I’m currently attending my sixth annual Re:Create conference in Franklin - an annual think-tank for creative leaders in large churches throughout the country. Randy Elrod from The People’s Church hosts this conference, and it is always a fun, creatively stimulating time, hearing from some of the country’s most influential leaders in the Arts world.
Yesterday, we heard from Barbara Nicolosi, (blog: Church of the Masses) a prolific screenwriter in Hollywood who also is a Christian. She gave a very inspiring talk on “Beauty” that really stimulated some deep thought concerning creativity in the Church, great art, and the worship of our most awesome Creator God. Why is the Church concerned about beauty, she asked? Because the pursuit of beauty is the call of the Church in that God is the creator of all things beautiful and so the pursuit of beauty is the pursuit of God in all His glory.
Beauty, according to Nicolosi, has three components. Three facets that must be present for an entity to possess beauty and thus inspire in the heart what only true beauty can inspire.
- Wholeness
- Harmony
- Radiance
“Wholeness” is the completeness of the work. Something of beauty is in itself complete, not lacking anything. For something with true beauty, there is no need to look beyond, beneath, outside or around it for something that it doesn’t have. It has a completeness that is evident to all who experience or observe it and thus find it beautiful. When something possesses this quality of wholeness, it doesn’t need anything more to make it what it is.
When something possesses “harmony”, Nicolosi says that every part of it is as good as it can be, and no part takes away from any other. There is internal and external congruence that you can tangibly and intuitively sense and feel - in the same way that you can sense and feel clearly when something doesn’t possess harmony.
“Radiance” means that a piece or work conveys some kind of enlightenment and lifts the consciousness of the observer to something beyond the work or object itself - hopefully, ultimately to God Himself.
I long for beauty. At the core of who we are, we all do. Though I fear that many of us lose heart in the journey and forget to keep our eyes and ears open. Beautiful things compel my attention and attract my heart, my mind, my soul, my senses to watch, listen, smell, dream, think, remember, experience, touch… And, ultimately, beauty directs my soul to God in worship.
Pondering beauty compels me to think about a sunset, a flower, my two sons, a Mozart concerto, David Sanborn’s “The Dream”, Mount Everest, the seemingly endless universe, a river in the Rockies… Each of these are beautiful to me, and lead me to worship my transcendent, almighty, mysterious creator God. As a creative, this is what compels me to create beauty. I’m convicted, as a songwriter, how many times I’ve created something less than beautiful - lacking either wholeness, harmony or radiance. Or sometimes… all three. I certainly have been careless, hurried or less than thorough at times. But there have been those moments of transcendence where God’s creativity and my work intersect to create something beautiful at which instant I touch God in a powerful and unique way. The created touching the Creator. Worship.
May we all be seekers of true beauty. May our journey draw us to an ever deeper and intimate relationship with our most beautiful savior, Jesus. To God be the glory.
And as a Church, let’s commit to pursuing beauty in all that we do as we plan, create, present and provide an atmosphere for undistracted and beautiful worship. Let’s together reclaim beauty for the glory of God.
Psalm 96:6 “Splendor and majesty are before Him; strength and beauty are in His sanctuary.”
Of course, your blogging is as excellent as I would have expected! Great stuff.
I forget how “creative” you really are.
I’m learning to see beauty in people…not an easy thing for me.
Good words.
[…] Interestingly, Nancy shared that something God has put on her heart for a potential future Arts Conference focus is “beauty.” We talked for a short time about this (it was our last item of discussion) and I was really intrigued since it was exactly what inspired me at last week’s Re:create conference when Barbara Nicolosi spoke on the three qualities that must be present for something to have “beauty.” Something tells me that ‘beauty’ is going to be a theme for me in the months and years to come. We DO need to do all we are able to properly steward and reclaim beauty for the glory of God. Check out my blog post on Nicolosi’s Re:create talk here. […]
[…] While this symposium was an evening of peering into the stories of five highly successful artists, in the end it was always about the glory of God, not the art. The art is a means to the end of glorifying God in all of life. It just so happens that art, by definition, speaks in a way that nothing else can - and so is able to reveal the glory of God in a way that nothing else can. Especially art that possesses all the qualities of beauty. (see my post here on Barbara Nicolosi’s talk concerning beauty) And what became clearly evident was that each of these artists ultimately focus not on their art or their career, but on how their art and their career point to the glory of God. […]