all. It is surface talk about things that don’t matter that allows us to maintain our privacy. So the couple who has been fighting on the way to church hits the front door with a smile, the mother who is frazzled takes a few minutes to get herself together. And when we arrive for public worship, nobody tells, nobody knows, and nobody helps."

Ouch. Can we commit together to trying to do better?

Check out the article, it's really good.

We'll be thinking more about "being known" this month, check back.

With hopes for His blessings on your life and your work in 2010...
--Luann