Michael Card - Scribbling in the Sand: Christ and Creativity

The first is someone who for twenty years I have heard say, Im not really creative. Susan, much of the burden for writing this book was to hopefully and finally convince you otherwise. You embody the truest, most Christlike form of creativity, the ability to seek and find and touch a persons heart.

The other person is my good friend Scott Roley, someone who by the worlds standards is dazzlingly creative. A wonderful singer, songwriter, instrumentalist. Handsome and debonair to boot! Scott, you left all that behind because you heard and faithfully responded to the costly call to go deeper, to touch fewer people but in an infinitely more profound way. This book was written in gratitude for your sacrifice.

C hrist entered our world, the Creator translating heavenly existence to earthly. When our faith in Christ is combined with our own human efforts at creation, the act forges a richer and more diverse form of communication. Artists throughout the centuries have sought to tap into the transcendent by their creating. The language of the arts, it can be argued, is a language born of faith.

In other words, all art forms attempt to translate what is unseen into what is seen. Painter Joel Sheesley states, I... suggest that the definition of content in art is very much like that New Testament definition of faith that calls faith the substance of things hoped for. Art, especially as we engage in it with a redeemed vision, becomes an activity of faith, translating the substance of things hoped for with words, paint and other materials into the content and form of art. Diversity is, then, created not out of deconstruction or fragmentation, but out of unity. Faith prompts us to create with a renewed language, uniting even the splintered language of the age and thus redeeming communication itself.

It is our desire that not just artists but the whole church be involved in this translation act. Ray Bakke writes, The frontier of the world mission is no longer geographically distant; its culturally distant but geographically right next door. This distance of culture exists not only in ethnic cultures but also in created new cultures in the city. The gap that exists between the culture at large and the church must be bridged by the gospel of incarnation, the greatest translation.

Michael Card is a great storyteller. His music and his writings whisper into my soul the secret treasures of the gospel. His skill as a musician, and the depth of his thoughts, give a magical quality to his expression; through his work we enter an enchanted place, listening to a wise voice tell a wonderful old tale.

Many years ago in Japan, when I found my heart being renewed by Christs presence in my life, a friend of mine suggested that I listen to Michael Cards songs. Unfortunately, my missionary friend confided, there arent too many contemporary Christian musicians I can recommend to you (he knew me well). But Michael Card is different. You will appreciate him. My friend understood my struggles as an artist drawn by Christ but not having many examples of contemporaries leading in the arts.

It took me several years to hear Michael in person. When finally, one day in New Jersey, I listened to him perform, I had a strange sense of kinship. The call is to community, the impoverished power that sets the soul free... This prayer for community I made my own. I would be involved in the years to come, and up to this day, in a church planting movement in New York City, and would live out my calling as an artist there as director of the International Arts Movement (IAM).

As I now read through the manuscript of this book, I am so thankful to be involved with Michael once more in understanding creativity in the church and in the world. His words are deeply woven into the fabric of creativity, and into the struggle of asking God to create that community around him. While deeply rooted in ancient faith, his wisdom speaks to todays problems and the challenges we face in the church. Now, as our nation and our cities face darkness head on, his words move us even deeper into the mysteries of life and death. His poetry (poiema) encourages us all to be engaged in the creative act of expanding Gods kingdom through the darkness. Michael leads us to see ourselves as Gods masterpieces, created in Christ Jesus to create, in turn, masterpieces for Gods glory.

Makoto Fujimura
New York City

M ost of what is helpful about this book was born in community. It was called forth by the genuine needs of the community. The basic biblical concepts were born out of one of the first real communities of faith to which I ever belonged, a small biracial church in Bowling Green, Kentucky, called Cecelia Memorial Church. Here I first entered into a discipling relationship with Dr. William Lane, who has since gone home to be with Jesus. In many ways this book is only a continuation of his work. The concept of the creative mandate, the insights on the structure of the hymn fragment from Philippians, as a matter of fact almost every section of this book is based on a concept he taught me.