YVQ ANNUAL

HOPE

Annual

This is YVQ Annual, a Christian art journal for young people.

We asked youths and young adults from across Australia to create art exploring the topic of HOPE. And now we get to share the talents of young artists of faith with the world.

Contributors

Essay

Visual Art & Illustration

Creative Disciples of a Creator God,

by Craig Brown,

p 4.

Hope,

by Claire van Tonder,

p 6.

Every Child is an Artist,

by Penny Martin,

p 14.

When I Look at the Stars,

by Mitchell Salmon,

Take Heart,

by Caleb Mynard,

p 11.

Photography Spring of Living Water (John 4:13-14),

by Malorie Raymakers,

p 12.

p 22.

Poetry God Hears,

by Shona Young,

p 8.

A Tale of Two Cities,

by Micheal Blumel,

p 10.

WHITE/BROWN/SINNER/CROWN,

by Josh Fielding,

p 17.

My Hope,

by Brendan Raymond,

p 18.

Hope,

by Sarah Backholer,

p 20.

Cover illustration by Elise Andrews.

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Youth Vision Vic/Tas is the youth & young adult ministry arm of Churches of Christ in Victoria and Tasmania (CCVT).

The Youth Vision team consists of Kat Deith, Scott Mageean, and Mitchell Salmon.

A | 1st Floor 582 Heidelberg Rd, Fairfield VIC 3078 P | 03 9488 8800 W | churchesofchrist.org.au/ youthvision E | yv@churchesofchrist.org.au

YVQ | Issue 14 | December 2016

From the Editor Religion begets art. There’s something about the quest to peel back the firmament of the physical and reach out towards the divine that manifests itself in creative pursuits. King David composed psalms, Jesus told stories, Paul wrote essays, hundreds of believers have painted, sculpted, and built magnificent buildings that are magnificent for the simple purpose of being so; all as an expression of their understanding of God. It’s not just Christians, either.

Other world faiths create songs, and poetry, and buildings in the search for the divine. Muslim artists, who tend to avoid the depiction of people in religious art so that they do not become icons of worship, have created stunning beauty out of tessellated shapes.

YVQ Annual has been an experiment with the format of YVQ to capture that relationship between faith and art, and to share the fruit of young artists’ expressions of faith through creative mediums. Earlier this year we invited young artists to submit their creative works to be published in this special edition of YVQ. What you hold in your hands reflects just a small part of the creative consciousness of young people in Australia as they engage with their world, their faith, and their art.

In this first attempt to create a Christian art journal for young people we received a small number of submissions, but all of them were of very high quality. Due to the numbers of submissions received we made the choice to remove the planned format of a journal curated by judges, and instead share all received submissions and invite some of our judges to share some of their own thoughts on creativity, faith, and art. I would like to thank Bec Matheson, Craig Brown, Joel McKerrow, Penny Martin, and Samuel Hardidge for volunteering to be a part of this experiment as judges.

I am very thankful to those who made a submission to YVQ Annual for the prayerful artistry they poured into their poems, visual art, and essays. It can be daunting to share your art—it can feel as though you are spilling your insides onto the ground and inviting people to walk through them—and it takes a lot of courage to share about something as intimate as faith. But I am encouraged by the strength with which you have approached YVQ Annual, and thank you for sharing not only what you can do with words, or with a camera, or with a computer, but a piece of how you see the world. It is my prayer that you will continue to explore art and faith, and that your exploration will prompt others in their journey, and others through them.

For those of us in churches, or doing ministry in all the diverse places in our society and on the fringes, my encouragement is that we will be on the lookout for the young people who chip away at the barriers between the seen and the unseen—in ways as diverse as people themselves—and raise them up with love and support.

Art is a dialogue. As such, if something in this edition of YVQ prompts a response in you, please don’t hesitate to write down your thoughts and email them to editor@churchesofchrist.org.au. If appropriate, responses shared this way may be considered for publication in future editions of YVQ. The theme of YVQ Annual is HOPE. What follows is young people like youth and leaders in your churches responding to that idea.

—Mitchell Salmon

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Creative Disciples Of A Creator God Writer Craig Brown In The Beginning…

Beginnings are important. God’s first act in the Bible was creation. It was an act of amazing breadth. It stamped this earth with a creative mark that is a literal part of us.

Too many times we have got into ridiculous arguments about how God created, and how long it took him to do it.

What is missed in these debates, postulations, and arguments is what the act of creating us, the Earth, and the universe reveals about God. We, and this whole world, are identified by God’s fingerprints.

God is creative. Out of nothing, he caused something to come into being that still causes us to gasp, and still reveals so much about the character of the Creator. He sat before the blank canvas and spoke into form such things as the Amazon River, the sweeping savannas of Africa, the glaciers of New Zealand, and the snowcapped Andes. The sun that sets tonight, casting its hue of many colours across our world, is the work of a Creator God. How awesome is the scope of God’s creation? How infinite his imagination? How much of his character is expressed in his creation? We tend to gloss over these questions, or trot them out in a banal way as the aforementioned sunset dips before us and we decide that it requires some commentary.

It follows then that if we all bear the image of God in us (Genesis 1:27) then there is a streak of creativity within us too. I’m not sure what you think of when you hear the word ‘creative’ or what you think your ‘creative streak’ might be. Do you think of the adjective? The descriptor that we use as part compliment, part excuse: ‘Oh, Oscar is so creative.’ Or do you think of the noun, the form of a word that has become a partial insult: ‘Oscar is one of the creatives.’ Or have the boundaries of the word ‘creative’ been limited to the actions of the actor, the musician, the painter and, of course, that most glorious of artistes, the writer?

For such a word, for a word that has so much depth to it, I think we in the Christian world have limited it too much.

We have pulled out the whip and tried to tame the lion in the circus. We have curtailed its application. Think of the ‘creatives’ in your church, and what do you most often think of? Musicians and singers? Usually. That’s what we have often done in the church system. Occasionally, we may find a young adult who has the capacity to act, or even write, but the opportunities are too limited for their talents. After all, we sing or play music every week—we don’t have time for a drama each week.

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Let me suggest that there are many, many creative gifts in the church setting. Think of the sermon, for example, which is a written act of creation then presented as an oral example of creativity. The use of words, of silence, the creation of tension and the emphasis on a certain point—that can be an act of creativity that still teaches and inspires. In fact, the best creativity does teach and inspire. But we are still limited if we think of sermons and musical acts of worship. What of the poet? The painter? The sculptor? Creativity goes well beyond the more traditional forms of church practice.

Creativity Is Not Limited To Traditional Acts Of Creativity

Before we get sidelined into a conversation about the role of the painter, the poet, and the dancer in our Sunday services, it is good to remember that creativity is not restricted to expressions of artistic endeavour. One of the most creative people I know couldn’t write you a sonnet or compose an operetta. What he does do, extraordinarily well, is think creatively. There is no problem that stymies his ability to think about a creative solution—or, at least, a creative response—to a problem, no matter how that problem may overshadow the running of life, or business, or governance. For me, that is a creative streak that stems from the Creator God, the same DNA as the creative streak that ran through a Fitzgerald, a Hemingway, and a Rembrandt. We need people like that in the church today because as we look around us, we are faced with problems that threaten the current way the bulk of the Australian Church expresses the Gospel. We need creative responses to these problems. Creativity breaks us free from the confines of institutional practices.

In his book Quicksand, Henning Mankel writes, “We would hardly have been equipped with the enormous creative capacity that comes from fantasy and imagination had it not been for the need to survive, to protect our children, and to find new ways of obtaining food when normal conditions become chaotic as a result of drought, floods, earthquakes, or volcanic eruptions.” For Mankel, creativity is a necessity for survival, and a key weapon in our battle against the crises that face us. In fact, he links creativity to “developing more and more appropriately practical abilities.” It’s not often that we hear of creativity and practicality linked together—but it is a crucial link that helps us to understand God’s gift to us of creativity. Too often creativity is exclusively linked with the ‘arts’, rather than life in general, and especially when “normal conditions become chaotic.” If one’s community is flooded, one has to get creative about living. Crises demand a creative response.

Yet, there is hope. There is hope because the Church has a creative streak that can think of new ways of being, and can be inspired to follow God’s creative call in new directions. Yet those who have been in the Church for decades need to embrace this creativity, and to give room to other generations—not always youth and young adults—who may have an understanding of what creativity can do for the Church’s sense of mission. Again, Mankel is helpful.

He talks of the creativity used to make a small ivory sculpture of a lion man some 40,000 years ago: “This man or woman who created the lion man must have lived together with other people who were able to ensure that he or she was supplied with sufficient food.

The artist was looked after. And this leads to two more conclusions. There was some form of social organisation able to provide for someone who didn’t go hunting or collecting plants. And this suggests that the sculptor must have had special significance for the group as a whole. Did this take the form of some kind of religious worship? Or were the people surrounding the artist impressed by what he or she was able to produce? Was the artist regarded as a kind of magician?”

The important point to make from this quote is that the creative person—the creative spark of this primitive community—was given space to work and their work was valued even before it was finished. This has some significance for the Church today. One of the responses to a sense of crisis in a Church setting is to do the things we have always done, but better. We often expend a lot of energy on this, for little result by and large. An argument can be made—and I would make it—that we don’t need to do the old ways better (classic institutional thinking) but we need to think of creative ways of introducing Gospel values in new ways. We need to give space to people in our faith communities to think, experiment, fail, recast, experiment again, and succeed.

As the community whose artist produced the lion man

YVQ | Issue 14 | December 2016

No one who has had any experience with the institutional Church can say that we are not faced with a general crisis; and a crisis highlights that the way we do things cannot simply continue. We need creative responses to the crisis of falling numbers of people engaged with Church, aging demographics, disengaged younger people, and the bulk of our finite resources focused on the running of the institutional Church as opposed to engagement with the community around us. That is not to say that there aren’t exceptions to that description, but the Church in Australia in general is facing a crisis. To simply hope to ‘hold steady’ and maintain at this point will not lead us into a new place of mission and growth.

gave them the space and support to produce a creative piece of work of communal significance, so too do we.

How much space do we give our ministers, leaders, and congregational members to think creatively, rather than expending all their energy and creativity on keeping the cogs of the institutional Church turning? Do we value the process and fruit of creativity, or do we prefer the simple outworking of what we have always done because it is easier to measure? Safer?

We know this to be true. Think of a church meeting you have attended recently. When the meeting sticks to tight, institutional agendas, people can walk away drained.

When the meeting, however, gives space to creative thinking and to what Edward de Bono would call “blue sky thinking”, have you ever observed a change? People become energised. They stay longer, talk more, and get invested in the mission of the church. It’s not to say that we ignore the mechanics of the church that need to be attended to—but we do need to give space to creative and communal thinking that tackles the big issues we face in the twenty-first century. We need to help introduce creativity into the life of the church by nurturing it in the lives of the people that make up the church.

Part of that is to get people to think creatively about what they do and watch, rather than to act as consumers. I could write a million words on this. Yet, let me contain myself to a paragraph. We live in a new golden age of television. There are many reasons for this—the emergence of successful cable networks in the US who have decided not just to produce more TV, but to creatively break the boundaries of TV is one reason, for example. Some of those boundaries can offend disciples of Jesus—language, sex, and nudity are key triggers here. What do we do with this golden age though?

Surely we can use it missionally? Surely we can take the big, big stories of shows like The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, and Stranger Things, and creatively work out how the creative sparks that lie behind their existence can be redeemed? These shows strike a chord in the lives of millions. They appeal to broad demographics in our churches. It’s time for creative rather than reactive responses in our approach to popular, dangerous TV shows.

This world that we live in, created so magnificently by God, and redeemed so sacrificially by Jesus, is a world of opportunity if we listen and obey the Spirit who uses us creatively to spread the message and character of Jesus.

Yes, crises may be on our doorstep, but with creative thinking we can begin to view the world as a place of opportunity for God’s people. ●

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Hope Writer Claire van Tonder

noun - ‘a feeling of expectation and desire for a particular thing to happen.’

- ‘a person or thing that may help or save someone.’

- ‘grounds for believing that something good may happen. archaic - ‘a feeling of trust.’ verb - ‘want something to happen or be the case.’

- ‘intend, if possible to do something.’

“I Have a Dream” is a famous speech by Martin Luther King Jnr (MLK) spoken August 28 1963. The speech captivated and grabbed the attention of many of its hearers. MLK earned a Nobel Peace Prize for the impact his life and views had in the community in which he lived. Did that make him popular? No, he was resented by many people because he went against what society believed to be the social norm. He fought for justice, for love, and for unity. It’s funny how in looking at our lives we can often see similarities that happen every day. What was it that drove his passion, leadership, and fight? The answer to that is hope. Hope for a better future. Hope for a free land. Our battles and our fights may not be the same, however they can at times be just as big, just as bold, and just as important as those of MLK.

I was 18 years old and having these words spoken over me. How do I handle that? Why would a loving God allow that to happen to me? What is Romans 8:28 talking about? “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” (NIV)

Hope And Healing The Sick

Rohan Dredge, Pastor at Discovery Church, sums it up well when he states, “You can’t lean not on your own understanding until you don’t have a choice.” After a while of bad attitudes, wrong mindsets, and basically being a grumpy teenager, I eventually lost hope. I lost hope of ever being healed, hope in doctors, hope of walking without pain and hope of being free to run.

This has been by far one of the biggest challenges in my faith journey. Two years ago, I filled in for a basketball team. That day, two years ago, changed my life.

There was one minute left on the clock and my team was one point down—safe to say the pressure was on.

I was dribbling the ball down the court when an opposition player fell onto the back of my legs and then twisted around in front of me.

That moment, that life changing, earth shattering, bone breaking moment was one of the greatest heartbreaks I have ever had to endure. As I lay there on the cold court, with people all around me, I was unable to move, or to even see straight. It was not only painful but it was overwhelming. I was taken to the hospital where I was later diagnosed with ‘the worst possible knee injury’. Two years on, five surgeries later, eighteen scars to see, and missing pins to find, the journey continues.

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“You can never play basketball again,” “you won’t be able to chase after your kids as you get older,” and “you will never run again” were the type of things that the surgeons had to say. This broke my soul.

Let’s just say that for a few years, this was the one verse I would have loved to remove from my Bible, out of sight and out of mind. For years and years, I hoped, I dreamed and I fought for healing. Every day I would pray that God would save me from this struggle, from my pain and from my heartbreak. The answer to this prayer was unfortunately not what I had hoped for. I was given no choice but to live with it and through it.

After a few months of this it dawned on me; Where or who was my hope in? My hope or lack thereof was being put in material things, in the pain, the suffering, and the here and now. Bill Johnson, Pastor and author, once said, “Jesus did not react to the darkness, rather he responded to the Father.” What a game changing word of truth. I had my eyes focused on what is seen, instead of what is unseen. What was unseen, what God had in store for me, was that I now get the privilege of being a school chaplain and sharing God’s hope to those kids that have none; maybe who are even in a similar place that I was!

I’m now studying at Bible college, leading teenagers in a youth group, working with some of the most vulnerable young people in my community, and I am walking free from pain most days. Turns out Romans 8:28 is true after all, God does indeed work all things for good according to his plans and purposes. The question I would like to ask you is, where or who is your hope in?

Jesus said to Peter, “Come, follow me.” (Matthew 4:19) So, Peter did, he followed Jesus’ commandment and walked. Peter never sank until he took his eyes off Jesus.

His hope was in Jesus; the way, the truth and the life.

Jesus, the Alpha and the Omega. Jesus, the Bread of Life.

Just as Peter did, when we lift our eyes, put our hope in Jesus, and follow the call of God, we too can walk on water. We too can part the Red Sea, heal the sick, and feed the five thousand. But even more than that we can dream and hope again.

Yep I know, sounds tricky, hey? Well the good news is that the dreams and visions in our heart are from God. He has instilled them in our life for a reason and for a season. They are dreams for a reason, meaning we cannot achieve them by ourselves. Philippians 4:13 states, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

We are not alone, we never were alone, we will never be alone. That is a hope we can always hold on to.

I dream for my family, friends, neighbors, and co-workers to see the light of Jesus Christ.

Recently, I had somebody tell me that in my ministry, it wasn’t my season. No reason, no warning, no God revelation, nothing. Just straight out, not based on anything tangible, but merely how they were feeling and thinking. Ouch. This broke me mentally, physically, and emotionally; I was smashed. Day after day I couldn’t get out of bed, couldn’t see friends, and had trouble thinking through what felt like a heavy fog. The feelings of guilt, shame, embarrassment, and lost integrity keep flooding over me regarding every aspect of church involvement and life.

Slowly, and with God’s help, I began to realise I needed to start moving from a place of pain to praise. It certainly didn’t happen overnight, but it did begin to shift.

In fact sometimes it can take weeks, months, and even years depending on the person and the degree of hurt.

The good news is: God is patiently waiting for us.

It has been a long process of healing that needed to happen, and is still happening. After a few weeks, a realisation came. Nobody but God can define whether it’s your season or not. It’s not our human right, rather it’s the Holy Spirit of God’s job to provide insight and wisdom into these situations.

YVQ | Issue 14 | December 2016

Romans 8:31 says, “If God is for us, who can ever be against us?” The question I pose to you is, what would it look like if we lived in a world where we focused on what we do have, and not on what we don’t have? A world where our blessings are counted and our hardships are prayed about, instead of a world where blessings are taken for granted and our troubles complained about. A world where seeking the Kingdom first was the priority over worldly standards, influences, and pressures. A world where communicating with our Creator was our first daily priority rather than our Facebook friends. A world where everyone can follow that dream they had forgotten about all those years ago.

Today I can safely say I have a dream, a hope for the future.

I dream for young people to activate what God has placed into their heart and who will fight for the name of Jesus and for each other.

I dream for a place where everyone feels safe and accepted.

I dream for a world of leaders who are motivated and equipped to spread the word of God in every environment God has place them in.

My challenge to you is, will you dare to dream again?

Are you ready to fight for what God has placed in your heart? Who will come with you on that journey? Isaiah 60:1-2 states, “Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord rises upon you. See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples, but the Lord rises upon you and his glory appears over you.”

Hoping is great, in fact it is world changing. It’s time to act, time to see, but most importantly time to do. Jesus never called us to be busy, rather he called us to be fruitful. Tomorrow’s stories come from today’s choices. For such a time as this, you have been placed here, so start running your own race, taking one step at a time, fighting the good fight, and God will do the rest. ●

To those who have had a dream crushed and negative words spoken over your heart, remember that God is the giver and taker of life. He gives us our dreams and he is the only one that can tell us when our season is over.

Brian Charles Houston once said, “Don’t let the absence of an immediate breakthrough change your revelation of who God is.” What a foundational truth to live by!

The path to the destination doesn’t always look the way we planned, but chances are it’s exactly the way God planned all along.

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God Hears Shona Young

Listen.

Our God—he hears; The sound of every movement, The very foundation of the planet, shifting and creaking.

Our God—he hears.

The rotation of the planets, merging and expanding in the galactic—minute by minute.

Our God—he hears.

The roaring thunder of our molecules, dividing and creating; The formulating waves as they toss and turn; Each glacier shifting and paving deeper crevices in the earth, Our God—he hears it all.

The silent hum of our prayers that rise like incense through the air...

Our God—he hears but are you aware?

There’s an infinite murmur of semi-formulated words that form seamless dialogue, and syllables that are taught in a syllabus but barely leave the tip of the tongue but our God—he hears.

Even as I sit here—echoing, rhyming and vocalising he hears the minute thoughts in the language of my heart.

The muscles of my mouth may be moving but the mother language of my tongue, only you oh Lord, can hear.

You hear the cries for justice from a saviour, healing and deliverance—from a redeemer.

You heard David as he faced Saul’s wrath, You heard Abraham’s silent cry as he looked in the eyes of his beloved son— You fulfilled every prophecy; You heard the groanings of the Israelites, in the desert and the sea, in prosperity and in peace—you heard and replied.

The very mention of the Psalms should recall a sum of recollections and prayers.

Indeed you were faithful throughout Israel’s journey from kingship to Lordship, heir to heir. Through king David’s highs and lows, peaks or despair, our God, you heard all his prayers. And as it says in Psalm 130, out of the depths we cry but every time, still you reply— Your ears are attentive to our every plea for hope and mercy.

I’m amazed at how you appear, so far and silent but in reality, you are constant, steadfast and prevalent in every situation—each day and night, In the small acts of providence to the largest displays of kindness; You hear impossible prayers to the ‘hey that’s possible’ sort-of prayers.

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YVQ | Issue 14 | December 2016

Indeed you are never distant and you hear our cries in an instant!

Our God—he hears; You’re near to the heart cries of the needy and you hear the utterances of the broken and lowly. Sinners of old and new, those present, many and few— who come and confess, that you Lord knew— All along, the very motivations of our deeds and the secret whispers prayed on our knees. You knew but nothing new here—let’s move along.

If you were to put pen to paper for each passing thought, the pen would not sustain, it’s a no brainer.

But imagine the book of life, It would be an immaculate record of each word joining and piecing together as we lift our hands in prayer, do not worry, these words are not in despair.

No syllable goes unheard, No breath goes unnoticed, No beat is unaccompanied, and no voice, silenced— In his time and in his house— every thought and informal prayer, every conversation directed to the Father, is remembered by our faithful king, it is there!

So thank you Lord for each word you speak!

Your spoken word will come to bear fruit.

So here’s my next spoken word, starting with Father and Abba— You are alpha and omega, He who calls each star by name, in your presence, I will forever proclaim, my words, hopes, dreams and despairs, are all in vain, if you do not call me and remember my name.

Our Lord Our God He hears your prayers.

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A Tale of Two Cities Micheal Blumel

From up above the buildings it all seems so serene, The neon lights and city sights illuminate the air.

But down below there is a world that often goes ignored, The city streets buzz endlessly long into the night.

Without a place to rest their heads they seek to find a home, Without a care for what comes next they sometimes spiral down.

The vacant stares that meet them as they go about their day, Often make them feel as though they’re better off this way.

But in the dead of winter I see a hope that never ends, It shines on through the darkest laneway and up around the bend.

Although my friends may never find a house to call their own, Their Father will wait patiently for them to come back home.

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Take Heart Caleb Mynard

Spring of Living Water (John 4:13-14) Malorie Raymakers

Every Child Is An Artist Writer Penny Martin

Some people may be artists—exceptionally gifted in the skill of creating something breathtaking—and whilst artistic ability is something that a few people possess, creativity and imagination are basic human characteristics. I have never met anyone who is not creative. The tricky thing with creativity is that it is “something we act out of but rarely focus on,” 1 somewhat like breathing, and we can often stifle or genuinely forget the creative gift that has been woven into us at birth.

As the inimitable Pablo Picasso once said, “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he [she] grows up.”

I recall one morning, on a day like any other day, when I was sitting watching my little boy play on the floor. I had recently entered into a time of intentional spiritual discipline—recognising in myself a sense of spiritual ‘dryness’ and one of the mind practices that I was focusing on was ‘intentional noticing’—as follows: Practice intentional noticing: between 7.00am & 9.00am abstain from smart phone / laptop (email, social networking etc.) while my son and I play together. At 9.30am (when he goes to sleep) keep a journal of the things I noticed that I am grateful for from the morning’s playtime. Pray a prayer of gratitude for eyes to see, ears to hear and blessings to celebrate.

On this particular day I glanced up as the morning sun began to peep through the trees outside and spill into the playroom and this is what I noticed: Completely captured for a moment I watched a small boy try to catch sunlight in his hands today Flashes of gold flecked his upturned face As the wind moved leaves and scattered a bright miracle into the room And suddenly I knew Perhaps truly for the first time Why Jesus said the Kingdom belongs to such as these Little eyes looking and looking for the glint of a new discovery

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Little hands feeling, holding, testing, touching all within their grasp Little ears listening, listening for tiny sounds Little heart open, so ready for the glorious invitation to the adventure of life (P Martin, 2015) My reason for retelling this small and somewhat insignificant occurrence is simply that it taught me, or perhaps reminded me, about the intersection of creativity and faith and the profound implications for those of us who are attempting to pursue the way of a creative God. Space To Breathe

One of the things that I have consistently noticed in my own life is that I have to make space for creativity and allow it to breath. Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters, compared to what lies within us,” and yet so often I find myself dragging around bits of baggage from my past or busily worrying about a future that has not even happened yet.

So many aspects of current dominant culture actually conspire against deep creativity because we are often too driven. We desire instant gratification, easy answers, and quick fixes. We look desperately for beauty but are not always prepared to commit the time and energy to create (or restore) beauty. We are hurried and worried a lot of the time, and one can neither create nor appreciate in a hurry.

The simple fact is that I am at my most creative when I have time and space. When my heart is not bogged down in anxiety and my mind is not cluttered by industry I can

1 Ken Wystma, “Generous Creativity: Exploring the Role of Imagination in the Pursuit of Justice.” Keynote address at the Justice Conference Melbourne, October 22, 2016.

Allowing time and space for creativity to breathe actually reconnects us to our deepest story. When God chose to make the heavens and the Earth it wasn’t just mechanics and matter, it was a creative process that to this day defies explanation.

There was imagination and freedom and humour and pathos and colour and energy and detail and care and patience—it was art, poetry, drama, and so much more; such grand design. This is the kind of God we are created in the image of (Genesis 1:27), who we express faith in, and who we strive to emulate in our living and being. The most basic characteristic of God is that he is creative and so too are we.

Seeing A Different World

As we intentionally create time and space to allow creativity to breathe, we inevitably notice the world in a new way. It is almost as if we learn to see with new eyes.

I have been privileged to travel to and marvel at some of the world’s most illustrious collections of art.

I have wondered at the astonishing task of creating the frescos on the dome of the Cathedral Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence. I have been left breathless at the mosaics on the floor of The Hermitage in St Petersburg. I have been moved to tears at Michelangelo’s impossibly beautiful sculpture of The Pieta in St Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City. In

each case I was struck at how one must see differently to create art.

we inhabit is bursting with creative, invitational, spacious potential.

I recall hearing Jackie Pullinger, the great charismatic missionary, talk about her first impressions arriving in Hong Kong in 1966 to be a missionary in the notorious drug centre Kowloon Walled City, and how she could see a different city. “I loved this dark place. I hated what was happening in it but I wanted to be nowhere else. It was almost as if I could already see another city in its place and that city was ablaze with light. It was my dream. There was no more crying, no more death or pain.” 2

Our Big, Gorgeous, Creative Story

Michelangelo once said, “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” I have often wondered what kind of character and passion it takes to be able to see in such a way, to imagine toward transformation, but the truth is we are all designed to see like that, to feel like that, to press towards imaginative, transcendent, transformative, generative places. It is in fact an integral characteristic of a person of faith. In Hebrews we find a unique account of the nature of faith: “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” (Hebrews 11:1, NIV) The writer of Hebrews goes on to list the heroic founders of our great story of faith, all of whom are included because they demonstrated the ability to see beyond the world that appeared to their eyes, to see the Kingdom of our God rather than simply the kingdoms of the world.

The challenge for us today is that we get busy and so our eyes get so focused on what we can manage and maintain that we forget what it means to imagine and daydream, to experiment and dramatise and let things get messy. What is even worse is that we forget that the huge, gorgeous story of faith that

One of my favourite quotes right now is by Dorothy Sayers. Every time I read it my hair almost stands on end. She writes, “Somehow or other, and with the best intentions, we have shown the world the typical Christian in the likeness of a crushing and rather ill-natured bore— and this in the name of the One who assuredly never bored a soul in those thirty three years during which he passed through this world like a flame. Let us, in heaven’s name, drag out the Divine Drama from under the dreadful accumulation of slipshod thinking and trashy sentiment heaped upon it, and set it on an open stage to startle the world into some sort of vigorous reaction.” 3 I want to sing or come forward for salvation when I read those beautifully crafted and passionate words that are literally bursting with challenge.

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feel my creative impulses firing. I am gentler and more patient. I write poetry. I start to draw again, and I listen much more deeply. However, creating such space takes intentionality and discipline—something I am struggling with even as I jot down these thoughts. My various devices are notifying me about a bunch of stuff that is all designed to snatch my attention and distract me from my writing.

The thing about creativity is that when we make time and space to let it breathe, and as a result we begin to see the world in a different way, we inevitably run into a huge, openarmed invitation from God to live into our big story. We, the faithfully creative, are invited to not only write and speak and paint and dance and plant and build new and inspiring things to be a sign to the world of our Creative and loving God, but we are also invited to look around at the tired, superficial, disposable, and wasteful nature of our consumer culture and to actively subvert such a society in the name of our God. To fix the broken (not just buy something new), to recycle the old and used (to benefit others and to create space for more freedom and inventiveness), to look for inner beauty and the characteristics of the Spirit

Jackie Pullinger (1989) Crack In the Wall: Life and Death in Kowloon Walled City, London: Hodder & Stoughton 16.

Dorothy Sayers (2004) Letters to A Diminished Church. Passionate Arguments for the Relevance of Christian Doctrine, Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson. | 15 2 3

We are challenged to work on our inner beauty, to cultivate patience, humility, unconditional love, grace, sacrifice, expansive hospitality and peace. (not just external appeal in those around us), to sow seeds in our gardens (not just to bring colour and provision but to teach us a new appreciation for the gifts of the earth, the complexity of soil, and the plight of many farmers who work so hard in our world to provide food to the hungry).

Creating, as well as restoring, beauty is at the very heart of God for the hope of the world: I will make rivers flow on barren heights, and springs within the valleys.

I will turn the desert into pools of water, and the parched ground into springs.

I will put in the desert the cedar and the acacia, the myrtle and the olive.

I will set junipers in the wasteland, the fir and the cypress together, so that people may see and know, may consider and understand, that the hand of the Lord has done this, that the Holy One of Israel has created it.

(Isaiah 41:18-20) As we take up the invitation and as we participate, we not only contribute to the work of creative salvation in our world, but we also gently learn the humbling lessons of simplicity, contentedness, generosity, responsibility, and the reward for hard work. We are challenged to work on our inner beauty, to cultivate patience, humility, unconditional love, grace, sacrifice, expansive hospitality and peace. Each of these lessons is vital for our personal, ongoing spiritual formation, but they are also a beautiful legacy for our children who are, every day, growing up in a disposable, self-centred, and impatient world.

A trembling breath and the hush of heaven A newborn babe is gifted to the world The promise of light and the hope of peace The sign that creative love must always and ever be LIVED and BREATHED (P Martin, 2016) â—?

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Dirt You walk in it Your feet fall Yet somehow Remain clean

But To You Imperfection Is perfection Where they see cracks You see gold Where they see pieces You see a whole

The salt And the light In the dirt And the mud

We Miss The Point

The world Brown as dirt You White as snow Me I don’t know

You Shout Past The Noise

Filth You stand in it You wade through it

God Comes down To roll in the mud You don’t have to wash your hands To remain pure You didn’t have to be a man Yet there you were In the midst Of our suffering You talked to kids To whores To kings Judgement Is foreign Condemnation Unknown sensation Ugly on the outside Beautiful within You see the angel You dismiss the sin I can never be intact We both know that

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WHITE/BROWN/SINNER/CROWN Josh Fielding

It’s not about perfection It’s not about being clean You will always find redemption It’s okay to be in-between God Does Not Judge His Language Is Love How are we so blind?

Time after time after time Why are we unkind?

To those just like us Before we pretended At fine You walk through the dirt The pain and the hurt You see worth Upon this dry earth From your Son’s birth To the end of time You give us a voice You make our words rhyme

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My Hope Brendan Raymond

I sit under this tree; rough, yet light and grand;

And am reminded that our sins are rougher;

his yoke, lighter; and his love, grander.

Therefore, my hope is in Him. I sit near a great wall, offering its protection;

and a pipe streaming water, seeming to provide;

But I remember that the Lord will protect me

and sustain me more than I ever could.

Therefore, my hope is in Him. I deviate from the main path,

and wonder for a moment if I will be lost.

But I am reminded that the Lord always finds me,

and I am never lost;

Therefore, my hope is in Him. I stand here next to the murky water,

coughing, feeling full of phlegm;

But I am reminded that I am healed,

and cleansed by your power;

Therefore, my hope is in you.

I sit and see beautiful lizards,

hear melodious birds,

and am captured by the lake’s reflection;

But I remember that your glory is greater

than all of these could ever be.

Therefore, my hope is in you.

I sit here so close to the beginning,

yet I know it will also be the end—

And I am reminded that just as you have

the power to give life, so you can take it away.

Therefore, my hope is in you.

I sit on a great tree,

that has now fallen to the ground;

And am reminded that no person is too great

to escape your judgement.

Therefore, my hope is in you.

I sit on the bank of a creek, looking across at the other bank;

And I am reminded of the separation between light and darkness,

between you and what we were.

Therefore, my hope is in you.

I sit on a high rock, overlooking the water;

And I know that, even if I fell,

your power could rescue me.

Therefore, my hope is in you.

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I start to hurry, noting the time,

but I almost miss the beautiful colours of spring;

And I am reminded that my attention

and devotion to you must be pure and undivided;

Therefore, my hope is in you.

I come to a bridge, and I sit down, the wood supporting me.

But I know that it is only your strength which I can rely on;

Therefore, my hope is in you.

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I arrive at a house, but I cannot linger here;

I remember that you are my home, and not any building or land.

Therefore, my hope is in you.

I sit near a swathe of vines,

choking and surrounding trees and fences;

And I am reminded that the world may imprison us for what we do,

but you give us grace and peace.

Therefore, my hope is in you.

I stand near a road,

and the noise brings to mind thoughts of home;

But I know that I must first build your house in my life,

on solid foundations.

Therefore, my hope is in you.

I rush forward, thinking I have much left to go;

but I suddenly reach the end, and I stop—

For it is the beginning, but then, it is not.

The old has gone, the new has come.

Therefore, my hope is in you.

The end has come, and I am saddened;

for I know the path ahead will be hard.

But you remind me that your Spirit

and your words will never leave me.

Therefore, my hope is in you.

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Hope Sarah Backholer

Hope...

Does it taste like a bitter herb?

Or howl like a raging storm?

I feel perspective slide away.

Do I hold to hope, Or does hope hold to me?

‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’

Pain is half of love; Is despair half of hope?

Why would despair cry out, Unless it hoped to be heard?

Sometimes hope feels hopeful, But sometimes I can’t find it.

What is hope?

Am I willing to lose out in order to find it; To travail the horizon of despair to see hope rise?

Weeping may endure for a night, But joy comes in the morning.

What does hope say of that morning?

‘Oh morning, dear, Hurry up.

This night is cold And life is rough.’

‘Ah yes, I come’ Speaks the sun, With whom the morning comes.

Even at night, the light of the sun is felt via the moon; So hope is reflected and lights the night, if only by a sliver.

And if there is no moon, And if the stars are clouded over, Is the ground yet beneath my feet?

I know not which way is up, Nor how long ’til the first light of dawn.

What is hope?

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Hope calls us on, a clarion call, But to what, and why?

For what do we hope?

And why do we hope it?

And how does it feel?

And what does it mean?

I skirt around, I spin, I know not what it is.

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Is hope the dancing breeze that shakes the leaves?

Can she be captured in a jar and taken as possession?

Hope is free and blows where she will.

Can I feel her in the darkness?

Where is hope?

Hope.

Is hope a rope?

Is hope a rope that appears in a pit, An apparent means of escape?

Clambering up only to fail...

We find that it pulls things in, instead?

But where is hope?

From where does it come?

I don’t know how it feels.

Dawn begins.

Hope is the one who comes to my door With soup on a rainy day.

Hope is the one who continues to hug me When I cry falsely, ‘go away!’

Hope is the hand that takes hold of mine, When I think I’m alone in the night.

Hope is a look, and a word, and a touch That says, ‘Don’t be afraid; it’s alright’.

Hope is a spark, and a grin, and a look, Hope is the truth and the life; Hope is a dress dancing in the wind hopelessly given to life.

Hope is a butterfly, thrown off her load, The tangle and mess of cocoon, she explodes; Hope, oh, she spins and she dances and sings, In the light of the sun from the moon, with her wings…

And she calls, And she calls, And she calls us on, but we can’t make it alone; Hope.

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When I Look At The Stars Writer Mitchell Salmon I’m about to embarrass myself by talking about music.

The first concert I ever went to as an adult was a Switchfoot gig played in the carpark of Eastland shopping centre in 2011. Myself and a number of youth and young adults skipped out on the evening program of our youth group Easter Camp to drive back to Ringwood to attend. It was not a brilliant concert; outdoors and vulnerable to the looming threat of rain that forced the crew to set up tucked at the back of the centre. But they played the good songs, and front man Jon Foreman chatted briefly about how music is his way of talking about God, before his intro to their song Stars was ruined by the overcast Melbourne night.

There’s a question that has dogged Switchfoot since… forever: are they a Christian band? I remember vague discussions with occasional Christians who disliked Switchfoot for ‘hiding’ their Christianity and Christian roots—placing their lamps under a bowl, to wax Biblical.

At the same time, I have been aware of some people (Christian and non-Christian) who disliked Switchfoot because they didn’t quite hit the mark of their medium, that saw their music being compromised by a certain ‘softness’ that probably came from their Christian roots.

In short, Switchfoot sometimes got stuck in the middle ground between being Christian artists and secular artists, satisfying no one and annoying everyone.

This is a tension a lot of artists of faith live in; a distinction between being a Christian artist and an artist who is Christian1. Does an artist’s faith define their work by that same faith, or are the artist’s self and their work separate enough that the work can be ‘secular’ even while the artist isn’t? Is all art produced by a Christian ‘Christian art’?

Personally, I buck against the idea of being a ‘Christian artist’ and producing ‘Christian art’. To be clear, I have a large body of work that is explicitly Christian—a large amount of my writing, perhaps even the largest part, has been in the service of creating explicitly Christian resources for things like Youth Vision’s Illuminate Camp, my local church community’s annual children’s production, and other children and families ministries. I’ve written scripts for puppets, for people, and even—for a brief period in late high school—for Halo machinima (video game animation) videos including parable adaptations and a version of Max Lucado’s With You All The Way. This body of writing is my ‘Christian art’; there’s no doubt about it. In that sense I am a Christian artist.

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But I don’t stop being a Christian. For me the fiction I write is an intentional expression of my Christian faith.

Characters actively wrestle with topics of justice, of personal responsibility against systematic oppression, of integrity, of doing good in a broken world, and seeking ongoing redemption for sins and mistakes.

If these themes sound familiar it’s because they are deeply anchored in the Biblical story. But they are also themes that resonate through a huge body of art, Christian and not, that has been created by artists for as long as there have been stories.

The reason I pull away from thinking of myself as producing Christian art is that I consider that label limiting, restrictive. I feel—unfairly, I know—that to produce ‘Christian art’ would mean meeting a salvation-message-to-page quota. And this is also a question of what topics, ideas, and concepts ‘Christian art’ is ‘allowed’ to, or expected to, engage with and to avoid2. The Christian young person knows, through years of conscious and subconscious messaging from the communities around them, which topics are ‘Christian’ and which are not— and non-Christian topics are discouraged from being engaged with, or from being engaged with outside the boundaries of acceptability as defined, often nebulously, by the faith community. Art that does break down these limitations is seen as ‘brave’ by supporters or ‘inappropriate’ by detractors as the Christian mainstream struggles to grapple with issues that artists have been exploring for decades. Yet if artists of faith, and art in the Christian world, do not engage with particular topics, ideas, and concepts, are we collectively agreeing that God has no interest in these ideas? Is God only interested in the message of salvation through Jesus Christ, or is his message broader than spiritual salvation—bleeding incarnationally into realities of economics, politics, race, sexuality, philosophy, environmentalism, exploration?

I also think of how many people in the world would be actively turned off from engaging with ‘Christian art’ if it is labelled as such. If negative experiences or negative perceptions of faith make a person wary of engaging

As I write this I am also mentally including all faith and non-faith backgrounds in this question.

Even YVQ Annual, of which I am the editor, placed some restrictions on the content that could be explicitly included in submissions.

1

2

But I also have a growing body of work that is very different from that, in which I write superhero science fiction and fantasy stories full of action, violence, magic, queer characters, and occasional swearing. They are not the kinds of stories I can see being used from the front at my church. This body of work is not Christian art. When I sit down to write for Virtue Comics, I am simply an artist.

us to get angry over injustice, to reflect on our relationships, to imagine a better world.

Art is a conversation between the artist and the audience.

It’s usually a one-sided conversation, but artist and audience come together in the pages of a book, the lyrics of a song, the strokes of a painting; meeting in the middle.

The artist, dragging much of their history, their philosophy, their ways of making sense of the world, journeys into the artwork and begins to create. And the audience, similarly burdened with history, worldview, and interpretation, joins them in that same work, listening.

Sometimes the exchange is a good one. Sometimes it is not. When histories and philosophies collide they can produce positivity or conflict.

In art, we can join in a conversation between philosophies and locate the things that unite us. To label some art as ‘Christian art’ is to rob it of its capacity to invite.

And to think of ourselves as ‘Christian artists’ rather than artists of faith not only limits our ability to connect across the perceived philosophical divide between the religious and the secular, and in doing so offer a reconstructed understanding of what Christianity is, but effectively removes Christianity from the shared creative consciousness. People will continue to make art, with or without Christians. Surely Jesus’ incarnational example is to place ourselves, with our honest message and Gospel hearts, in the places where the people are, so that when art is made it carries the DNA of the Gospel story that is invitational and exciting to everyone who hears it.

For those who have reason to dislike the Church (for legitimate reasons, or imagined reasons), to label art as being ‘Christian art’ labels the entirety of the piece as being some kind of Christian space, and a Christian space can be a hostile space, or perceived as a hostile space, for many people.

When I write, I want to create a space in which Christian stories flourish, but is welcoming and open to a non-Christian visitor. I want to sit in the pages with the religious and the atheists and talk about how we all thirst for justice, how there are times we all struggle with shame or guilt, and how we all seek a better story for our world. It’s not about hiding Christianity in the skin of a secular story, but finding the ideas that are commonalities between those people in the conversation.

The second concert I ever went to as an adult was Mumford and Sons playing at Rod Laver Arena in 2012.

Mumford and Sons garnered and continue to have a significant following among Christian youth and young adults, to the point that at times it’s possible to see the band’s influence and the influence of the folk rock genre they popularised in current Christian worship. But Mumford and Sons are not a Christian band. They have inarguable Christian roots, and draw influences from Biblical literature and Christian motifs in their lyrics, but they are not ‘Christian artists’.

But a massive part of what attracts me to the band is their exploration of themes of justice, redemption, human pain, spirituality, grace, love and intimacy, and the search for a better world. The themes in their lyrics are at times so robustly Gospel shaped that I recently used a paragraph from Dust Bowl Dance as a tongue-incheek paraphrase of James 5:1-6.

Here is a ‘secular’ band whose body of work cuts across the unfortunate divide between Christian and non-Christian music lovers and packs a stadium with its invitation to sit within songs that highlight the things we all struggle with and struggle against. These are songs that invite

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with religious art, then the artist loses the opportunity to build a bridge between themselves and the audience.

In a 2003 article in Rolling Stone, Switchfoot guitarist and vocalist Tim Foreman said, when asked about the band’s Christian identity, “We’re Christian by faith, not genre.” The Switchfoot band members use their music, their art, as an opportunity to open up conversation about life, faith, and God just as Jon Foreman did on that cold, drizzly Easter Saturday night in 2011. It was simple, it was understated, and I can’t imagine it ‘saved’ anybody that night. But artists like Switchfoot are faithfully present in their neighbourhoods, their artistic scenes, and continue to speak Gospel truth even if they don’t use Gospel language.

For many artists of faith, the act of creating is an act of worship, even if the content of the art is not explicitly Christian in message. This also applied for artists working in mediums that haven’t been explored in this article which, being written by an unabashed wordsmith, unfairly favours language-based art. I think of the dancer, performing in verbal silence on a stage. I think of the sculptor, shaping clay with calloused fingers. I think of the landscape photographer whose art is in representing the work of another.

Whenever we make art we pour ourselves into it. But what emerges from this process does not need to always look like the artist who made it. Our art contains our selves, but it is not our selves. Our art is broader, and can be made to be invitational in a way that we ourselves may find difficult or uncomfortable. And it can do more than repeat answers to a limited field of topics.

Jesus spoke into every area of life in his ancient time; the Psalmists sung of pleasure and pain in equal measure; the wisdom writers looked deep into the cracks of human experience and drew on the darkness and beauty there with honesty and courage. Christians can and should continue to produce art that speaks not just in the insular and familiar language of our faith, but in language that is for everyone. ●

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Join youth ministers, leaders, and community workers from around Australia and New Zealand at the National Youth Ministry Convention to hear from some of the best youth ministry practitioners from around Australia and the world.

Be challenged and inspired in a relaxed and refreshing environment, and connect with other passionate leaders of young people.

October 9-11 2017 | Sea World Resort, Gold Coast NYMC.org.au