Mission

Christ Life Art exists to convey the glory of God by proclaiming the truth of Scripture in our lives and through our talents.

The mission of CLA is to encourage Christian artists to make beautiful, meaningful, purposeful, and God-glorifying creations. To help them see the joy in creating art for God's glory, rather than for their own.

The basis for this mission comes from Exodus 31:1-11, where God commissions two artists to lead in creating the items for the tabernacle.

I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with wisdom, with understanding, with knowledge and with all kinds of skills—to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver and bronze, to cut and set stones, to work in wood, and to engage in all kinds of crafts. – Exodus 31:3-5 

What higher calling could there be for an artist? To be filled with creative talent by the spirit of God, and use it to form the items God would use to display His glory to His people. This is the same call of the Christian artist today. To create with wisdom, understanding, knowledge, and skill, using your God-given creativity to make art that glorifies God!

However, in Exodus 32 we see a sad event. Rather than spending their resources and skills creating things that honored God, they first created something that glorified themselves: a golden calf.

Aaron answered them, “Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.” So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron.  He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.” – Exodus 32:2-4

Artists, I plead with you, stop spending your talents on creative pursuits that are hollow and self glorifying. Stop making golden calfs. Rather, pick up your tools, your pencil, your camera, your canvas, your writing, your guitar, your poetry, your voice, and lay it at God's feet as you hear Him say:

All who are skilled among you are to come and make everything the Lord has commanded..." – Exodus 35:10

This is the reason for our mission:

Christ Life Art exists to convey the glory of God by proclaiming the truth of Scripture in our lives and through our talents.

Christ Life Art exists to convey...

With every effort, communicating the glory of God through various art forms (visual, written, and audible). Displaying, reflecting, delivering, and magnifying the weight of God's supreme and satisfying beauty to two groups of people. 

• The unreached: those lost who have never seen it. Found in other countries, in our cities, and even in our churches.

• The reached: those saved who have seen it. To encourage and build up the global and local body of believers.

...the glory of God...

Man is not made to glorify himself, nor is he satisfied by it. Instead, we find our joy in God, therefore, we desire to help others enjoy the infinite, limitless, boundless, beauty displayed in the attributes of God, of which His glory is comprised.

We never compromise one of God’s attributes for another, however we find at the center of His glory, God's holiness. It is His holiness that then shines out making every other attribute more glorious.

…by proclaiming the truth of Scripture...

To convey God’s glory to the lost and encourage the church, it must be His truth that we proclaim. To attempt to convey opinions of men is to manipulate God’s attributes, create a false god, create a false gospel, and glorify man.

To avoid this we must accept the presence of absolute truth and realize God's word is that absolute, and seek to know God through it.

...in our lives and through our talents.

We do not simply know God's truth, but experience it; and when that takes place we experience God. In our lives the reality of God's word becomes a satisfying display of His glory when we see it manifest in our lives as true, while we follow Christ.

The use of our talents is then used to convey those truths and experiences of them, in such a way that God's glory is displayed for others to see, be drawn to, and be encouraged by.