W. David O. Taylor, former arts pastor of Hope Chapel in Austin, Texas, and current Ph.D. student at Duke Divinity School, spoke last month to the Chicago Partnership for Church Planting about the place of the arts in church planting. Aaron Youngren, lead pastor for The Line, interviewed Taylor for The Gospel Coalition. Here Taylor shares three encouraging observations about churches engaging the arts.
Taylor acknowledges that the arts make many Christians nervous, and we will occasionally disagree about what’s acceptable or edifying. But Taylor makes a compelling point about how the arts offer one means of cooperation between churches to demonstrate unity in the body of Christ. And he wonders about the reasons behind the disconnect between culture makers in the entertainment industry and the Christians they so often demonize in their movies, plays, and television shows.
Taylor, who blogs at Diary of an Arts Pastor, is a contributor to and editor of For the Beauty of the Church: Casting a Vision for the Arts. Other contributors to the book include Eugene Peterson, Lauren Winner, John Witvliet, Jeremy Begbie, Andy Crouch, and Barbara Nicolosi. Check back tomorrow to learn what awakened Taylor’s artistic ache.