“Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all things for the glory of God.” 1 Corinthians 10:31
“God is worthy of our utmost worship, and we believe that this includes our work as artists. In theatre, music, dance, or art we aim for the highest excellence. We believe that the more professional and impactful we are, the more tools we lay in God’s hands to use. Additionally, we remember we have an Audience of One. No matter where we are, how small the crowd is, or how the situation plays out, we do our best because He is worthy of it.”
The next value we want to highlight is Excellence. It is really important to us that we display excellence within our art. First and foremost, it is for the Lord because he deserves our praise in everything we do. We’ve also seen the Lord work in mighty ways when we go into places as professional performers, with excellence. These stories explain why we believe excellence is so important in building the Kingdom of God through the arts.
Opening Doors
During our time with YWAM Tampa in Mexico, we stayed with the Huichol people and performed for a village called Colorin. We prepared a performance that was full of the Name of Jesus. The first miracle happened when we showed up for our performance. The first person when met once we arrived was the daughter of the village witch doctor. She proceeded to tell us a story about missionaries who had come to their people and taken advantage of them. Obviously, this caused a great deal of mistrust towards Christianity in general. As a result of this mistrust, any and all Christian villagers were sent out of this village. We as a team jumped into action, re-planning our set to give the story of the gospel but not close doors for a relationship with these people.
The Lord opened many doors that day. We performed for them, concluding with our pantomime of the Prodigal Son. They surprised us with some traditional food and drink and even taught us some of their traditional dances. It was beautiful and opened doors for the long-term missionaries to continue a friendship with this village. God worked through us going in primarily as performers and we are confident that God made a permanent impact on the beautiful people of Colorin.
Yeshua in Malaysia
On our trip to Southeast Asia with YWAM Tampa, we had the opportunity to perform a beautiful musical about the life of Jesus – Yeshua. We performed the musical and ultimately the Gospel for 2,000 people at two different churches in Malaysia.
Proselytizing is illegal in Malaysia, specifically to Muslims. But as professional performers we were able to market this show as a theatre production – because it was. This meant Christians could bring their Muslim friends to this show to see the Gospel and it would not be against the law. After each show we saw people come to the Lord and miracles happen!
Going in as professional performers and with excellence opened doors we couldn’t imagine possible. Making sure that our quality lived up to that intention gave us credibility and many lives were changed by the Lord.
