037 Recovering Your Creative Calling with Andy Crouch
If you’re involved in art, photography, writing or story telling; if you plant gardens, build houses, plan towns or make furniture; if you like to cook, sew, play sport, do business, or are in engaged in media, law, languages, technology, wood working, sign writing or just about any other human endeavour, then you are involved in culture-making. Culture isn’t the domain of the artists alone. You are shaping the world.
What really matters is what vision drives you as you act, play and create. That’s where Andy Crouch steps in. In this interview you’ll learn how to recover your creative calling as a culture-maker who shapes the world for good.
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In the Interview
One of our themes on More Than This this year is on how to discover your calling. Andy Crouch is a good dialogue partner here. Andy is executive editor of Christianity Today magazine, executive producer of the This Is Our City project, and author of Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling and Playing God: Redeeming the Gift of Power. In this Open House interview Andy and I explore:
- Why something as simple as making an omelet is ‘culture’
- Why condemning, critiquing, consuming or copying culture is not going to change it (and what will)
- The biblical vision of culture and how Easter Sunday changed culture forever
- The difference between our ‘gestures’ and our ‘postures’ (very helpful!)
- Practical steps to take up our own creative calling
Your Response
What is your creative calling? What would you like it to be? Call me using the ‘Send Voicemail’ button, or leave a comment below. Please also rate and share this podcast on iTunes to help others discover it.
Episode Resources
You may find the following links and resources helpful:
- Book: Culture Making by Andy Crouch
- Book: Playing God by Andy Crouch
- Link: Andy Crouch’s website
- Link: This is Our City project
Announcements
- Next events on my UK speaking schedule include Oxford Community Church and St Aldates Church on Sunday May 18. Drop by if you’re in the area
- If you’re interested in engaging the media, book into the #MediaLit course in Durham June 23-27. I’ll be a contributing speaker
- My speaking tour of the US in October-November is coming together. If you’re interested in having me share the Resurrection Year story at your church, conference or event please get in touch soon
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Amanda
After listening to this interview I had a few thoughts. Firstly, have you heard of culture jamming? I learnt about this at Uni (art school) and I think its a term that could apply to what Andy is saying.
As a Christian and an artist I have had trouble finding my way. I’ve been through the line of thinking of ‘what’s the point if it doesn’t lead others to Christ?’ which includes the thought that my art should somehow be ‘Christian’ and concluded in the end that this would be a forced endeavour and it made more sense to ‘be a Christian in the art world’.
Now however, after listening to this talk my response is more along the lines of ‘oh, so WHAT I paint doesn’t matter as much as WHO I interact with within that art world’. Not only that, who can I interact with outside of the art world from my creative stance? I’m an introvert so this is a hard thing for me.
I am looking at teaching art classes in our church hall (I’m also a Pastor’s wife!) as an extra bit of income and can see how this could be a good way of interacting with a whole range of people within my own area. I am also considering doing it as a ‘ministry’ without pay. I hate that there is a given difference (but again, part of ‘church culture’). Anyway, I did gain a bit of food for thought and feel more free to pursue painting whatever I want but focus more on the networking.
Sheridan Voysey
Glad to hear the interview got you thinking and broadened things a little for you. In addition, art is valuable for its own sake—to bring beauty and light into the world. Have you ever read Hans Rookmaaker’s little book Art Needs No Justification? You can pick it up cheap or else listen to some of his audio teaching here: http://www.labri-ideas-library.org/lecture-list.asp?s=1077&page=6