Why An Arts Conference?

I was reflecting last night on why we do Pulse. It’s a lot of work gathering all the presenters, getting the word out, and pulling off the event. It’s a lot to ask of others too: pay money, give up your weekend. Why all the fuss?

The simple answer is this: the arts matter. The arts can easily be marginalized and pushed to the periphery. Sometimes they’re seen as the warm-up act to the sermon, or the “relevant” stuff we do to compete with the world, but not as the “meat and potatoes.” This couldn’t be further from the truth.

N.T. Wright says it well:

“The arts are not the pretty but irrelevant bits around the border of reality. They are highways into the center of a reality which cannot be glimpsed, let alone grasped, any other way. The present world is good, but broken and in any case incomplete; art of all kinds enables us to understand that paradox in its many dimensions.”

For some it might seem over the top to spend so much time, energy, and money exploring how the arts connect to faith. Not so when you see the arts as a crucial, deep, and significant way in which we can share the story of God at work in our world.  Investing in the arts is akin to investing in the kingdom.