Build A Testimony

Christian artists need to hear from God in three main areas:  inspiration for our work itself, God’s plans for our marketing, and ways to minister.  Each of these areas is an opportunity for you to build a testimony.

The general assignment for the online school of the Spirit has three parts:  (1) soak in God’s presence 10-15 times each month; (2) edify, exhort, or comfort 20 people a month; and (3) jot down a short account of what you’ve done.

Soaking is an opportunity to draw fresh creativity from God. The edify-exhort-comfort assignment is good for artists because we can easily become so absorbed in our art that we lose touch with people; a discipline to connect will help us stay more well-rounded.  And writing it down simply gives us a way to make sure we’re doing the assignment.

But a recent conversation led me to add what I call the “Scavenger Hunt” to the monthly assignment.  This is a list of items to reach for as you seek to led the Holy Spirit lead you in the arts.  Some are things to reach for in prayer; others are ways to make your work more effective.

Christian artists need to hear from God in three main areas:  inspiration for our work itself, God’s plans for our marketing, and ways to minister.  With this in mind, I’ll be listing ten items in each month’s Scavenger Hunt.  Not all will work for you, but aim to do one or two each week as you soak, minister, and journal.

Here’s a bit of the thinking that went behind a few items in the Scavenger Hunt.

“Ask God for one main idea that will make your marketing more effective.” This is item 2 in the Scavenger Hunt, something to ask God while you’re soaking.

Marketing can be a full-time job. Many artists don’t like to do it, but often it makes the difference between the hobbyist and the professional.  It doesn’t work if it’s gimmicky or too blatantly commercial; it has to be tasteful.

Most of us don’t have the time or the money to launch a full-scale marketing campaign.  But if we let God direct us, He will show us how to make a small but effective effort.

It’s one step at a time.  I have about ten times as many blog hits now as I did a year ago.  Month by month, God has given me a few things to do to get the word out:  learn to add tags to the postings; put links in an article that gets posted on another website every month; send out an email to everyone on my list, letting them know about the blog.

Each step has cost nothing but time; each has been manageable.  The next step God has given me is to simplify and tighten the materials on my webpage.

“Include marketing in your work.” (Scavenger Hunt item 6.) Your job isn’t just to get paint on a canvas; it’s to get the canvas out where people can see it.  Using the ideas you get in item 2, your creativity will include the whole process of connecting your work with people.

“Send a card, letter, or email to appreciate an artist who has influenced you.” (Scavenger Hunt item 5.)  This is a very simple way to edify-exhort-comfort; it could lead to your receiving a bit of advice from an expert, lead to a chance to share your faith, or lead to a new relationship.  And there is no way to measure the impact your note of appreciation may have on the person you send it to.

“Post your testimony as a comment on the blog page.” (Scavenger Hunt item 10.)  Has God made an impact in your art?  Has He given you ideas?  Has He used your art in unexpected ways?  Share your testimony by posting comments on the blog – or email me at stansmith888@sbcglobal.net and I’ll post it.

There are 1000 things that try to make a Christian artist give up.  Build a testimony, so you always have a fresh report of what God is doing in and with your art.

Stan Smith  ::  © 2008, GospelSmith  ::  www.GospelSmith.com

Find New Techniques

God will give you inspiration in the arts, but He isn’t going to do all your work for you.  This is why He often will show you new techniques, and then will leave it to you to explore and fine-tune them.

If you spend time soaking in God’s presence and listening for inspiration for your art, sooner or later He is likely to give you a new technique to explore.  This is a little different from receiving inspiration for a specific project.

For a specific project, inspiration will often give you the whole thing or at least a major part of it.  For instance, if I need a title for a blog, I linger in God’s presence and suddenly a phrase pops into my mind.  That’s all I need.

But instead, God might give a principle for how to create blog titles.  In that case, I would have to go back over all the blogs I’ve written so far, using the new principle God had taught me to rewrite all the old titles.

These two kinds of inspiration work differently. Frankly, when I have a tight deadline, I need the kind of inspiration that shows me what to do with an individual project.  But if I want to be a better artist, God’s revealing a new technique will force me to learn new skills.

If God shows you a new technique, He has put you in a school of the Spirit.  And just as it was in the classes you took in school, you will get as much out of His school as you put into it.

Example #1: when I write a blog, I have been led to start by writing a short summary of the article. These 50 words help me focus the blog; they also become the summary I can post as an excerpt.

I haven’t taken the time to go back over all the other blogs I’ve written and to revise them – I haven’t had time.  But this simple principle has helped me write.

Example #2: I am not particularly gifted in graphic arts, but God has given me a way to make better-than-average covers for my booklets and labels for my CDs, quickly.  I have been challenged to seek unity and diversity in my designs – unity so my products look like they go together when I set them out on a book table; diversity so people can quickly tell the items apart.

So I have been led to create templates of everything I need, usually in PhotoShop or InDesign.  With one layer I can change the background pictures; with another I can change the text.  The template saves work and provides design unity; the variety of pictures provides diversity.

When I learned this principle, I went back to items I had created earlier and redesigned them.  Now the principle is part of my normal workflow.

Example #3: for music, I have often sensed God challenging me to record rhythm tracks on my keyboard and save them on my iPod; then I can hook them up to speakers and play them back along with live music I’m playing on the keyboard.  I’ve seen other musicians do this, and it works wonderfully.

Unfortunately, I haven’t done much with this idea, in spite of receiving many nudges in my prayer times.  I can’t tell you why I’ve dragged my feet.  Perhaps it’s my backwardness with recording equipment; perhaps it’s a lack of confidence.

But all the inspiration in the world is useless if we do nothing with it.  And that’s the point of this kind of inspiration:  God expects us to experiment, to learn, and to fine-tune a new skill when He speaks to us this way.

Sometimes God will show you how to be more productive, but some of the new techniques He shows you will release something in your own unique creative gifts.  Don’t waste His wisdom. Take time to explore the new techniques He shows you.

Stan Smith  ::  © 2008, GospelSmith  ::  www.GospelSmith.com

The Next Marketing Step

Marketing is a necessary part of your work as an artist, and you’ll need just as much creativity for your marketing as you need for your work itself.  As you soak in God’s presence, ask God to show you the most effective next-step you can take, the step that will do the most to make your marketing more effective.

If you are like my wife and me, you love to produce your work and hate the nitty-gritty of marketing.  Even now as I write, JoAnn is preparing new art to display at a show next Saturday.  She‘s having a great time.  But I know that later in the week, we’ll have do a lot of grunt work:  putting the pictures in frames, taking her art to the show, and set-ting up a display.

I’m in the same boat.  I played spontaneous prophetic music in a meeting on Friday, and just listened to the recording.  It was beautiful, if I do say so myself.  But people at the meeting asked JoAnn if I had made any new CDs.  She had to say no; the CD I made a few years ago is a sample of what I do but it doesn’t reflect the newest styles I use now that I use two keyboards at once.

So here’s the question:  what is the next step in marketing?  For JoAnn, it’s preparing her art for a show next Saturday.  For me, it’s setting up the recording equipment so I can get my music out to people it can touch.

Don’t confuse marketing with high-pressure sales.  Your marketing as a Christian artist consists in getting your work to the people God means for it to touch. With this is mind, here are a few ways you can identify the next steps you need to take.

1) Soak and ask God to show you who your work should reach. Let Him speak to you about their needs.  Your goal is not just to display your talents, but to serve your people with your art.

If you are involved in performing arts, you may feel that your individual contribution gets lost in the crowd as you are just one musician among many on the stage or just one dancer in the ballet.  You may find that God calls you to do your best in the performance, but then to be salt and light to the other artists backstage.

2) Soak and ask God to show you how to present your work. Much of what I am called to present doesn’t even feel like art; it’s the materials I put on a book table when I minister.  But is my book table attractive?  Is it clear what the materials are?  Can people tell at a glance which materials stand alone and which are part of a set?

As you listen, God will give you ideas that will make your work stand out.

3) Soak and ask God what one ingredient will tie all your work (so far) together and add synergy to your presentation. Synergy is a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.  Most creative people have diverse works, but few of us take the time to find the theme that ties it all together.

Few of us have time to do all we could to market our work.  But every so often, ask God, “What one thing can I do that will make my presentation more effective?”

One thing, not many; most of us would rather do the creative work of producing our art than the grunt work of marketing.  With this in mind, ask God for one small step you can take that will dramatically boost your effectiveness. As you ask Him for wisdom, He will show you one step – and it will be affordable in time and money.

4) Soak and ask God to show you how to make your marketing easy. Jesus said His yoke is easy and His burden is light.  If we need to be faithful to get our work out to people, it needn’t be burdensome.  Ask God for wisdom; He will show you how to make the workload manageable and even enjoyable.

Stan Smith  ::  © 2008, GospelSmith  ::  www.GospelSmith.com

A Medium For Play

To stoke your creativity, use a new medium.  You’ll find it useful to use one medium for work and another for play.  Because Jesus was in the habit of teaching with parables, you’ll find your playful artistic experiments to be a rich source of ideas that will spill over into your work.

Many creative people use one medium in their real work, and another purely for recreation.  I read about a graphic artist who does a lot of commercial work, but has developed a hobby of doodling on business cards.  He jealously refuses to let the business cards become a business that someone else can run.  It’s a medium that allows him to play, and he plans to keep it that way.

Do you have one medium for work and another for play?  If so, don’t let your heavy workload rob you of the art you play with.  If not, there are several reasons why you should.  The medium you play with is vital for your overall creativity.  Here’s why.

Your play medium will serve as a parable, giving you fresh ideas for your main work. Jesus often taught through parables.  What you learn in your music can teach you how to paint; what you learn from painting can teach you how to dance; what you learn…you get the idea.

I began to use layers when I learned to use PhotoShop.  I’m not particularly gifted with graphics; I was learning the program to help my wife with one of her projects.  But using layers has affected my keyboard playing and my writing.

Playfulness sets you up to receive kingdom inspiration because God’s kingdom calls us to be childlike. Work often brings out our grim determination to move in a straight line from here to the completion of our goal.  This is how the workplace expects us to act, with time-lines that project what we are going to do and when we are going to do it.  It’s all stunningly efficient, but you couldn’t devise a better way to stifle creativity.

Creativity often happens when we’re fooling around. We may want it to happen, but concerted will-power won’t necessarily produce it.  As often as not, it happens by accident.  The guitarist suddenly plays a line he likes; he plays it again and again so he won’t forget it, and later it becomes the root of a new song.  The dancer spontaneously tries a few steps in the grocery store; it has nothing to do with anything she’s rehearsing, but a burst of playfulness adds something to her repertoire.

If God has called you to be creative, you can’t afford to make sense all the time.

Grace looks more like play than like work. Don’t get me wrong; it’s always a lot of work to do anything worthwhile.  But when God’s grace gets into the picture, playful things start happening.

Grace is the quality that causes the foolish things to confound the wise, and the weak things to displace the mighty.  And this is the very quality we need if we want to make a kingdom impact on the culture around us, for the world around us hates our world-view and is predisposed to sneer at anything that reflects faith.

But our light, no matter how small the flame, is destined to shine in darkness, and the darkness can’t put it out.

When David was a shepherd, do you think he learned to use his slingshot because he was planning to face a giant, or was it just play to while away the long hours of tending sheep?

Keep a medium available for play.  You have no idea how God will use it.  It may become a parable that teaches you; it may line you up to receive inspiration; it may simply keep you in touch with the grace of God, who loves you not just for what you can accomplish but for who you are.

Stan Smith  ::  © 2008, GospelSmith  ::  www.GospelSmith.com

Divine Creativity

Be a co-creator with God as you work.  When God created, He started with an atmosphere of the Spirit then spoke creative commands.  So whenever you can, work in an atmosphere of worship; then speak God’s blessing on your work and on the people it is meant to touch.

There is a side of artistic creativity that focuses on technique:  using a particular chord pattern in a song, layering paints on a canvas, or working out the timing of a dance.  But there is a side of divine creativity that belongs to every Christian – to those who have invited Jesus to come and live within them.

Jesus is the Word who spoke creation into existence, as recorded in Genesis 1.  This same Jesus is risen from the dead to live within all who believe in Him.

As II Corinthians 5:17 notes, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things are passed away; behold, all things have become new.”  The new creation began with Jesus, a man born from heaven.  Adam began with every advantage, created as he was in an ideal environment.  But Jesus was born in a stable because there was no room at the inn; he was born into a world that would try to destroy Him, as Herod did when he learned that the Christ had been born in Bethlehem.

And so it is for the Christian artist:  you are born into a hostile culture, sent by God as a sheep among wolves.  But the same Jesus who overcame the world will overcome through you.  You too have been born of the same Father that begot Him.  And just as He spoke creative words in Genesis 1, He will speak creative words through you.

Jesus didn’t speak into nothingness.  Genesis 1:2 says “The Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”  Divine creativity begins with an atmosphere.  Do whatever you can to cultivate an atmosphere of the Holy Spirit as you work.  If possible, surround yourself with worship music.  When you can, pray for God’s peace to fill your workplace.  If you work in a secular environment that tends to be chaotic, make your workplace orderly.

Use soaking times to go as deep into God as you can.  As you learn to cultivate an atmosphere of heaven in your personal devotions, you will find that it gets easier to access this same anointing in daily life.

Then, as God did throughout Genesis 1, speak creative words into the atmosphere of His presence. Speak over your work, that it will bring a kingdom impact to people and will open doors of ministry.  Speak over your marketing, that God’s covenant promises of blessing and multiplication will work in your behalf.

Romans 10:8 says the word of faith is in your mouth.  And Isaiah 51:17 directly says the same about God’s creative word:

I have put My words in your mouth;
I have covered you with the shadow of My hand,
That I may plant the heavens,
Lay the foundations of the earth,
And say to Zion, “You are My people.”

Base your proclamations on the Bible.  Jesus came to fulfill the words of scripture, and He still has the same purpose as He works in your life.  Your imagination can’t guess the will of God, but scripture reveals it.

Be faithful to use your voice.  Don’t just complain about the darkness; command light.  Don’t just agonize about the hostility of the culture God has sent you into; declare that the light He has placed within you will shine in the darkness, and the darkness can’t put it out.

Stan Smith  ::  © 2008, GospelSmith  ::  www.GospelSmith.com