Finding Contentment

Our good friend Bobby, who oversees Sojourn Music's website does an amazing job. He just posted another of Mike's talks.

Here is what Bobby posted:
"On October 18, 2006, shortly before Sojourn moved into The 930, our art center and home, Mike Cosper gave a presentation in Troy, NY at a conference for the Acts 29 church planting network. Here is the first part of this two-part presentation on “Missional strategies for the arts.”

In this mp3, Mike provides a summary of Sojourn’s early attempts at engaging in the arts, primarily through our first gallery, Aslan’s How. You’ll learn how a group of very young Christians “just dived in” to the young, artistic culture of their city, making mistakes and learning lessons along the way.

You’ll hear him describe some thorny issues that cropped up, decisions on what kind of art a church should allow in their gallery, what happens when you bring in a hot indie band for a show and 500 kids cram into a building meant for 100, and other factors contributing to the successes and failures of Sojourn’s initial attempts at cultural engagement.

You’ll also learn how things changed, how the leaders decided when to pull back and when to thrust forward, what Sojourn’s strategy is for freeing up artists within the church to use their gifts, and more.

Mike then talks about a theology of art and a theology of culture: what does the Gospel have to say about these things?

Other tricky issues come up, like our tendency to unintentionally make “art” into a mediator between us and God — and how Christian artists and worship leaders can combat this tendency by continually asking things like “Do I feel hindered from worship when I’m not playing in the band?” and consider the danger in statements like “Playing drums is how I worship.”

Warning, in case you listen to this audio in the presence of children: four minutes and thirty-nine seconds into this lecture, there is an anecdote that you may judge inappropriate for children to hear. It’s concerning a piece of art that a visual artist wanted to display in Aslan’s How, and what the Sojourn leaders decided to do about it. It’s only about a minute."