Kingdom Artist Initiative
The Kingdom Artist Initiative (KAI) is an instructional program that partners with artist communities to equip and support artists of faith in their role in culture. KAI teaches artists how to build harmony between their faith, art, and career.
Our program focus is to:
– Help artists foster a Spirit-led career life that informs how they create art, manage their career, and interact with others.
– Empower artists with the confidence that their art life is honoring God and serving His purpose right in the middle of their work as a career artist
– Show artists how to organically contribute the Kingdom way and perspective to cultural conversation as they move forward in their career.
Let KAI be a partner in serving your artists:
We work directly with individual artists and partner with artist communities in churches, educational institutions, and organizations. Our curriculum is focused on 7 areas artists need to address to confidently navigate their career with the assurance that their kind of art life honors God and is leaving a Kingdom footprint in culture.
Here are some examples of KAI instruction:
Video excerpt with Marlita Hill
Listen to our podcast
Check out our resource library
If you are an individual artist, sign up for one of our virtual sessions or suggest KAI to your leadership.
If you host a community of artists, bring a customized KAI experience to your community or tell your artists to join one of our virtual sessions. The KAI program can be tailored to fit your community needs through sessions delivered in-person, online, or a combination of both, as well as in customized time frames. Contact Marlita Hill for more details.
7 KAI Program Areas:
Relationship.
Our relationship with God has fundamentally changed ‘how’ and ‘why’ we pursue a career in art. As Christians, we are artists, still and absolutely. But we are not, nor will we ever again be, just an artist. It is important that we understand the changes relationship brings so that we can align our careers with them.
Trust.
We will never have true harmony between our faith, art, and career until we understand the God with whom we are in relationship. Harmony is about coming to one mind, which requires vulnerability and trust that the other person has your best interests at heart. You will never allow God to come near your career life if you don’t trust Him with it. And you won’t trust Him if you don’t know Him.
The Will.
Heb. 10:35 says, “Therefore do not cast away your confidence, which has great reward.” However, you cannot have confidence in things about which you are ignorant. Many artists are unable to stand assured that their career is honoring God and leaving a Kingdom footprint in culture, because they are unsure of His thoughts on them being there in the first place. God does not desire to be mysterious to His children. He desires us to know His will and stand confidently in it.
Identity.
2 Cor. 5:17 says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” Being an artist in relationship with God is a very different culture than being an artist without one. That relationship, that God in us makes us so much more than just a person who creates art and presents it to the world. What, then does it make us? And what does that new look like?
Representation.
1 Cor. 12:27 says that we are the body of Christ. Heb 1:3 and Col. 1:15 say that Christ is the express image of God. As part of the body of Christ, then, we participate in being the image of God to the people and environments with which we interact. We are how people get their first glimpse of who God is and what it is like to be in relationship with Him. We must stay in His image, regardless of the kind of art we make, where we make it, or for whom we make it.
In, but not of.
In the day-to-day activities of being an artist, Christians are no different than anyone else. We still have to practice. We still use the same supplies as other artists. We still have to audition like everyone else. We still have to get resumes together. Yet, in these daily activities and beyond, we are guided by a different force and specific set of principles that affect how we approach and carry-out these activities. It is important to understand what that difference is and how we walk in it in our career life.
Calling.
Being in church, for any length of time, tempts us to believe that the most “Godly” vocations are pastor, missionary, and church planter. If you aren’t any of those, you try to get as close to them as you can. As Christians with “secular” art careers, we are the furthest thing from that (at least as it exists in the 4-walls). Yet, God says that “the field is the world,” and that He plants His children in that world. We are of this tribe in the family of God, particularly made and strategically placed. Since that’s the case, we don’t have to go searching for some holy appendage to attach to our career to make it more Godly. We are right where He placed us.