When we plan effective evangelistic strategies, we often talk about homogenous groups, unreached peoples and church growth. But in all this, mission agencies and churches must analyze regional and national cultures in the search for missing keys that will unlock communities for Christ. One vital key rarely considered is the role of artistic communication in reaching a culture and helping the church grow and reproduce itself within that culture.

Culturally Appropriate When believers worship God and express their faith in a familiar and culturally appropriate way, the unchurched do take notice. Previously unreached people become more receptive to God's Word and the worship of the true creator God when they see and hear and experience it, not only in their own language, but in their own music and story forms and artistic patterns.

Western missions has generally assumed that, to adequately understand the Bible, you must know how to read it. Translation efforts, combined with literacy training, have been valuable in many cultures. But experts estimate that up to 75 percent of the world's people don't know how to read. That means the literary approach to evangelism cannot do the whole job. We must integrate artistic communication methods into our normal ministry thinking.

We need Christians with special sensitivity in the arts to find their way onto the mission field and into the development of mission strategy. We need to help missionaries and churches clothe the gospel in culturally appropriate forms and avoid the unconscious mistake of promoting Western forms of communication and styles of worship as the only correct ones. Maybe in this way we can break through barriers which have been difficult to penetrate with traditional methods.

We must stimulate the use of wide range of indigenous communication forms. The forms we're talking about include music, drama, storytelling painting, architecture, mime, puppetry, crafts, festival, chant, movement, ritual, arrangement of space, body language, and others. In all these ways, the arts convey an important understanding of life, its problems, possibilities, truths, fears, and mysteries.

Practical Implementation Artists, mission agencies, churches and seminaries can all take practical steps to bring the arts into greater use in evangelism.

For artists and musicians:

• Make yourselves available, no strings attached, to church leadership to use your artistic gifts as they need them.

• Be a servant, not a star.

• Do a short-term mission assignment as soon as possible.

• Do much street work, campus ministry, etc. (in conjunction with your local church), as soon as possible.

For mission agencies:

• Focus on developing indigenous worship, encouraging churches to use forms of worship that are culturally appropriate.

• Assign missionaries to take lessons in some craft or art form from a national.

• Promote the development of new ethnic-Christian celebrations, honoring God and highlighting the gospel in the context of such important events as birth, parent-child dedication, conversion, baptism and marriage.

Jews for Jesus had done this in creating a new Jewish-Christian wedding ceremony, as well as circumcision ceremony. These have elements of both Jewish and Christian traditions, with an emphasis on biblical truth framed in familiar cultural forms. The gospel is proclaimed quite strongly in the context of joyous celebration, and without denying - or in any way pulling one away from - neutral cultural norms.

For local churches:

• Artistic communication is not just for the mission field. Are your forms of worship and evangelism culturally appropriate to your community?

• Spend as much time planning the worship service as the pastor spends preparing the sermon. Develop a worship team for better planning.

• Make it a point to develop methods of non-literary, non-academic communication for your worship times, to create an environment where unchurched people will feel more comfortable. Direct the service to the believer, but don't make it so "in-house" that you exclude visitors.

• Emphasize the participation of the worshipers more than the performance of the platform people - choir, soloists, preachers.

For colleges and seminaries:

• Develop interdisciplinary degree programs for training specialists in artistic communication.

• Arrange for faculty and students to be placed in domestic cross-cultural short-term ministry situations.

It's time we let God use us in more creative ways to evangelize the world. When we do, many more will see and fear and trust in him (Psalm 40:2-3).

Rev. Byron Spradlin, Founder and Director, Artists in Christian Testimony (A.C.T., a mission board and sending agency empowering music and arts ministry specialists for culturally sensitive worship, evangelism, and church planting ministries world wide);prepared & copyright © 1995 by Byron L. Spradlin. Unauthorized duplication is a violation of applicable laws. For permission to duplicate contact Rev. Byron Spradlin and send a contribution to Artists in Christian Testimony. This article is adapted from Evangelical Newsletter, October 11, 1985.