“There’s no doubt God is an Artist,” says Dick Ryan, InterVarsity’s artist and art ministry coordinator in the Chicago area. Speaking at a chapel service to kick-off the second annual Arts Festival at InterVarsity’s National Service Center, Dick focused on Exodus chapter 31. There God tells Moses about the two artists he appointed to design a worship tent and its accessories.
Dick said he uses chapter 31 and other verses in Exodus as a way of showing artists and art students that creativity is important to God. “Many people don’t think you can be a Christian and a good artist,” he said. His ministry is focused on showing that God invented the arts and that God has a plan for each person’s artistic talents.
Dick has more than 25 years experience in the music theater business in the Chicago area. Now he travels widely, showing staff and student leaders how to create communities for artists in which they can learn to express God’s creativity in their art. As he talks with students he wants to see them begin to understand God’s love for them and God’s plan for their lives as his creative people.
“When God is involved in the creative process, people may be able to see a little foretaste of heaven,” he said. “That’s why people respond to art. They’re hunting for that beauty in their life.”
A number of InterVarsity staff work with students in the arts, including Jenny Hall, who leads SOULink, a ministry to artistic students on the University of Southern California campus.
Other speakers who are sharing during the NSC Arts Festival include landscape painter Steven Kozar and poet Ruth Goring.
