Blaine Hogan worked as a professional actor for nearly 12 years before he took a sabbatical that led him to Mars Hill Graduate School in Seattle, WA. While in Seattle he received a Masters in Christian Studies focusing on the intersection of art and faith. He currently works for Willow Creek Community Church as an Experience Engineer creating contexts and spaces for people to experience God using video, multimedia, movement, and performance art. He writes about ideas, hope, and the creative process on his blog: www.blainehogan.com.
- Somewhere along the way he was fascinated between the intersection between art and faith.
- Art seeks to tell the truth in dark places.
- Movie theatres, galleries, etc.
- That’s what faith in God seeks to do, too.
- Most Christian art feels more like propaganda than truth.
- We’re over-informed and under under-refelctive.
- We’re afraid of being boring and unattractional.
- We often default to doing slick presentations that are emotionally-driven and void of reflection.
- Our work can be more potent, truthful and effective if we viewed ourselves more as prophets and pastors instead of programmers and producers.
- We need to turn more inward than outward.
- We need to use our own stories instead of someone else’s.
- We need to get a bigger view of our work and its importance.
If you want to make great art that provokes people in your communities to move towards restoration and reconciliation, you must work on yourself, your ideas and your creative process.
Yourself
- We are the most over-informed, under-reflective culture in human history.
- You don’t learn from your experiences you learn by reflecting on your experiences.
- We make art every week that asks people to reflect on and consider their own stories.
- If you aren’t willing to do the same your art won’t cause your congregations to do the same and lack the truth and honesty you’re asking them to awaken to.
- When you don’t take to reflect, the urgency of Sunday takes over and we default to what we know or by stealing other people’s ideas.
- These are the beginnings of creating propaganda.
- The sacred spaces you work in were meant for so much more than this.
- You can only bear witness to what you’ve been willing to face yourself.
- Self-awareness and reflection are the first place for us to start.
- Knowing and understanding our unique stories are the foundational elements to making good art in the church.
Ways to Understand Your Story
- Therapy
- Psychology without spirituality is arid and ultimately meaningless while spirituality without grounding in psychological work leads to vanity and illusions. – Understanding the Ennegram
- Prayer
- What does your prayer look like in regards to your story?
- Journaling/Writing
- Reading
- Let Your Life Speak by Parker Palmer
- To Be Told by Dan Allender
- Ask
- Ask people in your life what they see in you.
Every great piece of art comes from reading your own story. Under-inform and over-reflect.
Ideas
- The best ideas are ones that don’t set out to make a point but to tell a story.
- The best ideas must move you before they can move someone else.
How to Have Consistent Ideas
Listen
- Start by listening: to yourself and your community.
- YOu have a story that only you can tell but you must know it for yourself.
- Uncover the narrative in your community. What’s the story your unique community is trying to tell?
- We must act as cultural anthropologists.
- We must capture what we observe. We must take Field Notes. If we don’t write it down we forget it.
- Every month he takes time to pull out the themes that move him the most.
- Create something that comes from deep inside of you… something that moves you.
- The rate of return on things that move your artists will move your community.
Scratch When You Don’t Itch
- We need input to avoid copying when we panic.
- Capture everything.
- Scratching can be confused with stealing.
- The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp
- We all get stuck… one of the best solutions
Go analog when you’re stuck.
- When you get stuck, go offline.
- Remove distractions.
Creativity and disorganization are not badges of honor.
- Being less organized does not mean you are being more creative.
- Less organizations = more chaos.
- Chaos subverts creativity.
- None of us are getting paid for our ideas, we are getting paid to execute our ideas.
- BEHANCE developed Action Method.
- Making Ideas Happen by Scott Belsky
Even the failed pieces are essential.
- Fail and fail often.
Blaine shared this piece from Willow that was a result of him reflecting, ideating, going analog and failing.
An Act Of Confession from blaine hogan on Vimeo.
Our sacred spaces were made for bigger things than filling them with propaganda.
They are meant to be filled with our stories. Stories of light and darkness. Stories of redemption and restoration.
These stories are to be told by you.
You are prophets and pastors.
