2025 Artists Network
- Image
G.K. Chesterton wrote, “The function of imagination is not to make strange things settled, so much as to make settled things strange; not so much to make wonders facts as to make facts wonders.”
Artists of all types are tasked with inviting their viewers and hearers to see and listen. To make facts into wonders. Art is uniquely suited to enrich our prayer lives, catalyze renewed engagement with the Bible, foster empathy, enhance our spiritual perception, challenge our beliefs in healthy ways, and bring us into more intimate contact both with our Lord and the world. It invites us to slow down and gaze deeply. Art communicates, questions, and holds accountable. It stirs and reveals.
The arts, in all their forms, are good gifts from God, intended to be cultivated and employed, communicating God’s message for humanity. As artists, we need to mindfully consider how to practice the habit of seeing and listening on our own in order to create. At the 2023 gathering of the Artists Network, we will approach this way of contemplative seeing through the lenses of music, painting and visual arts, film, literature, and more.
What Network Participants Are Saying
- "The Artist’s Network is as much educational as it is practical, because what we learn here - we can adapt in our lives. The way we look and understand art, the way we create. The connections between artists who know Christ are so meaningful!"
- Eglė Tamulytė, President, Lithuania - "Being part of the Artists Network, I feel way less alone and deeply understood in my creative calling, and I’ve learned that honestly singing about my struggles is not egocentrism, but a way to glorify the God who brings beauty from ashes."
- Balazs Koncsard, Worship Leader, Hungary
Applicants should be artists who are engaging with society or the church. The Network provides a haven where Christian artists gather in community for relationship, spiritual nourishment, deep thinking, professional growth, and strategic possibilities.
Network Leadership
2024 Network Programme
Detailed information about this Network's 2024 sessions is not yet available but will be posted in the future. Please review the information from last year for a look at the high quality of instructors, teaching, and content available in this network:
Whether you're a painter, writer, poet, dancer, musician, or any other creative soul seeking a deeper relationship with God, this interactive, collaborative workshop will engage our creative spirits as we learn to better hear from God and meditate on His Word. As we learn the art of reflective prayer, we will encourage one another to deepen our journey as Christian artists and bearers of God’s image (Imago Dei) in creation. Join us in this exploration of faith and artistic expression, as we seek to hear God’s heart through the lens of our unique creative gifts.
In this session, we will lead participants in a deeper, more personal opportunity to practice the principles explored in the first session, which will prepare us to bring this discipline into our everyday lives and art-making. We will reflect on the outcome goals of the week, identify expected take-aways, and spend time in community prayer. Participants will also get the chance to hear from an artist and how the topic can be a part of one's creative process.
C. S. Lewis’s imagination was triggered by his awakening to beauty in his world. In time, he recognised that God was behind beauty and was wooing his creatures to Himself through it. Consequently, in his own literary art, Lewis sought to employ the imagination to awaken and point his readers to God. This presentation explores Lewis’s development along these lines in the hopes of encouraging those who attend to benefit from Lewis’s story and discover how, as he crafted his art as a storyteller, he was able to awaken longing in the hearts of his readers.
How are music and worship intertwined, and what roles do they play in the life of the Church? Taking the form of a panel discussion with musicians, this session will explore the practical outworkings of music and worship. Network participants will be able to put their own questions and scenarios to the panel and learn from their reflections.
Our culture is presently in a crisis of meaning that is unprecedented historically. The impact on human life has been devastating. In this talk, we will explore why this is the case and how the arts point to meaning.
God’s Word is a rich source of wisdom for understanding creativity. Discover principles of creativity from the tabernacle art, beauty lost in Ezekiel, and a woman with perfume. Learn practical lessons on the beauty of wholeness, engaging ugliness, and aesthetic actions that leave a legacy.
In this session, we will learn how a theological perspective on the universal plot structure illuminates an understanding of how God is working in your story. Process and reflect through an active exercise that includes insight on such story elements as calling, trials and truths, climax, and return with blessings.
Led by Network leaders, Natalie Meeks and Joshua Masters, this session will go deeper into the topic explored in session one through the engagement of small groups and community discussion. Participants will also get the chance to hear from an artist and how the topic can be a part of one's creative process.