Rachel's Viewfinder
It started with a simple question: how can a Christian artist embrace and minister through their artistic gifts?
I was sitting in a plenary session at Urbana 09. That entire year, God had been taking me on a journey of incarnational faith. The verse for the year had been Micah 6:8, “What O man, does the Lord require of you? But to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly before your God.” At Urbana 09, every session was a blend of music, performance, teaching, and art. The theme that year was, “The Word became Flesh.” God had become tangible when Christ walked on earth. As believers filled with His Spirit, our lives could be a tangible expression of the love of Christ for the world. We were called to a decaying, broken world and asked to meet needs in His name and love. Art, clearly, could be a part of that. But how?
By the time I was at Urbana 09, I was involved in full-time mission work. Ever since I was five, I knew I was called to be a missionary. I grew up in an artistic, Christian family. My dad was an engineer and model-railroader. Mom sewed and played guitar. My sisters and I had a room with craft products in one corner, and on boring, rainy days, Mom would say, “Go make me something.” The impulse to “make something,” grew to become a natural part of my life. As I got older, my projects became more ambitious.
As a child, I wrote stories by coloring pictures and asking Mom to write the words above the pictures for me. Movie-nights were treasured family times, and I turned to my writing as a way to express the movies I saw in my head. But by the time I graduated from college, a new idea came into my head: why not actually make a movie? I started scouring the Extras on DVDs, learning how Hollywood directors and producers made their magic. When I was 21, I finally shot my first movie.
Sure, it’s not the best 20 minutes of movie-magic. For one, the green-screen didn’t work. Only about fifty people in the world have ever seen it. But the 14 months from script to final edit revealed something: I was addicted to movie-making!
Shortly after the “premier” of my first movie, I left for a summer missions internship in Charlotte, NC, with SIM. As a teenager, I took two mission trips, one to Peru and one to the Caribbean. Both solidified the missionary calling on my life. Now, I would spend three months working with the Communications/Media Department of an international missions organization. I spent the summer making short, biographical movies about new missionaries with SIM. That fall, I spent a month doing it again. The following spring, I returned to Charlotte to do full-time media ministry at SIM.
As I sat in the sessions at Urbana 09, I realized that after a year of making movies for missionaries, I was still struggling to find a way to fully express my faith through my art. I had many other artistic skills to offer. But where could I use them?
The Lord used that realization to fuel the next journey in my faith. My “Arts, Faith and Inspiration,” blog series has been detailing this journey.
My art is my life. My work at SIM is an extension of living the Great Commission through my artistic skill-set. It’s often said that art is about art for art’s sake. Yet I create with a medium that has a message. As a believer, the message is the same: “repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near.” My art exists to put flesh to “the Word was with God and the Word was God.” Everything is about relating the message, “the Kingdom of Heaven is near,” through art, life, practice and expression. My art is my life. It’s often said that art is about art for art’s sake. Yet I create with a medium that has a message. As a believer, the message is the same: “repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near.” My art exists to put flesh to “the Word was with God and the Word was God.” Everything is about relating the message, “the Kingdom of Heaven is near,” through art, life, practice and expression. I desire to engage other Christian artists in living out the Great Commission through the arts.
