As an Artist

In the past preachers like Isaac Watts, John Wesley, and Martin Luther both preached and wrote hymns, and when ministers like Lyman Beecher had descendents like Harriett Beecher Stowe who influenced the culture through literature. We have tended toward compartmentalizing the arts, particularly separating them from preaching. John and Charles Wesley not only led a great awakening, they also wrote thousands of hymns and printed scores of pieces of literature.

The emerging generation of youth and college students love the arts, love creativity, and love people who are real. I love to sketch, to draw images of God�s creation. Music has also been a particular artistic interest (although I do not claim to excel at any musical form�just ask my kids about my singing!)

But, my minor in college was music, and I met my wife Michelle in the A Cappella Choir at Samford University. Even in high school I sang with a group that performed in venues from churches to malls, from Calloway Gardens, Georgia, to Disneyworld. I was a singer before I was a preacher.
I later served churches as minister of music. In more recent years I have been a bit more tame, but about the time I turned 40 I picked up a bass guitar (actually Michelle bought it for me). I started playing in chapel at Southeastern, and one thing led to another, until I began to take a talented group of students called Joy Made Full to minister. I loved it so that when those students moved on, another group emerged. This group featured my son Josh on drums and a variety of students over the years playing and singing with us. How God has blessed. We have seen now hundreds come to Christ, untold lives changed (including ours), and even produced a CD.

My Current Musical Favorites:

Hillsong
Lecrae
Coldplay
Delirious
Mute Math
Jeremy Camp
My friends in the Chad Lister Band
And an occasional dose of 70s Southern Rock (old habits die hard).

We have lost the place of the arts. But at her best in history the church led the way in the arts. If we are to reaching the teeming numbers of young adults in America we must learn to proclaim the unchanging gospel in creative ways. We must learn to sing the good news, to perform it with the arts, while always maintaining the biblical, timeless practice of preaching (I Corinthians 1).