| Introduction. From drama in local churches to images of Jesus in paintings and sculptures, from music reflecting God's glory in local idioms to films about Jesus, artistic expression spans a spectrum of ideas, materials, media and imagery that helps Christians of all cultures think more clearly about Christ. It challenges our presuppositions and pushes us to broaden our horizons even as we appreciate the creative talent God has given his worldwide body of believers. You might expect that arts would find a natural home on the visual medium of the World Wide Web-and you would be right. A search on Google for sites that have the words "arts" and "missions" yields about 285,000 hits. Clicking on advanced search and removing the words "degree" to eliminate educational programs, we still received about 192,000 hits. A search on "arts in mission" with the quotation marks forces Google to search for the exact words between the quotes, and reduces the number of hits to 118. Removing the word "degree" reduces the hits to eighty-six, a more manageable number! We invite you to experiment with your own search, but you might want to check out what we offer first. As usual, we have developed a MisLinks page (www.mislinks.org/practical/arts.htm) that provides numerous links that focus on the arts for this installment of Missions on the Web. On our page we start with general directories to help you find resources. From there we provide links to the performing arts of drama and dance, followed by music. After that are links to visual arts, which explore the Christian message as seen through paintings, sculpture, film and so on. Finally come journals, articles and collections of articles that help clarify our thinking on missions and the arts. On our Web page we link you to sites that are missions-or cross-culturally-focused. In this article we don't have the space to mention every source listed on our page, so we'll focus on the most useful or interesting to us and remind you to browse to the page of the most up-to-date collection of links. It is appropriate that we provide a warning to our readers. This is an area of the Web that, in the name of free expression, is filled with artistic material that is inappropriate for Christians. We have worked hard to filter out any sites that provide links to offensive sites or images. However, if you should find any connections that are inappropriate please notify us and we will drop the link. General Directories. In spite of the high number of hits found through Google, most of the sites found for this page were not located through Web search engines. Arts-related missions pages, we found out, are best discovered by browsing through Web directories that arrange their links within selected topics. Disciple the Nations (http:// disciplethenations.org/) is the site most focused on our theme. One subsection of the site is The Great Commission Worship & Arts Center (GCWAC) (http://disciplethenations. org/index9.html). The vision for GCWAC is to "effectively partner with churches, schools, missions and ministries in order to train, equip and release biblically established artists and musicians into their roles in seeing cities, nations and ethnic groups discipled into becoming wholehearted worshippers of God." This site provides more than one hundred links in various artistic categories through the index page (http:// disciplethenations.org/rield/index67.html), including forty articles. While the reasons for the somewhat haphazard site architecture are not clear, the specific focus of the site as a whole makes it worth the time to wade through the various links and crosslinks to find help you may need. Evangelism.uk.net (www.evangelism.uk.net/) is pragmatically focused. Its goal is "to offer suggestions and ideas to UK Christians and churches to encourage and enable their evangelistic thinking and action, and to help evangelism get done." The Creative Arts: Organizations page (www. evangelism.uk.net/ creative_arts.htm) has links to fourteen organizations. Another dedicated Web directory is the International Worship and Arts Network (www.worship-arts-network.com/). The site has as its vision to glorify God "by 1) influencing, challenging and resourcing artists who will declare the supremacy of Christ among the nations; and 2) by serving local churches in facilitating worship that is both artistically and culturally relevant. " Towards that end they provide a multitude of helpful connections. The Arts Index section of the site (www.worship-arts-network.com/arts-index.html) connects you to twenty-one subpages covering topics such as dance, ethnic music, puppets and computer graphics. The links page (www.worship-arts-network.com / links-index.html) provides dozens of links in nine categories (including Artists, Global Music, Web Evangelism and so on). A number of the major Web directories include a section on Christianity and Arts. Again, not necessarily missions-focused, they still provide potentially helpful resources for you to check out. We offer links to the appropriate directory sections of AltaVista, Google, LookSmart and Yahoo. Google's directory for arts in Christianity (http://directory.google. com/Top/Society/Religion_and_ Spirituality/Christianity/Arts/) includes seventeen sub-directories with over 4000 links. Some of the more unique subdirectories include comics (four links), computer wallpaper (nineteen links) and Orthodox Icons (forty-six links). Yahoo's directory for arts in Christianity (http:// dir.yahoo.com/Society_and_Culture/ Religion__and_Spirituality/Faiths_ and_Practices/Christianity/Arts/) is much smaller, with seven subcategories and less than two hundred links ranging from architecture (fifty-nine links) to theatre (forty-one links). Finally, we also searched several Christian Web directories to see what they offered on missions and art. For the most part, they focused on arts without a missions connection. Even so, our page gives you links to several of those sites, including Christian Re-source Index, Christians4Europe, CrossDaily, CrossSearch, East of Eden and ReligionsResources. As an example of the types of resources available through these directories, CrossSearch provides an extensive Arts and Entertainment directory (www. crosssearch. com/Arts_and_Entertainment/) with over 2800 links arranged in twelve categories from "Craft Arts" to "Visual Arts." Performing Arts: Dance and Drama. One major focus in artistic work is performance, including dance, drama, mime, music and so on. We divided the performing arts into two major sections. First are resources related to dance and drama, and second are music and ethnomusicology. The Christian Actors Website (http://members.tripod.com/~caws/ welcome.html) offers searching, messages, advice, links, and jobs focused on acting and Christian theater. Christian Sacred Dance (www.Christian dance.com/), sponsored by One Accord Ministries, has as its mission to "train and mentor a new generation of dancers dedicated to glorifying God, evangelizing the lost, and edifying believers in the Church and community with sacred dance." This large and well-organized site gives you access to resources such as props, helpful information on starting a dance ministry in a local church, educational opportunities, workshops and more. CrossSearch (www.crosssearch.com) offers a Drama and Musicals directory (www.cross search.com/Arts_ and_Entertainment/Performing_Arts/ Drama_and_Musicals/) with links to almost fifty sources for Christian drama productions, plays, musicals and other theatrical performances. There is also a subdirectory focused on youth and children with an additional six links.
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