Discipling artists must become an absolute priority for church leaders in these early days of the 21st Century. The Protestant Church is already behind the wave of first-world culture change. In the developing nations of the world, we have already left the age of the orator and entered the age of the artist.

God has made artists – who I like to call imagination specialists – to lead human communities into touching the transcendent realities of life. They are transcendence toucher specialists. They are environment designer and worship facilitator specialists.

Am I saying that artists are special? No, not at all. I am saying that artists are specialized by God Himself. Artists’ “unusual wisdom at imaginative design and expression” (the OT idea at the core of the term “craftsman,” see Ex 35:30-36:3) provides humanity with servant leaders uniquely equipped to create the handles by which we humans grasp the non-material realities of life -- love, gratitude, beauty, goodness, etc. God enables artists to serve the community and culture by sculpting the symbols, metaphors, rituals, liturgies, and other expressions that allow us all to “hold” and “handle” the realities of life beyond the material.

Creatively gifted people must be “re-introduced” to and “re-invited” into the servant-leadership of the Church. If not, this current generation of church leaders stand to lose yet another generation of artists; robbing the church of growing more fully in the ways God desires her to grow.

Discipling artists must become a value and priority for pastors and creative followers of Jesus. The Church needs them to serve. The culture and the nations need to see Jesus revealed through them. Will you take deliberate action to disciple them in the ways of God so they can fulfill God’s unique purposes for their lives?

As an athlete, your whole life consists of learning the fundamentals of your sport: strength, speed, agility, hand-eye coordination, shooting, passing. As a hockey player, I found myself doing the same things playing in the NHL that I was taught growing up as a kid first learning the sport. The consistency with which the athlete executes these foundational practices differentiates between the average, the good and the great.

Paul says to Timothy in I Corinthians 11:1, “Be imitators of me just as I imitate Christ.” This is a familiar principle to professional athletes as we have spent our lives imitating fellow athletes. In athletics, discipleship takes place through teaching the next generation how to play the game. We are shown by those who have gone before what to do and what not to do. Pitfalls are identified. We become stronger physically and mentally. We are taught how to finish the race. To an athlete, finishing strong is everything. Winning is everything. We would never play the game just to be in the game, yet that is what we have done as Christians. Jesus gives us this great game plan in Matthew 28 to go and make disciples, but somehow we have managed to take this ever so important principle out of the Christian walk. Instead we have taught people that just being on the team is enough.

Having spent three years of his life with twelve men, Jesus changed the world forever. One pastor spent countless hours praying, teaching me how to pray; reading the Scriptures, teaching me how to read the Scriptures; loving people, teaching me how to love people. The influence of athletes is matched only by celebrities and politicians. Just as Paul was sent to the Gentiles and Peter to the Jews, there are men and women God desires to send into the world of the athlete to disciple them in God’s ways and show how to live for His glory!