Is Art a Ministry, a Hobby, or a Profession

Michael Minkoff
Like nobody does. Does that mean that the prophet should be like, oh, I guess there’s no market for my art, so I should just quit? Right? Well, in a lot of ways, that’s the attitude that a lot of churchgoers have toward artists in their midst. Seriously, hear this story all the time. If you can’t make it, then just treat it like a hobby or give it up. And when they say can’t make it, they mean can’t make it in terms of like can’t make something more marketable. And a lot of artists can’t make marketable work in an honest and genuine way, because that’s not the art that God’s given them to make. And so, it’s this actually really strange thing where you’d think it’d be ministry within the sacred space or professional art in the secular space, but it actually just ends up being Professional in both spaces and ministry gets edged out altogether. That there’s no place where ministry actually functions because if you can’t make it, then you can’t make it. I think that’s one of the major issues. And aside

Jimmy Smith
One issue that I see a lot with the ministry versus profession question is a lot of people, what they actually want to do is they want to be a professional musician, but they kind of camouflage It and disguise it as a ministry, if that makes any sense. Why would they do that? Well, I don’t know if they even realize that they’re doing it. So you could want to be a professional musician, for instance, and you could be a piano player, a guitar player, and you are a Christian. And so you would prefer to play Christian music, you know, or you would prefer to play music, you know, hymns or whatever, you know, music in church and things that glorify God. Like that’s just, but your end goal really is to be a professional musician, if that makes any sense. Like that is a completely different statement than to say, I am called into ministry. Like I am called to be a minister. And when you start, when you start conflating those things, those two things together, I think it can actually be quite dangerous. And what a lot of people do, especially in Christian music right now, is they want, they say that they want to be like, they present everything as if it is this ministry. But really what they’re just doing is they’re just pursuing a career and it’s just convenient for them to be playing Christian music for whatever reason that may be.
Michael Minkoff
Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. And I can think of some reasons why it might be that way. And that is that I think it is easier actually in terms of the standards. The standards are much lower. The standards are much lower within the church because of the fact that it’s this mixed ministry situation where if you go up and you sing a special song from God really, really, really Badly in a worship service, but everybody loves your heart and loves your spirit, then no one’s going to be able to come up afterwards and be like, Hey, so, you know, I know that you were In the spirit and really just giving it everything you got but that just was really pitchy and the timing was terrible and I you know you should probably get voice lessons before you get Up there again you know everyone’s to be like oh you are just get out of here with that attitude with that you know pharisaical legalistic controlling kind of abusive attitude you know But that means that a lot of people who maybe don’t have what it takes to make it, who don’t actually have a great deal of skill, can, like you said, camouflage that mediocrity by just trying To make it within the church and then shield themselves from critique because it’s a spiritual service. So, how can you critique my prayer or whatever, you know, that kind of a thing. And it

Jimmy Smith
But when you start trying to mix the two together, what you end up with is you end up with churches that are run by people that are looking for a career path instead of a broken heart before God. Genuine calling, exactly. And then they are going to just immediately pass that on down to the worship team or down to the musicians because that kind of culture pathos.

Michael Minkoff
I wanted to read a quote to you guys from Joni Mitchell about this very thing, and it’s interesting the overlap that there is between her experience and the experience of a lot of artists In the church. So Joni Mitchell said, I heard someone from the music business saying they are no longer looking for talent. They want people with a certain look and a willingness to cooperate. And I thought, that’s interesting, because I believe a total unwillingness to cooperate is what is necessary to be an artist, not for perverse reasons, but to protect your vision. The considerations of a corporation, especially now, have nothing to do with art or music. That’s why I spend

Michael Minkoff
And I think that there is an inherent, this is my opinion, but I actually think there’s an inherent elitism in the forwarding of praise and worship music. And actually, in general, there’s a difference between serving the congregation and pandering to the congregation. Why don’t you teach the people how to sing? Why don’t you teach the people a little bit about music? You know what I mean? Like, that’s your job.
Carly Taich
It’s just they’re not used to being challenged. So we just assume they can’t be.
Michael Minkoff
Right. But oftentimes they like it. They enjoy that. It’s fun. It’s interesting. And then once you can really nail it on those multiple parts, I mean, it’s so much more enjoyable. I think there’s an attitude among those executives and those administrators in those churches. They’re not the ones that were actually in front. Like you said, the guy who sings the music isn’t the one who writes it. He’s oftentimes not even the person who selects it. The bureaucratic administrative leadership team selects the music, and he’s just like kind of Christian karaoke guy up there. Business in general, they feel kind of beholden to the needs or the tastes of the tastemakers. And the tastemakers are oftentimes not making aesthetic decisions. They’re making business decisions.
Jimmy Smith
That’s what I keep thinking is a lot of this, ultimately, it does come down to a business decision, even within churches. Because really, the ultimate goal is to get attendance up so that you can get more offerings and pay the bills. And it just comes back to the number.

Michael Minkoff
Because this is actually a major problem in the church. I think the attitude that we have about church right now is not a very good one. But it’s basically that there’s a leadership team and an institutional structure that does all the work of the church. And the work of the church in these models is to serve the congregation spiritually. That’s the model. You have a leadership team that you pay so that they can serve you spiritually. But in a way, that ends up meaning that the pastors and the pastoral team and the leadership team, they are the church. And there’s not really much of a sense in which the congregation is the church. They’re just the people the church serves. And so it becomes really ingrown. Into the church to continue to expand and make more palatable or more appealing all the services that are offered in order to gain more quote unquote customers, religious customers Who then come and pay their money to receive spiritual services from this team.
Carly Taich
And better coffee.
Michael Minkoff
And better coffee. Better coffee, definitely. We’re paying in order to get better services. For ourselves. For ourselves. Rather than having this attitude where the church is the people it’s the assembly of people who are doing the work of god pursuing the kingdom of god and representing in the world jesus And his righteousness as a very very different picture of the church and um it’s not a business oriented one it’s more like an organism or a family where each person is expected to contribute In keeping with their nature. So, I mean, if you’re a part of a body and you’re a finger, well, then you do the work of a finger. So, if you’re not doing your work as a finger, well, guess what? That work just doesn’t get done and no one else can do it. You know, if I’m trying to poke things with my eye, you know, it’s going to be damaging to the whole body.
Carly Taich
Thank you for that visual.
Michael Minkoff
And the thing is, none of this is unbiblical. Paul is very explicit about the nature of the church in these terms as the body of Christ and as each member being a member of that body. And we even talk about body members, like, you know, like that’s not that hard of a thing to grasp. But instead, I feel like we’ve changed our model or our image or our metaphor or whatever of the church in such a way that pastors do all the work. And then we wonder why there’s pastoral burnout, right? And all this other kind of stuff where people are being asked or expected to do things well beyond their capacities or their nature, other people sit aside and do nothing, except for Just receive and spectate. And that even goes with the singing. A lot of people are tone deaf or can’t sing or whatever, because they’ve never tried, because they’ve never been encouraged to participate, because they’re just spectators to the Worship. They’re not actually participants in it. And so that’s a really bad problem.

Michael Minkoff
And if you are not called to do it, I would still encourage you to do the exact same thing. Try to persevere. Try to make your work. And when it fails and it’s terrible and it’s not worth it, then quit. Truly, truly. Seek brutal feedback and assessment. You know, brutally honest but helpful and constructive feedback and assessment. We’ll also provide that. And then figure out what it is that you’re supposed to do in the church. If it’s not to be art, maybe art should just be a hobby. And if you can’t make it well and you can’t do it well and you don’t feel like it’s part of your calling, then make it for fun and enjoy it and support artists who are doing it at a higher level And do that without envy and with great contentment. Because God’s given you another work in the body. If you’re not an artist at all and you don’t think you’re called to be an artist at all, you still have some kind of work to do within the church. And it is particularly changing this culture that we have where artists within our midst feel like their profession, their calling, their vocation is a lottery. That is a terrible situation. Think about if you were called to be like a lawyer or an architect or a whatever, and your process was really just lottery. You could go through all this training and all of this output of your own personal finances in order to become, you know, get a legal degree and your success in it, not guaranteed at all. You know, 0.0% of you or whatever are going to make it and the rest of you are going to make it big and that’s it.

Michael Minkoff
Give it. So I highly encourage, I think the biggest difference maker here will be non-artists who are in the church supporting artists in what ways they can. And if you need a reason for that, we have lots and lots of podcasts you can listen to. But I believe that the arts are, and the honest arts, the genuine arts made by people who are called to do it within the church are probably going to be the greatest and most central tool In the next generation for the representation of God’s truth and beauty on this earth. I think that there’s a lot of reasons why I believe that. And they’re very carefully studied. And it’s not because that’s my thing. I am passionate and zealous about this for the sake of artists like Carly and producers like Jimmy.