Creative gatherings for Christians are often difficult to fund and organize; there’s a precarious feeling that their existence must be constantly justified. It’s no coincidence that so much Christian writing today is in a personal and confessional mode—there’s a quiet cry going up from artists in our pews to have genuine spiritual and aesthetic community.
Small magazines can fill that need, serving as “experiential labs and community hubs for rising and established writers and thought leaders,” said Sara Kyoungah White
Are we more influenced by beauty that orients us to the strange and unexpected work of God in the world—or by political slogans and self-help books?
The contributions of ‘small’ writers and literary publications are immense, but their influence can be difficult to trace,” Pastor told me. “You can’t know how an image or idea developed in a poem or short story may awaken something in a reader who, years later, will write or paint or talk or sculpt it out, perhaps for an audience of millions
what such artists need, what such a movement needs, always, is a passionate and supportive audience.”
The ceaseless work of creation, education, and tending to the depths of the human spirit will continue. But we can advance it with bold and creative institutions tasked with bridging image and word, mind and spirit, for the sake of the church
Humans will satisfy this hunger for beauty one way or another. As God’s people, we should host the feast
