More Than Meets The Eye
by Monika Grefe
When I first walked into the St. Stephen’s homeless shelter, it was far from aesthetically inspiring. Florescent lights overhead cast a dingy yellow glow on long rows of brown tables and chairs filled by dozens of men and women resting head-in-hand, drinking a lukewarm glass of milk, or staring blankly across the tops of everyone else’s heads. Fans blew around hot July air and the odor of sweaty, unshowered bodies mingled with the smells of the upcoming meal. We stepped into this homeless shelter known as St. Stephen’s with arms full of art supplies, easels, guitars, drums—and a purpose.
This was the second full day of our “intercultural experience” in downtown Minneapolis, and by “our” I mean a team of six Crown students (Mariam Ahmad, Sarah Anderson, Tim Gustafson, Joy Murrieta, Anna Newby, and Josiah Stumbo) and myself. I joined this bright group of students as a Crown staff member, but even more importantly, as a fellow artist.
Our team lived in downtown Minneapolis, just blocks from the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, in one of the most diverse neighborhoods in the Midwest. We partnered with Source Ministries, a faith-based non-profit organization that was founded in 1987 for the purpose of “being a friend and a voice to at-risk young people and urban subcultures.” Source uses outreach events (like the “Drum & Easel,” which we conducted at St. Stephen’s) to give the surrounding community a tangible display of truth and hope.
The Fallout Urban Arts Center, Source’s outreach facility, provides space for a community kitchen, art gallery, music performance areas, interactive art lounge and a skate ramp. It hosts anything from art shows and open mic nights to Bible studies and community meals. Source uses the Fallout to infuse the neighborhood with the gospel. “I loved being a part of this community that focused on building relationships with the people around them and loving them in any way they could,” said Newby. “It was great being able to use the arts— music, painting and dancing—to reach out to people.”
Through various elements of outreach, whether it be a hip-hop show or a colorful mural covering the side of a vacant two-story building, Source’s core values (prayer, mission, justice/mercy, hospitality, learning and creativity) are openly and freely shared with anyone who stops to look or listen. People who stumble upon the Fallout may enjoy a free meal or a look through the art gallery; yet what they may not realize is that they are getting an unexpected and refreshing glimpse into a new kind of community—the Source “family.” Through food and conversations on art and life, the Source staff share love and acceptance with the down-and-out and those who have found no place to belong. Gustafson says he found the Fallout to be “a very hopeful place where people are not afraid of the imagination, and a trustworthy place where the love of Christ is richly at work inside of people.”
It is at the Fallout that artists of any genre find a safe haven of loving acceptance, and the Source “family” welcomes any unpolished and raw question about creativity and Christ, about art and the gospel. “I’ve tasted another new love here—community love, the church love that is supposed to happen,” Stumbo jotted down in his final days at the Fallout. “I saw it get a little messy at times, which added to its beauty. I saw people step past comfort to encourage. I saw people dance with each other, just for fun. I saw people take the terrifying risk of expressing themselves through art, and then being held up, supported and encouraged by all their great big family. I saw myself gain confidence as I was surrounded by people who confidently go about life, loving each other and the neighborhood around them. It’s a very rich taste that I’m going to crave deeply as soon as I leave.”
Our team, immersed in this urban art subculture, watched the Source community share their imaginations and creativity. Each of us wrestled with the connection between art and the gospel, and what it means to each of us as individual artists and believers. Our time in Minneapolis, as appropriately voiced by Stumbo, was “two weeks of analyzing and reanalyzing and overanalyzing beauty and art, every conversation bearing fruit, fruit which becomes song and dance, laughter and poetry.” And it was there that we discovered a deep connection between our God and our creative expression: we discovered that art is deeply entwined with our relationship with God.
Through art, we catch a glimpse of something beyond ourselves: God’s creative genius. Our team conversed with dozens of fellow believers who shared views of art, creativity, and worship with us. These views and thoughts didn’t bring confusion, but affirmation of our calling to create, and how that can be worshipful when given back to our Creator. One of these fellow believers who shared with our team was singer/songwriter Tracy Howe. She greatly impacted our understanding of how to integrate our lives as believers and as artists and told us the importance of sharing our creativity and uniqueness. “If you don’t share what you have, the world is missing out on something,” she explained to us. “God has put something in you that He hasn’t put in anyone else.” Defining worship as “our unique expression of what God’s done,” Howe’s view of creativity and the gospel came as a great encouragement to us—a group of artist-musicians who are compelled to create and to share our creative works with others.
As simple and as imperfect as we are as artists and humans, we can still be tools of God’s beauty and truth. The Source community demonstrates this well as they embrace and use art to tell their stories and articulate their relationship with Christ. Murrieta, who organized and led the team to Minneapolis, saw this freedom and acceptance reciprocated in her own life: “I am encouraged beyond encouraged by everyone [at the Fallout] to be okay with valuing art,” she said. “I wasn’t sure I’d have worth as an artist, but everyone’s celebration, acceptance, and dedication to art as believers has worked to both encourage and liberate this inside of me.” She continued, “Art doesn’t belong to the world. God is truly the giver of this delightful gift, its creator and who it is intended for. It is truly beautiful when it is God’s, and I am grateful for the brothers and sisters [at the Fallout] who can see that.”
Paintbrush or camera, guitar or drum—it doesn’t matter. If we create with a desire to please God in what we do while seeking to share the hope and truth of the gospel, then we are tools of His beauty. The time we spent in Minneapolis showed our team what it looks like to enjoy art and fulfill our desire to create, while loving God and living out the gospel at the same time. Fortunately, places like the Fallout welcome artists who may not understand the gospel but have the chance to see it through the vivid, eclectic and beautiful art that unfolds before them.
Sitting next to people at St. Stephen’s, our team experienced worship happening in an unlikely place and in nontraditional ways. As we delighted in the beauty God set before us in the beat of a drum, in a small bowl of paint, in the curious eyes watching us, we recognized that God is indeed the giver of all good things… including art.
Claiming this name of “artist” has been a great breath of freedom to my own heart. As a writer and photographer, I am passionate about art and how it can illuminate the deeper life found in Christ. In countless conversations I have shared with friends and fellow artists, I have watched my creative and spiritual journeys come together as one and firmly believe that artists are called to present beauty. To draw out elements of beauty and hope from an ugly and sinful world not only satisfies our desire to create, but it announces to the world that there is more to this painted picture of hope. Stumbo, after time spent wrestling with his understanding of art and God, shares his thoughts. “I am finally able to find harmony between my attempts to walk in step with the Holy Spirit and my passionate desire to create,” he writes. “Finally I am free to worshipfully express my heart and maintain my uniqueness.”
I couldn’t agree more.
Through intercultural experiences, whether it is a fourteen-day trip to China or a semester-long study abroad program in Congo, students at Crown experience change. This is part of Crown’s vision: to bring in students who care about change in themselves and change in the world, and to teach those same students about the impact they can make on the world around them.
A significant percentage of Crown students travel around the globe on various spring and summer short-term mission trips each year to places like Africa, Asia and South America. During the 2007-08 school year, however, Crown sent out three trips that didn’t travel halfway around the world. The first team, led by humanities department chair and drama professor Johnny Grainger, shared a dinner-theater outreach in various cities throughout California. Through this ministry, they saw people in the audience commit their life to Christ. The second team partnered with Acts 29 Church to minister in Hamtramck, Mich., one of the most poverty-stricken areas of the U.S. There they taught English classes, held youth outreaches, and provided help in building construction and renovation. The third trip was, of course, our Minneapolis team that you’re reading about.
Sending out teams locally is about more than a savings in airfare; it’s about establishing a growing connection between Crown College and local ministries that can be strengthened over time. These trips come also as a reminder that “global” can be local, and stepping out into “the world” sometimes means walking across the lawn to your neighbor’s backyard.
