EMQ » July–September 2021 » Volume 57 Issue 3
By Brian Schrag and Julisa Rowe
William Carey Publishing, 2020
88 pages
US$8.99
Reviewed by David R. Dunaetz, Associate Professor of Leadership and Organizational Psychology, Azusa Pacific University, and former church planter in France.
This short book describing how to launch a community arts program for evangelistic (or other) purposes is one of the most innovative mission books of 2020.
The authors’ goals are to help the reader to analyze the systems of artistic creativity in a culture in order to better promote God’s purposes. Essentially, this involves learning how to conduct research into a culture’s art, including the knowledge, skills, resources, and social structures that are associated with art in that culture.
To accomplish this lofty goal, the authors provide tools to understand what is communicated by artistic forms in a given culture and to promote local creativity using the culture’s own art forms to communicate the Gospel more effectively than by using outside forms of art and communication. Through a “Kingdom of Heaven lens,” missionaries are encouraged to learn and listen to the people they are serving.
The focus of the book is a seven-step process called CLAT (Creating Local Arts Together), which enables missionaries or other Christians to better understand a community, including its culture, art forms, and needs, so that the community can use the arts to accomplish its goals (such as spreading the gospel).
This is a condensed summary of a much longer book written by Brian Schrag (see For Further Reading). It is written in short, simple sentences, is under one hundred pages, and generally avoids Christian jargon, making it an unusual but theoretically very rich ministry manual. This unusual structure perhaps models how to communicate the Gospel to those who are unfamiliar with it. However, it may be too unconventional and innovative to be appreciated by many missionaries. If you do not have a thirst for innovation and out-of-the-box thinking, you will probably dislike this book.
The authors’ target audience consists of long-term missionaries and local church leaders where the Gospel is not yet well communicated, especially in non-Western contexts that are culturally distant from the missionary. Unfortunately, understanding a culture sufficiently to use the arts to accomplish God’s purposes requires much time and effort and is not something that can be done in an evening by reading a book. This book provides guidelines for a process that may take months or years to develop before leading to a fruitful ministry. This book is not for people who want a simple program to apply. It is more of a research guide than a book proposing art-related activities that lead to opportunities to share the gospel.
The general process presented is also appropriate for Christian workers in our own Western contexts, and to a lesser degree, short-term missionaries. Some aspects of the process could be appropriate for missionary interns in seminary spending three months to a year in a culture.
For Further Reading
Krabill, James, Ed. Worship and Mission for the Local Church: An Ethnodoxology Handbook. William Carey Library, 2013.
Schrag, Brian. Creating Local Arts Together: A Manual to Help Communities to Reach Their Kingdom Goals. William Carey Library, 2013.
