Once upon a time, long ago, one could be a poet, an artist, and a preacher of the Word. You know, like Luther’s day. He was a theologian and not a bad song writer (read the words to A Mighty Fortress Is Our God lately?). Isaac Watts, John and Charles Wesley, and many others both preached the Word and wrote about it in songs we sing to this day. I recently saw the place where David Garrick, the great actor of the eighteenth century, lies under a slab with his name in the Poets Corner at Westminster Abbey in London. Garrick admired the dramatic young preacher George Whitefield (who also wrote hymns), remarking Whitefield so combined the truth of the Word with the flair of an artist he could move people to tears by the way he would say “Mesopotamia.”
I fear we have lost such a time. We have so compartmentalized ministry that the idea of a song writer who is a preacher seems foreign. “Artist” tends to be a term reserved for those who are musical, or poetic, or who apply such things as dance, painting, or acting to Christianity. But wait a minute. Preaching when done well is both a science and an art. There is the science, if you will, of hermeneutics: the ability to interpret the text accurately. But preaching with that alone may be accurate, but it tends to be as boring as it is precise. There is an art to preaching, the ability to use creativity to communicate the truth, as Brooks put it, through personality.
But I am not only thinking about preaching. I am concerned that we have a generation of young people today who love the arts—their musical interest and often their musical knowledge is impressive—but who have bought the compartmentalization lie. I have met gifted young men who have a passion for God and for ministry, but the idea of being a preacher has no interest to them. Their interest lies in the arts too much to be separated into the category of public speaker in their mind. When we say “those who are musical should be ministers of music, lead worshipers, etc,” we may have put in place a system that discourages some of our most gifted and creative ministers from preaching the Word. I confess: I do not listen to podcasts of preaching on my daily powerwalk. I prefer everything from Mute Math to Imogen Heap to my personal favorite, Delirious. I wonder: if I were eighteen today and feeling a call to ministry as I did thirty years ago, would I be hesitant to go toward the route of being a preacher of the Word because I would feel forced to choose between being creative and being conventional? Such a dichotomy need not exist. It does not exist in a formal way I believe. But I see it played out in the lives of so many teens with whom I talk each year.
I minored in music in college, earning enough hours to be a major in most fields. I served churches early on as a minister of music. More recently I have written much (I suppose since I am an author I am an artist) about corporate worship and the role of music. I have played bass guitar in several bands. I am a lousy song writer. But I know a good song when I see one. I am a much better preacher, though I am not all that, than I am a worship leader. But I know what it takes to be an effective individual or band when it comes to bringing a group into corporate worship. I refuse to submit to the oversimplification that silos preachers and artist and musicians and poets and others into their own little neat categories, with overlapping discouraged. I pray God will raise up a generation of young men who hunger to communicate the Word with all the creativity God has given them. I pray we will not lose many who love music so much that they think they have to choose between being a song writer (the “rightful” place of creative minds, some might say) and being a preacher (the archaic form of communicating truth, some may have us believe).
I believe you can be a preacher and an artist. And I believe God calls many, from David the King to David Nelson (our dean, theology prof, and lead worshiper in chapel–he is a preacher and an artist) to share His Word.
