Christian Storytellers Pt VII

...and so the call goes forth!

The world (and the Church) is in dire need of Christian storytellers. Women and men who will tell the story not merely accurately, but compellingly, beautifully, with skill and power. Exciting the imagination, stirring the emotions, challenging the intellect, and directing the will; the creation of culture must not be left in the hands of those who listen (willfully or ignorantly) to other stories...

I have often thought of art as a valid, but peripheral concern to the purpose of the Church. I have in recent years been chastened. The arts are indispensable.

In a very real sense the arts are the medium for telling the story at the meta-cultural level.

The call of the Christian storyteller is neither superficial sentimentality, nor is it raw self expression; rather it is something more closely approaching prophecy. To return to the grey room and the glorious spring of our previous post; much of Christian art is essentially describing the spring flowers; secular art describes the colorless gloom; some Christians in an attempt to avoid painting daisies collapse into the secular pursuit of painting grey windows in grey rooms...

The call of the Christian storyteller is neither to describe the flowers outside the window, nor to describe the shadows inside the window; the call of the Christian storyteller is to break the window!

We must tell the story of the Spring within the world of the room.

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In drama and dance, in narrative and screenplay, in music and lyric, in clay and in paint, in philosophical treatise and in political speech, we need to tell the story. Not in a polemical or proselytizing manner, but in a provocative and intriguing tone. We are not convincing, but rather inviting; we are not fighting, but rather dancing; we are not conquering, but rather wooing...