Vocation in the Arts

Vocation, the Arts,1 and the Christian Liberal Arts2

By Robert J. Hubbard, Ph.D.

Northwestern College

Introduction: Starving Artists and Christian Outcasts

Aspiring theatre artists learn a buzz phrase early in their development. It goes something like, “If you can be happy doing something other than theatre, do it.” I’m pretty sure somebody passed down this phrase to me as early as high school. I suspect that prospective visual artists, musicians, and filmmakers learn a similar mantra early in their development. A key element of this advice centers on the definition of “happy.” If happiness means accumulating wealth, acquiring status within the community, and/or making Mom and Dad proud, then aspiring artists should seriously consider other lines of work. The odds strongly suggest that only a select few will achieve the above definition of happiness with the phrase “actor,” “painter,” “cinematographer,” or “oboist” on their tax return.

As it stands today, the artist’s life promises a persistent struggle. In his essay “Music as a Vocation,” Samuel Lipman laments the “grave” state of a musical profession. Not only does Lipman describe “horror stories” of “hundreds of applicants for each opening in a major orchestra,” he also claims that the morale of the few musicians fortunate enough to secure employment has reached “an all-time low” due to reduced funding, shrinking audiences, and the overall diminished stature of classically trained musicians and conductors within the larger culture (53). Other art forms mirror this condition. Of the nearly forty thousand members of Actors’ Equity, well under six thousand, or 14.4 percent are employed in any given week (Actor’s 6). Among this small percentage of professional actors fortunate enough to work regularly, the majority still do not accrue enough hours during a given year to qualify for union health benefits (9). The barrage of piercing questions that opens Zelda Fichandler’s essay “The Lying Game” epitomizes the harsh reality behind these numbers:

But seriously, why does someone want to be an actor? To enter that arena with the lions and subject oneself to rejection on a regular basis? To change the masochism of love for a profession that makes no promise to love you back? To risk a life of temping and maybe even poverty? To postpone having a committed relationship or raising a family? (31)

Unfortunately, Christians pursing careers in the arts find little relief from the challenges of surviving as artists. Indeed, many Christian communities actually increase the burden. In Bearing Fresh Olive Leaves: Alternative Steps in Understanding Art, Calvin Seerveld observes, “Christian artists, together with poets, actors, composers of music, choreographers and such like, normally live hand-to-mouth as eccentric outcasts from many a Bible-believing communion” (42). What Seerveld describes as “outcast” status undoubtedly originates from a number of earned and unearned prejudices. As early as Saint Augustine, Christians have railed against the lifestyles associated with artists and the dangerous feelings that art evokes. Not even art rooted in religious themes or explicitly intended for worship finds sanctuary. The Reformation planted the fear in Protestant circles that such forms of art constitute idol worship or are simply, in the eyes of my Free-Lutheran mother-in-law, “too Catholic.” This prejudice handicaps drama and visual arts in many of our churches to this very day. As evidenced by recent boycotts of films and visual art exhibits, contemporary Christians continue to express discomfort with the difficult questions that works of art inevitably generate. In One of the Richest Gifts, John Wilson summarizes the dilemma facing today’s Christian artists: “Many Christians, particularly in the pietistic or evangelical tradition, have tended to be suspicious of the arts and to treat them as weapons of the Devil” (71). In the vernacular of a highly competitive and popular art form known as country music, the message is clear: “Mama, don’t let your babies grow up to be artists.”

The Goals of This Study

The economic and social hardships confronting today’s artists raise many essential and depressing questions for students and faculty within the Christian liberal arts (CLA). What does the reality that today’s crop of hardworking and talented artists must struggle so relentlessly to practice their art tell us about the position of the arts within the larger culture? Why should students study or, God forbid, major in an “arts field” when the life the artist is so untenable and undesirable? Why should Christian colleges eagerly offer courses and even majors in visual art, film, music, or theatre? Would not these colleges better serve their constituency and fulfill their unique position within higher education by shepherding students away from the arts and encouraging them toward more traditional paths of ministry, such as mission work and/or seminary?

In the following essay, I wrestle with these questions. In contrast to the pervasive professional model of “if you can be happy doing something else, do it,” I advocate a vocational approach to the arts within the Christian liberal arts. Among its many advantages, I argue that the vocational approach offers a more constructive, a more Biblical, a more redemptive, and, in the long run, a healthier path for students. My essay divides into three sections. In Part One—by far the shortest section of the three—I lay the groundwork for this study by contrasting the terms “vocation” with “profession.” Part Two functions as an apologetics for the concept of vocation in the arts. I use this section to explore such issues as the usefulness of art, God’s call for Christian artists, and the importance of the servant-artist in furthering the Kingdom. In Part Three, I extend the discussion of vocation and the arts to include the unique contributions offered by the Christian liberal arts. This portion of the essay tackles issues such as the role that Christian colleges should play in changing cultural attitudes towards artists and their work and in mentoring students who elect to follow this difficult yet important calling.

Part One: Vocation Vs. Profession

“If you can be happy doing something other than theatre, do it.” While this well-meaning career advice may actually prove useful for a percentage of young people flirting with the prospect of becoming artists, it clearly represents a “professional” rather than “vocational” approach. The tensions between “vocation” and “profession,” two words often inappropriately used as synonyms, warrant consideration. In “Vocational Education,” James VanOosting distinguishes “between two radically different approaches to making life choices—the professional and the vocational”:

The professional approach is so familiar as to be a cultural common place. It has such primacy in personal power, economic currency and institution warrant that it claims near monopoly status: is there any other way to make a decision? The professional approach is based on logic and is susceptible to quantitative analysis. (8)

VanOosting contrasts this definition of “professional” with the following definition of “vocation”:

The word “vocation” derives from the Latin infinitive vocare, “to call,” carrying inside it the Latin noun vox, or “voice.” The simplest English translation for “vocation” is “calling.” In common parlance, vocation and profession are sometimes used interchangeably. For my purposes, however, they must remain distinct, because they are decidedly different. (9)

Vocation, it follows, functions as an extreme alternative to profession. Vocations call, professions advertise; vocations rely on faith, professions expect security; vocations ignore caution, professions play the odds. According to VanOosting, “The two approaches cannot compete with each other because they do not occupy the same field of play. They are completely different, rooted in the soils from different lands” (9).

Understandably, the practitioners of the professional model cannot responsibly advise students to become artists, or to enter any profession where the risks far outweigh the rewards. The vocational model relies on different thinking. VanOosting reminds us that, “in Hebrew Scripture, Moses had a vocation. There is no profession called ‘Liberator of Slaves’ and, if there were, the list of disadvantages to such a career choice would be much longer than the advantages” (9). In Let Your Life Speak, Parker Palmer makes a similar distinction between a wise career path and a vocation. States Palmer, “Vocation is more akin to the ancient tradition of pilgrimage—‘a transformative journey to a sacred center’ full of hardship, darkness, and peril” (18).

(For further elaboration, see Suspiciously Appropriate Yet Completely True Anecdote # 1 in Appendix.)

Translation: people choose professions because they want to, because they are reasonable, because the odds look good, because of financial safety. People follow vocations because they must. To paraphrase an old ad campaign for a commercial investor service, “When God talks, people listen.” In Here I am, Quentin Schultze summarizes this distinction: “Too often we put conditions on our availability: ‘Okay, Lord, since you haven’t literally spoken to me, I am going to do whatever I want for a while.’” (20). In contrast to this “professional” approach,3 Schultze advocates following Abraham’s four word reply to God’s call, “Here I am, Lord,” with the prayer, “Use me! Use me! Use me!” (20).

Part Two: Vocation and the Arts

The “Non-essential” Vocation, the Criterion of Utility, and Other Lies

During the economic boom of the 1990s, I watched many theatre students flip their tassels and enter the post-college world. Some went on to graduate school; a few earned their livings as actors or theatre technicians; most found “day jobs.” Several students succeeded in finding work in the non-profit arts’ sector as administrators, facilities managers, video producers, website designers, and after-school drama program leaders. As a theatre professor at least partially responsible for the education of these students, I took comfort that many found gainful, productive and service-oriented employment in fields tangentially connected to their college major. They truly seemed to be using their education while simultaneously advancing the relevance of art within the larger culture.

When the tech bubble finally burst shortly after the dawn of the new millennium, and recession ensued, a new crop of theatre graduates experienced difficulty finding employment. Of course this predicament crossed all disciplines, but I wager that graduates aiming for positions with non-profit arts’ organizations encountered a particularly tough time. It seemed that the resources that made these positions possible had dried up. I recall listening to a radio broadcast of the then newly elected governor of Minnesota warning the public to expect severe budget cuts in all “non-essential programs.” What constituted a non-essential program? On a long list that included, among other items, closing low-traffic highway rest stops, the governor’s proposed budget called for deep cuts to state-subsidized arts funding. When compared with vital needs in healthcare and education, windfalls such as The Guthrie Theatre and “artist in the schools” programs ranked low on the list of priorities. Under this rubric, common throughout the United States, the arts function as a luxury. Pay for them in good times, when surpluses abound, but cut them to the bone when times turn tough. After all, the arts are “non-essential” to our daily lives—frosting on the cake of a healthy economy.

These criterion of utility in evaluating a work of art underscores a belief pervasive throughout the culture. It is a flawed, uncritical, and unbiblical position. Paul’s discussion of the body of Christ in 1 Corinthians 12:12 offers a useful scriptural starting point:

The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. If the foot should say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. And if the ear should say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,’ it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body.” (NIV, 1 Corinthians 12:12)

In order to further His Kingdom, God gifts His people with a wide array of abilities. All members of the creation play a role in a divine and elaborate plan. I break no new ground in recounting this foundational information. But, despite its centrality to Christian life, too many of us ignore it.

(For further elaboration, see Suspiciously Appropriate Yet Completely True Anecdote # 2 in Appendix.)

The body of Christ metaphor extends easily to the concept of vocation. Historically, Christian communities limit the definition of vocation. In their zeal to serve, many Christians overlook their gifts and damage themselves and others because they incorrectly believe that the only concrete way to serve the Lord is in the pastorate or the mission field. Fortunately, “ministry” comprises more than two vocations. The continuation and restoration of the creation requires that some of us minister as teachers, accountants, bus drivers, and, yes, artists. We must reject any sense of hierarchy in God’s callings, whether imposed by well-meaning Christians with a narrow view of vocation or by a culture obsessed with status. In Keeping the Faith, Nicholas Wolterstorff warns against intellectual elitism. “The task of the scholar,” states Wolterstorff, “though important for the health of the community, is as such neither better nor worse in God’s eyes than that of a gardener, that of a preacher, that of a carpenter” (27). Simply put, the criterion of utility, the idea that some callings are more useful than others, goes against a Biblically centered interpretation of vocation. All callings potentially work towards the good of the Kingdom.

Moreover, the mere existence of criterion of utility signals the perception of a spiritual decline in the arts. In “Religion and the Mission of the Artist,” Denis De Rougemont reminds us that many civilizations have existed in which works of art “have been regarded as eminently useful, because they contained a power, an exalting or terrifying quality, a meaning” (175). Despite the fact that art remains essentially symbolic, the plays, the pottery, the choral odes of today no longer carry the weight of the eternal.4 De Rougemont argues that rubrics used to evaluate works of art based on their “utility or necessity, on the one hand, and gratuitousness or uselessness, on the other, are inconsistent and absolutely superficial” and ultimately teach “something about the nature and attitude of the society that accepts them” (175). Wilson does not exaggerate when he laments, “Tragically, many Christians would agree that the arts serve no useful function in the world” (71). The true lesson to be learned, according to De Rougemont, is “the knowledge that this society has lost the sense of the sacred” (175).

Of course art remains useful, powerful, and spiritual despite misguided notions that it is frivolous, unimportant, and secular. That some Christians pretend art is useless ultimately diminishes Christian influence, forfeiting authority to other voices. We must excise sugarcoated fantasies from our educational models that mere exposure to art will automatically turn us into better people, lest we forget that Hitler trained as a painter. Some artists clearly do exercise their influence irresponsibly. They deck the world with artistic symbols that promote ideologies of racism, propaganda, intolerance, unhealthy body image, sexual abuse, and chemical dependency. On this point, Wilson wisely observes, “The arts appear to be many things capable of being a good or bad influence on life and society” (6). In Art in Action, Wolterstorff chooses more evocative language to make a similar point: “Art is not isolated from the radical fallenness of our nature. It is an instrument of it. Art does not lift us out of the radical evil of our history but plunges us into it. Art is not man’s savior but a willing accomplice to his crimes” (84).

In an understandable if knee-jerk response to fallen imitations, many Christians advocate a paralyzing self-censorship that rarely works and ultimately discourages Christian artists from being provocative. In Eyes Wide Open, William Romanowski rightly observes that the desire of Christian artists to be mainstream has resulted in a “penchant for sentimentality” and “homogenized knock-offs” (80). In nearly every instance, this self-censoring approach fails as a method of creating good art or as serious alternative to the terrible messages that artistically irresponsible “texts” promote. Such legalistic and divisive measures inevitably frighten Christian artists away from exploring the frightening yet inherent truths of life.

Moreover, Christ-against-culture tactics such as censorship or cultural isolationism neglect the truth that God’s grace exists in even the most fallen and depraved artifacts. In the concluding line of On Politics and the Art of Acting, Arthur Miller reminds us that even ethically suspect works of art may hold awe-inspiring power and unquenchable graciousness:

However dull or morally delinquent an artist may be, in his moment of creation, when his work pierces to the truth, he cannot dissimulate, he cannot fake it. Tolstoy once remarked that what we work for in a work of art is the revelation of the artist’s soul, a glimpse of God. You can’t fake that. (86)

In the Reformed tradition of “common grace,” all beauty is God’s beauty, as all knowledge is God’s knowledge. Ironically, attempts by Christians to protect faith from art more often than not diminish faith in art and underestimate God’s awesome and omnipresent influence.

Art reflects a worldview. I reference the harmful potential of art only to bring to light the positive contributions that a thoughtful Christian worldview proffers the world. Instead of being embarrassed when great artists are not Christians, or, for that matter, are anti-Christian, Christian artists should seize the opportunity to explore complicated and inherently scriptural concepts—creation, incarnation, redemption, the fall—in thoughtful and challenging ways. Both as artists and audiences, Christians need to re-learn the usefulness of art in their lives and embrace and engage artistic attempts that seek the truth. The stakes are high. Wilson laments the “tragic results” of “ignoring the cosmic consequences of the Cross”:

Withdrawing from the culture in a mistaken attempt to escape the ‘world’ has tended to make some Christians, not only anti-art but, even more serious, anti-intellectual. Not only do they fail to understand what the modern artist is trying to say or do, but they deliberately make no attempt to understand. This can only lead to a breakdown in communication and a failure to appreciate the forces and “demons” let loose on our age. (72)

This is a long way of declaring that the vocation of the artist represents a sacred and essential calling, a calling that Christians must heed and support. On this point I recall a conversation I had several years ago with a graduate school classmate. Discussing the depraved state of the popular theatre, he offered, “Sure, the theatre is a pretty fallen place, but the solution isn’t for all of the Christians to leave it.” In all forms of art, Christians need to be a presence, to offer a thoughtful alternative to the lie, or to reveal the grace veiled within all works of art. Brokenness impacts all parts of creation, including art. But, in a dark room, a single candle often casts the most light.

The Arts and the Mission of Vocation

Having argued that art is neither frivolous nor powerless as a force in the culture, I now wish to reflect on the roles and responsibilities that Christian artists might play in God’s creation. Admittedly, a library, not one section of a thirty-page essay, would better serve this broad topic. I humbly offer the piecemeal information below to educate people contemplating vocations in the arts of some of the ways that they may ultimately use their callings in lives of service.

Earlier I discussed how, if advertised in the want-ads, Moses’ “vocation description” might look something like “Wanted: Liberator of the Slaves.” What essential roles and responsibilities might go into a similar description for an artist? Wilson reflections on the cultural influence granted to art helps formulate such a description:

Poets, according to Shelley, are the unacknowledged legislators of the world, and it is a fact that books have changed cultures and the history of civilization. Music can stir the heart and capture the soul of a nation, setting it off in a different direction to the beat of a different drummer. Drama can educate and inspire movements and ideologies while architecture is the concrete realization of a society’s values and dreams. Painting and sculpture can create new idols to worship and serve. (6)

Wanted: Artist. Responsibilities include world legislator, culture changer, soul stirrer, movement inspirer, and value-realizer.

And since all of the above descriptions could apply as easily to Stalin as Mother Teresa, De Rougemont’s importation of language typically reserved for the mission field further validates a vocation in the arts from a more intentionally Christian perspective.

I think that an artist fulfils his mission, in proportion as his work elicits in the spectators, readers, or hearers, a sense of liberation; manifests the true, that is to say, renders truth sensible; evokes the order of the world of the laws of human destiny; builds or reveals the structure in the sensations, imaginations, ideas; and finally, induces to greater love. (182)

De Rougemont’s pithy statement yields several vital additions to our steadily growing vocation description. Artists serve as truth-tellers, liberators, and teachers. Perhaps most important, they obey and facilitate the first and greatest commandment: they “induce love.” In a broken world deeply in need of tenderness and direction, artists answer a vital call.

In Art in Action, Wolterstorff illuminates the role of the Christian artist in society even further by cultivating a connection to horticulture. His Reformed reading of Genesis envisions the collective vocation of humanity as that of a gardener (77). Often described in Reformed circles as the “cultural mandate,” this interpretation says that God calls His followers to keep or “subdue the creation in order for the purpose of serving human livelihood and delight” (76). Obviously artists “subdue” differently than gardeners. Wolterstorff explains:

The artist takes an amorphous pile of bits of colored glass and orders them upon the wall of the basilica so that the liturgy can take place in the splendor of flickering colored light and in the presence of the invoked saints…. He makes from our huge store of words—of sounds with meaning—a selection and puts them into an order so as thereby to inspire his fellow men to “not go gentle into that good night.” The artist, when he brings forth order for human benefit or divine honor, shares in man’s vocation to master and subdue the earth. (77)

In this view, the vocation of the artist is akin to an organizer—a gifted steward who takes raw materials of nature and arranges patterns that both instruct humanity and glorify the true Creator. De Rougemont echoes this call for artistic stewardship when he writes, “Art is an exercise of the whole person, not to compete with God, but to coincide better with the order of Creation, to love it better, and to reestablish ourselves in it” (182).

The “artist as gardener” simile implies a servant function that warrants further emphasis. All too often, artists project an elitist and prima donna persona, a posture that alienates and separates them from the common people and the common good. How weary I become when I hear an artist profess, “I don’t care if the audience likes it or not. I do this for me.” Artists who embrace such selfish ideology must not realize that, as Wolterstorff observes, “the tragedy of modern urban life is not only that so many in our cities are oppressed and powerless, but also that so many have nothing surrounding them in which any human being could possibly take sensory delight” (82). Artists who understand service as a vital part of their vocation hold within themselves the ability to confront this tragedy of modern life, to transform blight into delight.

Towards this end, Wilson calls for a:

return to the tradition that the artist as servant—just as all men and women were created to be servants of God and one another. It is to see the arts, not as a mystical or snobbish pursuit for the culturally privileged, but existing for the benefit and enjoyment of all. It is to recognize art as one of the richest gifts of God to mankind and to rejoice in the creativity He has given to man (and women). (7-8)

Seerveld sharpens the servant-artist ideal: “Artists need to realize that they are, as Heidegger would say, neighborhooded, and that other people are the artist’s fellow-creatures who need care and help in looking at the nuances of reality; and it is this service of care and help which artists are called to provide” (58). This achievable ideal calls for artists to permeate their communities, to use their talents to care for the aesthetic yearnings of their “fellow-creatures.”

How artists realize artistic-servanthood is a question at the center of a vocation in the arts. Hard-earned answers to this question promise to restore the vital significance of artists to their respective communities. Fortunately, several models currently thrive that replace self-centered and indulgent stereotypes of artists with community-centered servant ideals, many of them redemptive—if not overtly Christian—in mission. Some illustrative if arbitrary examples include: in 2000, the Theatre Communications Group launched the New Generations Program, a successful plan that awards grants to young theatre artists who target their efforts to empower marginalized communities5; in his keynote address to at 2005 ARTEO (Art = Economic Development) meeting, cowboy artist and North Dakota native Walter Piehl advised artists to select subjects that are generally popular with the people of a specific region, thus connecting art to community in meaningful and marketable ways (Cantlon C7)6; neighborhood centers like the Grandville Avenue Academy for the Arts in Grand Rapids, Michigan, support artists-in-residence programs with the proviso that resident artists teach courses to the youth of the community7; as a boy, I gave up my bedroom for a week to a then unknown poet and essayist named Kathleen Norris whom my elementary-school-teacher mother lured to her classroom on an isolated Air Force base in the upper Midwest as part of an “artist-in-residence” program.8 A detailed examination of each of these community-centered arts initiatives should be the topic of another study. For now, suffice to say that they serve as only four of countless models of ways that artists “neighborhood” themselves.

Seerveld drives this home: “I believe it is one of our callings as generous stewards of the Lord to see to it that Christian artistry is spilled, like Mary Magdalene’s rich perfume, over the heads and feet, minds and sorrows of the most helpless ones in our society, even if they are unchurched, unpatriotic, and unable to buy. Otherwise, I believe that, as a body who have been given Jesus Christ, we will be found wanting when the Lord returns” (58).

Finally, the call to serve as good stewards of the creation extends to our own artistic gifts. In a quest to develop servant-artists, we must not confuse being self-serving with serving one’s self. Created by God in His image, we exist as part of the creation. How can artists cultivate and shape the earth’s raw materials into edifying works of art if they do not first cultivate and shape the raw materials within themselves? As James Mead observes in his essay, “The Divine Vocation: Reformed Theology’s Conversation with the Call of God in the Biblical Traditions,” “Human vocation is a reflection of divine vocation for the same reason that humankind is the image of God” (3). Developing one’s artistic gifts through years of study, rehearsal and repetition represents an essential form of self-stewardship. The innumerable benefits of art cannot impact the creation if artists fail as planters of their own gardens.

(For further elaboration, see Suspiciously Appropriate Yet Completely True Anecdote # 3 in Appendix.)

This imperative segues nicely into Part Three of my study.

Part Three: The Role of the Christian Liberal in Vocation and the Arts

The basic assumption established in Part One of this study is that a vocation in the arts is a legitimate calling because God entrusts artists with important roles and responsibilities within His creation. In Part Three, I envision the unique leadership role that the CLA might provide in supporting a vocational attitude toward the arts. I see this role as threefold. First, the CLA must, to the best of its abilities, use its influence to restore the legitimacy and primacy of the arts within the larger culture. Second, the CLA must fully embrace its role in helping students discern their vocation. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the CLA must affirm students in the sacred validity of a vocation in the arts while simultaneously preparing them for the trials inherent in answering God’s call.

Changing Cultural Attitudes One Non-major at a Time

I firmly believe that a vocation in the arts is perceived negatively today partly because the culture as a whole devalues and poorly supports the arts. The liberal arts in general and the CLA in particular offer an antidote to this cultural malady. Every semester, I teach “Theatre as a Fine Art.” Populated mainly by non-majors, this core course provides many college students with their only direct engagement with the theatre during college. Many students who enter the course have never seen a play before. Although I claim only a modest conversion rate, I approach this course with a missionary’s zeal. On the first day, I inform the students that the theatre rarely, if ever, suffers from a shortage of actors, playwrights or designers but, for most of its turbulent history, it has endured a dearth of audience members and patrons. Over the course of sixteen weeks, I try to instill students with not only a deeper understanding but also an active affection for the theatre. If such assessment were possible, I would measure the success or failure of this core course not by how many majors it attracts, but by how many students might, as a result of taking “Theatre as a Fine Art,” one day purchase a subscription to a regional theatre, take their family to a touring children’s theatre production, serve on a board of community theatre, or drop a generous offering into a street performer’s hat in the subway.

Ironically, most departments in colleges and universities, whether faith-based or secular, begrudgingly teach introductory courses. More experienced faculty often flee from them or mutter complaints when forced to teach them. Larger universities typically pawn these introductory courses onto graduate assistants. This backwards and cynical approach, while easy to fall into, needs to end if the true potential of a college curriculum is ever to be realized. The bulk of students who flow through a department appear in the department’s core offerings; these offerings merit the best efforts and the best teachers. In the true spirit of the liberal arts, these introductory courses offer the opportunity to advocate that supporting the arts is a vital vocation for which we all may find ourselves called. Whatever major they select, today’s general education students potentially play an instrumental role in assuring that the various fields of art flourish as flowers in God’s creation and recapture the sacred status of art within the larger community. In other words, making a vocation in the arts a respectable and sustainable calling depends largely on the generous participation of non-artists. In order for artists to serve the community, the community must serve the artists. We must, as Schultze advocates in Communicating for Life “co-create culture” in order to “shape it and share it with ourselves” (19).

Earlier, I used the language of the mission field to describe the role that artists play as stewards of creation. If this analogy is fair and accurate, it follows that Christians should provide similar prayer and financial support to the art world as they do to the developing world. Seerveld recounts a dialogue that took place while fundraising for a Christian art gallery in Toronto. Explaining why he couldn’t support the drive, a potential-donor said, “I just gave $10,000 to a leper colony in Africa run by missionaries of our church. Why should I give money to young artists in a modern city like Toronto?” Predictably, Seerveld’s explanation that “young Christian artists, exercising the gifts of painting and sculpting that God had given them, could not put bread on the table for their families” failed to persuade the reluctant donor (42). In the wake of tsunamis, famines, or ever-present leper colonies, even the most art-loving Christians instinctively regress art to a “non-essential” status.

Certainly, I am not suggesting that Christians turn support away from natural disasters so that their local artist may prosper in the suburbs. I only point out, along with Seerveld, that artists contribute to the welfare of the culture and that Christians are called to support them. Seerveld imagines this role:

What is at stake for the body of Christ if it does not have a prayer list of artists in the same way that it has a prayer list of missionaries? Should not every congregation of Christ’s followers have its resident playwright or song-writer that you can phone up to commission a play or a song for your wedding anniversary, in the same way that you have a family doctor to call up when you have the mumps? (42)

Few Christian communities occupy the world Seerveld imagines. Could an intentional effort from the CLA help bring about a shift? Does not such an effort correspond with the basic mission of Christian education to prepare students for lives of service to God and humankind? Yes, to both questions. In The Soul Tells A Story: Engaging Creativity with Spirituality in the Writing Life, Vinita Hampton Wright writes, “The healthy creative life requires community, not only mentors and leaders but companions who help the person to survive the difficulties and fully appreciate the blessings” (54). Whether through senior seminars or introductory classes, the CLA need to inculcate this vision of community for the arts into the hearts and minds of its faculty, students, and alumni.

Discerning Vocations One Major at a Time

Having discussed a strategy for how arts programs within the CLA might unleash the potential of non-art majors, the focus of this discussion now logically turns to how these programs might serve their actual majors. In addition to numerous other duties, faculty advise students. Too often, hammering out an agreeable class schedule overshadows serious discussions of vocation. When vocation discussions do occur, the advisor’s role is replete with ethical pitfalls and conflicts of interest. Every department covets numbers, and the temptation looms to lure gifted students away from other programs. Years ago, I remember openly questioning a colleague’s motives when she gleefully announced that she successfully “converted” another student to theatre from the business communications track. What are the rules? Should arts faculty first discourage students in order to weed out the non-serious, the same way that some science departments blast incoming freshmen with organic chemistry in order to scale-back the inflated pre-med population? Imagine the pitch: “Good morning prospective students. This is why you don’t want to major in theatre, art, film or music.” I am pretty sure admissions would disagree with this approach.

A key concept to remember in these ethically charged situations is that God calls while faculty only mentor. Good mentoring should include discussions about “profession.” Guileless discussions about bleak employment prospects should not, however, replace or be confused with attempts to decipher a student’s vocation. VanOosting identifies a useful three-stage process for discerning one’s vocation as opposed to one’s profession:

A vocation must be heard or felt with passion. This passion – to write, to paint, to heal, to teach—must be confirmed first by oneself. Second, it needs to match one’s gifts. And, finally, it needs to be confirmed by a community of others or by a mentor. This final step helps preclude mistaking a personal compulsion with genuine vocation. (10)

To varying degrees, faculty within the CLA participate in each of these three stages of self-confirmation, matching one’s gifts, and confirming the vocation through a community. This mentor role invites facilitators, not decision makers; translators not callers; servants not recruiters.

Working through VanOosting’s process, to “hear and feel a vocation with passion” first requires an investigation into the source of the passion. In my department, first year students sometimes arrive as declared theatre majors only to witness their passion evaporate once they dig in. Conversely, students often accidentally stumble into a theatre course or a production only to find themselves bitten by a very poisonous bug. Both extremes hear and/or feel a strong attraction to the theatre. Borrowing Pentecostal language, I find it helpful to interpret these initial fits of passion as more akin to spiritual awakenings than religious conversions. Before joining the church, students must confirm the awakening. Rainer Maria Rilke advises a vocation seeker in this stage to “delve into yourself for a deep answer. And if this should be affirmative, if you meet this earnest question with a strong and simple, ‘I must,’ then build your life according to this necessity” (16). As humble stewards of education, faculty mentors best serve students in this first stage of vocational discernment by providing information, listening, praying and, when appropriate, keeping silent.

If we accept the basic premise that liberal arts education cultivates general intellectual ability, then VanOosting’s second stage of discerning a vocation melds nicely with the liberal arts model. After all, how better may a student “match one’s gifts” than by taking a wide array of courses both in their major and outside of it? A current trend in theatre programs within the university model asks students to specialize in one discrete area. While earning a BFA in acting or painting at age 21 may seem attractive to many students, this push toward specialization excludes learning about the wider art to say nothing of the wider world. How can students confirm their gifts with their passions if they never earn an opportunity to discover the areas in which God has gifted them? In this gift-discovery stage of vocation, mentorship plays an important role of exposing students to as much complicated art as possible while challenging them to develop their artistic and aesthetic muscles. In hindsight, Leo Strauss’ 1959 address at the University of Chicago, “What Is Liberal Education” seems uniquely directed towards aspiring artists. “Liberal education is liberation from vulgarity. The Greeks had a beautiful word for "vulgarity"; they called it apeirokalia, lack of experience in things beautiful. Liberal education supplies us with experience in things beautiful” (6).

VanOosting’s third stage requires a more involved and potentially painful relationship between students and faculty mentors. Discerning whether a student’s passion matches her gifts can be delicate, especially in the arts. Students commonly translate their passion for the theatre, for example, into a dream of performing on Broadway. Sadly, a student’s gift may not confirm this love of acting. An assessment and redirection of a student’s gifts may go against the student’s sense of self; sometimes, this assessment carries the baggage of a personality clash. Granted, teachers often prove wrong in their assessment of student talent, but all students deserve an honest and informed appraisal of their abilities. All students deserve to have their passion confirmed. How might these frank conversations take place?

(For further elaboration, see Suspiciously Appropriate Yet Completely True Anecdote # 4 in Appendix.)

Drawing upon his Quaker roots, Palmer advocates what he calls a “clearness committee.” This Quaker tradition involves “a process in which a dozen trusted friends help discern a vocation” (44). Because of its faith component, this tradition translates beautifully to the CLA. Because of their expertise and mentorship role, faculty should ideally steer this committee. Indeed, Parker’s clearness committee echoes existing practices such as “juries” common in many music departments. Striving to guide the students toward their gifts, a “clearness committee” provides a forum to lovingly and constructively offer impressions of students’ abilities. They could take many forms, from required meetings at the end of the semester in conference rooms, to more casual gatherings around a dining room table. Students may choose to compose their committees with a variety of people, faculty included, who care for them. The sometimes painful steps of identifying and confirming gifts is necessary as students and faculty alike attempt to discern the intricacies and ambiguities that surround the pursuit of vocation.

This said, all attempt to discern God’s calling must be approached with humility, patience, and a healthy sense of humor. Palmer recounts a discussion with a member of his “clearness committee,” a Quaker elder named Ruth. Despite years of trying to discern God’s calling for his life, Parker confided to Ruth that God still offered him no clear way. In a “a model of Quaker plain-speaking,” Ruth replied, “‘I’m a birthright Friend. . . and in sixty-plus years of living, way has never opened in front of me’ … Then she spoke again, this time with a grin. ‘But a lot of way has closed behind me, and that’s had the same guiding effect’” (38).

Serving and Surviving

Not long ago, I talked with a friend after she successfully interviewed for a position as theater professor at a small liberal arts college. During her interview, a future colleague asked her if her feelings about undergraduate theatre higher education had changed in the ten years since she had been a student. She candidly replied that she wanted to make sure her students understood what a difficult field theatre is. “I think I left college with the naive idea that I would simply move to a city and immediately start working in the theatre,” she said. “If I got this impression from my professors, I was advised poorly.” Obviously, the “hardship and peril” element of a vocational approach to the arts cannot responsibly be glossed over. Palmer rightly observes that advisors do a disservice to students when they withhold the “shadowy parts” (18).

Idealistic proclamations about the value of art to the culture or the importance of listening to God’s call do not change the sad truth that many gifted artists will never realize their dream of working as artists, at least in this lifetime. Not being able to use one’s gifts in the way that one envisions exposes even the most loyal follower of Christ to feelings of despair and self-doubt. “Okay God, you gave me this passion. I confirmed it as best I could. I’ve done everything I can to develop it. I desire to serve others and glorify you with it, but nobody will give me the opportunity.” Such anguished thoughts cross all disciplines, but I wager they are particularly strong in the arts, where emotions and temperaments run a little higher and where such a low percentage of artists sustain a living exclusively through their art. In Hear I Am, Schultze reminds us that picking a career reflects a high degree of “social privilege” not available to “most of the world’s population” (16). Sadly, such recognitions of privilege offer cold comfort to those schooled in the “professional” model of education. The temptation exists to lapse into bitterness, pressed by the feeling that God somehow broke His promises.

(For further elaboration, see Suspiciously Appropriate Yet Completely True Anecdote # 5 in Appendix)

In such moments, warmer comfort may come from the wisdom that true vocation does not carry the burden of reward. In “Music as Vocation,” Lipman wrestles with what it means to devote oneself to an art form without professional expectations.

And so we are led to the idea of what it now means to live “for” music… I think we can all understand the meaning of the word “for”: to love music, as one of God’s sublime creations for the benefit of humankind, with all our hearts, with all our souls, and with all our might. It means to live by music; it means not just to think music but to think in music; it means to consecrate one’s life to the service of music; it means music as a way of life. It does not mean that one must make a profession of music; still less does it mean that one who lives “for” music may not live in the world. It only means that music must come first and last. (53-54)

Biblical prophets do not hold a monopoly on the intense devotion that Lipman describes. It parallels the commitment parents routinely demonstrate in their care for a severely disabled child. Caring for such a child represents a vocation—a necessary and vital calling that will probably never result in earthly forms of reward. The arts at times require this level of selfless participation, of stewardship without need or hope for recompense. We may labor to transform this condition the same way that medical researchers may work to cure autism. But, in many ways, the absence of a cure makes the answering of the call all the more grace-filled and holy.

And, realistically, the decision to follow a calling in the arts need not mean a life of despair, destitution, or poverty. After all, we must, as Lipman suggests above, “live in the world.” In a 2003 “My Turn” column in Newsweek, persistently unemployed actor Clay Warnick humorously reflects on his decision to doggedly pursue an acting career. While he admits that his earnings as a professional actor only constitute about 15 percent of the thousands of dollars invested in classes and union fees, Warnick actually credits his acting experiences with awarding him an advantage in the workforce.

Besides the fact that I occasionally get an actual job, there are several benefits to pursing an acting career. These benefits are so great, in fact, I urge all parents to insist their children study theatre in college. If your child is a drama major, you can rest assured he’s learning a lot about literature, history and art along with life lessons in persistence, teamwork and pure grit. . . . This persistence has served me well in my day job as a newspaper ad salesman. For 20 years, I’ve put my ego on the line selling myself to film, TV and commercials producers. Next to that, selling an ad in a newspaper is a piece of cake. I’ve got the commission checks to prove it. (14)

“Living in this world” sometimes means working in jobs and sustaining relationships that seem far-a-field from the employment we imagined for ourselves when we first answered God’s call.

On this topic, I repeatedly inform prospective students, and, more often, their parents, that theatre majors usually land on their feet in the big bad world. I cannot recall the number of times former students have repeated a phrase something to the effect of, “I use my major everyday.” I recently directed a play written by a theatre graduate of a CLA college. A playwright by vocation, he currently supports himself as a sales manager at a public relations firm. He writes plays every night after putting his kids to bed; he regularly sends out scripts to playwriting contests; he helps run a local writer’s group; he blogs and lets anyone who wants to download his finished scripts from his website. Describing his day-job, he once told me, “I perform everyday. I write, I edit, I read my audience, I give presentations constantly. I don’t think I’d be half as good at any of it if I hadn’t spent so much time in the theatre.” Was a job as a sales rep what he had in mind when he graduated from college fifteen years ago? Probably not. Is he still true to his vocation? I believe he is. While Wright acknowledges “people tend to be more creative when they are eating reasonably well and not hiding from creditors,” she cogently follows this remark with “but creative gifts exist apart from jobs and careers. A lot of people have “day jobs” and still carry on with their creative works” (24).

In Here I am, Schultze offers the term “stations” to describe how Christians may ethically live and work in the world. A tributary of vocation, Schultze defines “stations” as “our jobs, situations, and relationships” that force us to “work out our faith concretely” (15). When applied to the arts, an aspiring filmmaker may support a family through the station of making a promotional film for a local charity. A visual artist may apply expertise in color and texture to interior design and thus bring joy and vitality to a client’s family room. A poet may staff the information desk at a large bookseller, using hard-acquired literary acumen to guide hungry readers. These represent only three of countless stations that flow out of a vocation in the arts.

Surely moments such as these glorify God. Surely God knows what He is doing when a capitalistic culture necessitates that artists use their gifts in various stations. In a concrete example, Lipman appropriately chastens purist music critics who berate classically trained musicians for earning their daily bread catering to “bourgeois society.” States Lipman, “we would do well to remind ourselves of Richard Strauss’s comment in 1904 when he was criticized for conducting two concerts in Wanamaker’s department store in New York: ‘True art ennobles any hall, and to earn money for wife and child is not a disgrace to an artist’” (53). Clearly, artists may further God’s kingdom even when they use their gifts in unplanned, unexpected and unconventional stations.

Conclusions

The professional and vocational models of education offer two distinct approaches to the arts. If the professional model dominates the Christian higher education landscape, parents may breath easier, graduates may contribute to their 401Ks sooner, and cloistered Christians may consume elevator-music-art freely without fear of intellectual challenge or stimulation. These results, while comforting to some, come at a potentially high cost. If artists fail to develop their talents, beautiful gifts from God become locked in boxes of fear and doubt, and no one is helped or glorified. The entire Body of Christ suffers if the people whom God gifts neglect His call. The arts shift from a vital and sacred part of creation to a non-essential form of entertainment. They move from a model that fosters a servant-artist ideal grounded on principles of stewardship and pilgrimage to a professional approach based on consumption and self-congratulation. Make no mistake: these are the legacies of the professional model.

Fortunately, an ancient and Biblical alternative exists for the people who God calls as artists. Although it may not conform to sound business model, the vocational alternative does grant room for artists to serve as well as survive in the world. The CLA has a role to play in this survival. By championing the arts as a legitimate vocation, and by encouraging students to discern the still, soft voice whispering in their ears, we can help construct a culture where artists thrive in all stations of life.

Ironically, the vocation ideal may ultimately be more “practical” than the professional model. I started this essay with the phrase “If you can be happy doing something other than theatre, do it.” If unexamined, this homage to practicality and happiness could actually lead students in exactly in the opposite direction. For, as VanOosting prudently observes, “not to use one’s gifts, regardless of excuse, is to live an anguished life apart from creativity. Look around, and see if it isn’t true” (11).

Appendix of Suspiciously Appropriate Yet Completely True Anecdotes

Suspiciously Appropriate Yet Completely True Anecdote # 1

An effort to discern and sharpen my personal vocation as college theatre professor recently influenced a major shift in my life. I left a tenure-track position at a richly-endowed, urban Christian college for a position as a smaller Christian college on a rural campus with unarguably fewer resources and an arguably lower visibility within the Christian College community. I initially explored the position because it came with the possibility of tenure-track line for my wife at another nearby college and because the move would put us within a day’s drive of family. The timing did not work out perfectly, however, and I soon experienced the mixed blessing of needing to accept or decline a job offer before we knew if my wife would be offered her position. I agonized over what to do; I quickly fell into a “professional model” of making lists of pros and cons. With the cons in the lead, and not eager to endanger the status quo, I neared a “no” decision. One Sunday morning I shared my situation with a friend in the parking lot at church. Without hesitation, he said to me, “Bob, you need to go where you can do the most good.” This plain-speaking conviction socked me pretty hard. Of course God wanted me where I could do the most good, to be the servant-artists that He called me to be.

I grew up admiring the sunsets in a small town in the sparsely populated Great Plains. For a long time, I felt a pull to return. I interpreted this urge as a longing to live closer to extended family. But when forced to examine this persistent whisper, I found more in it. The discomfited experience of being asked to decline or accept a position that I would not have applied for without extenuating circumstances helped me discern that, at least for the time being, God wanted me to serve as a theatre professor in rural America; to minister to the kinds of students I grew up with and still felt simpatico; to help create good theatre for an audience that, without the presence of the college, would not often experience it.

I answered the call and soon found myself surrounded by a gifted department that, at risk of sounding immodest, thrives as one of the best and highly regarded programs of its kind in the nation. United with colleagues with the “professional” chops to earn their livings in higher profile places, we have joined together under a similar vocation. In a setting many Christian theatre artists with similar credentials would flee, we thrive, fulfilling through our lives and work a crucial calling within the Christian liberal arts.

Suspiciously Appropriate Yet Completely True Anecdote # 2

How can anyone argue that God gifts us all the same? My sister is a pediatrician. Although I deeply admire her contributions to the creation, my squeamish nature and hopeless performance in organic chemistry makes me a poor candidate for her profession. And, despite originating from the same gene pool, she would be the first to tell you that her gifts, considerable as they are, wouldn’t translate well into a career in the theatre. Clued-in early in our development by different gifts and temperaments, we heard different calls that ultimately led us down different paths. She ministers medically to at-risk children in a major urban area. I teach theatre and direct plays at a CLA college. Both of us serve God through our work. What a great design.

Suspiciously Appropriate Yet Completely True Anecdote # 3

I assemble with a group of attractive and talkative strangers my age in a run-down space littered with plywood boxes painted black and ancient lighting instruments dangling from a broken network of overhead pipes. Listed on the itinerary only as, “the old space,” this dilapidated theatre now serves as a lecture hall, classroom and, presently, the site of freshman acting scholarship auditions. As we wait, the attractive collection of high school seniors take turns describing the show that they just finished and the overall brilliance of their performance. All of them played the lead role, of course, and some talk openly about their numerous professional contacts. Several question if college is really necessary for their fast-moving careers, but they seem to agree that they will at least consider it when they receive this scholarship. I wonder what the heck I am doing in this room with these people. I stepped off of a jet plane from rural America less than three hours ago, and never felt more like a hayseed.

At last, two avant-garde looking theatre instructors dramatically make their entrance. “Lou,” a forty-something Italian American who speaks with his hands and believes in “the method,” emotes passionate rhetoric about the excellent theatre conservatory program offered by the college and the sacrifice required for those select few fortunate enough to earn scholarships. He sheds a tear. “Sally,” dressed completely in black, smokes a slender cigarette, eyes us all disapprovingly, but says nothing. In less than ten minutes, they confirm every theatre stereotype I hold. I love it.

In alphabetical order, Lou calls us to the stage to perform our contrasting monologues not exceeding four minutes in length. I flew one thousand miles for these four minutes. Each audition concludes with a short question and answer period in which Lou asks us why we want to be actors. In the stressful daze, I don’t register how the other auditionors answer, although I have a feeling that many of the responses hint at the possibility of fame and fortune. When my time quickly comes, I muster as much confidence as I possible and say, “I think that we have a responsibility to develop our gifts. I don’t know if I’ll ever make it as an actor, but I’m pretty sure that I’m supposed to discover and develop this gift as far as I can.”

Eight years of higher education later, a decade of college teaching, and a concentrated summer of research specifically into the topic the role of vocation and arts, I can’t improve upon the mutterings of a nervous eighteen-year-old.

Suspiciously Appropriate Yet Completely True Anecdote # 4

Jesse arrived in the department fresh off her unofficial coronation as high school drama queen, her memory buzzing with lead roles and acclaim for her acting. Brimming with enthusiasm and confidence, she naturally auditioned for the first two plays of the semester. The world stopped when her eyes worked down both cast lists without registering her name. She cried. She called home. She considered transferring colleges. She prayed.

The next day, Jesse walked into the theatre director’s office and asked if there was any position left on the crew. The director told her that he still needed an assistant stage manger (ASM). He told her that he considered Jesse for ASM, but she had only checked “actor” on her audition form. That night Jesse took her place in rehearsal next to the stage manger, taking notes, clearing the stage, being of service.

Eight years later, Jesse nears the completion of doctorate in theatre from a prestigious university. During college and graduate school, she proved herself a promising scholar, a sensitive director, and a first-rate stage manger. Jesse did act again in her senior year, by choice. She performed well, but it wasn’t for her. Upon completing her doctorate, she plans to open a theatre company for people with disabilities with some graduate school friends. She wants to manage the company and direct occasionally. Against her will at first, Jesse successfully matched her passion for theatre with her gifts.

Suspiciously Appropriate Yet Completely True Anecdote # 5

When the name of a former student appears on my desktop email, I usually click to it right away, thrilled to connect to a beloved voice from the past and eager to avoid the other unopened work-related emails that promise to yoke me to my desk until Christ rises again. This time the email comes from a recent graduate who moved to a nearby city after graduation to pursue a career in the theatre. It turns out that she will be in town next week, and she wonders if I could find some time to meet with her. Five days later, we sip cokes together in the theatre lobby. She looks tired.

Without prompting, she shares a series of toxic experiences that have overwhelmed her pursuit of a career in the theatre. Apparently, the only theatre jobs that she can find overwork and underpay her. She feels unappreciated and unprofessional. The burden of working three minimum wage part-time jobs to make ends meet shows on her world-weary face and in the slumpy shoulders. It is difficult to know what she seeks from me exactly: career advice? empathy? someone to tell her that it is all right to give up? I try my best to encourage her without pretending that next week her big break will come. I pray that it does, but I know the odds.