You just started a church. How will it be different than other churches in your city?
take some nuggets to chew on for the rest of the week, and hopefully give us something to help us in our everyday lives.
We actually started a church about two months ago with several of my friends in town and my dad—he’s been a pastor in the city for 30, 40 years. I had this longing in my heart for a lot of these young guys in the city who are Christians who are just absolutely in a rough situation. They want community, [but] they may not know how to say they want it. But they all want Jesus, they all want the same things, and for some reason they’re not finding it in the traditional established church. I wanted to create an environment where they felt like they wanted to come and be a part. But more than that, I think I just wanted a place where my family could go, where my friends in the city who had become disconnected for one reason or another could get together and have sort of an intentional place, a place where we could connect intentionally with one another and we could set aside time to connect with Jesus. I think it’s really easy to say we’ll just do it when we feel it, spontaneously, but I think anybody who has been in a marriage more than a couple years realizes you’ve got to love intentionally and you’ve got to make plans, mark things on your calendar and stuff like that. We have a time we set aside to sing together and talk together, and have someone get up and talk about Jesus, and teach a little bit, and
Do artists have a specific and unique role to play in the church community? Yeah, absolutely. I think the arts really are, in my opinion—I’m obviously a songwriter—but arts, in my opinion, are the voice in any community, and when you limit the artist, you limit your voice in a lot of ways. I think it’s really important. What is the point of the Church, what is the Kingdom of God exactly, what are we doing? If it’s something that is supposed to be reaching out into the world, we have to have a voice to do it. It’s really important that we have songwriters and people in the church who are creating a language for our conversations with one another, within ourselves and with God.
Many churches hire musicians from outside. How can churches better develop artists from within their community?
Watch our john mark mcmillan interview at NeueMagazine.com John Mark McMillan stopped by our studio for this interview and a live acoustic performance. Watch the whole interview and performances at NeueMagazine.com.
The way I grew up, the church I grew up in, their concept of a church meeting was the pastor used to say: “We look at church as a workshop and not as a trophy case. We’re not here to
ACT: Think of three ways you can concretely make your church more supportive of the arts. Bring them to your next staff meeting and discuss how to encourage more art in your church.
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