MomentumArt

The MomentumArt Summer 2008 course is a 10 week full-time arts course designed to inspire, inform, and increase your creativity.

Week 1 Contemplation / The Kingdom

M 30/06 Living in the Now/Here | Present Riseness of Christ

T 01/07 Abba’s Child | The Beloved

W 02/07 The False Self | The Kingdom is Like...

T 03/07 Seeing the Kingdom | Gospel of the Kingdom

F 04/07 Kingdom Overview | Presence of the Future

 

Week 1 - Contemplation

If “In quietness and trust is our strength” is true, then contemplation is a good place to start. Brennan Manning says there is a part of our personality we have fabricated for survival purposes and he calls this the “Impostor”; but when we allow God to call forth the person he really created us to be, we will see the impostor’s control of our lives diminish. When we realize that God is very present in our daily journey; and we begin to appreciate the disciplines of meditation, contemplation and simplicity, we will discover how to accomplish this. The results will be intimacy with God, hearing his voice, as well as seeing more clearly what God is doing. When our objective is an increase of His passion and purpose within us, we will become better at everything we do. Pursuing freedom, renewed life, renewed hope, and learning to partner with God to see his kingdom come.

The Kingdom

Often when people hear the Kingdom mentioned they assign that to mean either the church itself or our heavenly destination. Probably the best definition of the kingdom is: God working through us as he rules and reigns in our lives; or: being involved in the activity of God wherever you are, on a daily basis. You will see that this is the theology that Jesus both instructed on and also imparted to “those that believed.” Learn about how Jesus brings the power of the future kingdom into our present age as He fills us with his authority and sends us out to do greater things than He did.

Week 2 Truth / Seeing & Senses

M 07/07 Is Truth Important? | Truth Or Consequences

T 08/07 Getting In Touch | Simple Truth

W 09/07 The Spirit of Truth | Perspectives On Seeing

T 10/07 Childlikeness | World View

F 11/07 Is Seeing Believing? | Intuitive Art

Week 2 - Truth

Truth is at the heart of what we are all missing and craving in finding significance in our earthly existence. But it is also who Jesus is, in fact, it’s what He wants us to transform into as well. You notice I didn’t say conform, but transform, because our aim should not be possessing truth, but living in it. Our lives seem so distant from truth at times. In this segment you will learn how to literally absorb truth into your spirit to better enable you to stand against the false concepts and lies that hold us back from living a life of freedom, and live life as Jesus did-walking 'in the truth' and 'by the Spirit'! Once we've had a revelation of truth and are walking in freedom in our own lives, we can then learn how to communicate and impart truth -and a love for truth- to others, demonstrating to them their own value/significance in the kingdom. Yes! Let’s live and breathe truth-and let our renewed minds spring us forward into an artistic expression grounded in freedom and love! His nature is now our nature-we are new creations in Christ....AND that NEW nature is what we walk in every day-it is a springboard for our artistic expression-lets let our expression come out of the truth that sets us free-not false concepts and an image of ourselves that hold us back from our calling...David saw this and said, ”..now I see, you want truth in our innermost being..”

Seeing & Senses

Jesus said “I only do the things I see my Father doing…” How did He do that? The key to understanding the Kingdom is in learning how to see, hear, and even smell and taste His presence. This subject is absolutely essential in becoming a great artist. The best artist’s in every category are not just excellent in the technical aspects, but they are also intuitive, sensory and are passionate about what they see. They pay attention to the details and then try to communicate to us what they value most. We want this time to be about expanding our giftedness into the spiritual aspects of the senses as well. Why not take this into the supernatural realm that we are so privileged to be a part of? Learn how to see and hear with your spiritual eyes and ears as well as physical, and how to express that in your creativity.

Week 3 Beauty & Creative Expression

M 14/07 The Creative Nature | Redemptive Qualities

T 15/07 Beauty-Goodness-Truth | Art Challenges Us

W 16/07 Beauty and the Beholder | Expression

T 17/07 Capturing Concepts | Insight/Revelation

F 18/07 Master Architects | Art Culture

Week 3 - Beauty

Francis Schaeffer told us that beauty has a redemptive quality, he said God gave us beauty as a constant reminder that His goodness is still there. Even though worldly influences try to distort and pervert it, God seems to purposely protect the beauty we find on earth. Beauty is a powerful force that draws us into seeing there isgoodness out there somewhere. Shouldn’t we try to begin to amplify that goodness and use our God given abilities to draw people closer to Him by bringing them more in touch with the source of everything beautiful? Lets discover how we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. "One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple." Psalm 27:4

Creative Expression

All humans are created in God’s image and He is creative. That fact is incredible in itself, but there’s more. There is an opportunity for mankind to start all over again and become a “new creation”. This new opportunity goes way beyond what any of us could imagine. Our “creative nature” now has the ability to go into warp drive, there are no limits now! It is possible for us to receive information and insight into things far beyond ourselves, areas and concepts that can be deeply meaningful to others, even life changing. Our goal this week will be to get you to think way out of the box and find a way to express it.

To dream with God, partner with God! Eric Liddel (Olympic runner) said 'When I run, I feel his pleasure'. Let’s dream about doing, and do what we feel his pleasure in. If we can do our dreams on our own, they are not big enough-we need to dream bigger, dream impossible!

Week 4 Imagery/Imagination

M 21/07 Visual Inspiration | Focus & Resolution

T 22/07 Moral/Immoral Art | The Message

W 23/07 Anointed Imagination | Roses in the Winter

T 24/07 Inviting Inspiration | Resting

F 25/07 Creating an Atmosphere | Abiding/Burning

Week 4 - Imagery/Imagination

This week goes hand in hand with the last week. J.M. Barrie (Peter Pan) once said, “God gave us imaginations so we could have roses in the winter.” Imagination is not only a wonderful gift from God, it is a way of turning learning into an incredible adventure. It is like the “manifold wisdom of God” that brings us a welcome challenge and adds interesting complexity and fulfillment to our lives. It’s a way of taking people to see something that we hold dear in our lives and letting them experience it. This is a week we are praying for an explosion of creativity and inspiration. Not to just capture an imaginative moment, but to become imaginative creative people.

 

Week 5 Remembrance/ Focus & Growth

M 28/07 Learning Backwards | Remembrance

T 29/07 Creating Memorials | Concepts On Memory

W 30/07 Dumping Pages | Art of Personal Growth

T 31/07 Finding Yourself | Forming Values

F 01/08 Art as a Calling | Excellence

Week 5 - Remembrance

In our new life in Jesus, we are immediately introduced to the fact that there are many things we have to learn to remember, and there are also many things we have to learn to forget. The arts are really all about remembrance. We express what we have experienced or learned, and usually they are experiences that have deeply touched us; like a memorable moment, or people who helped us or enriched our lives. Do we create memorials because we don’t want to forget people and places? I think we do, possibly because we know that we live our life forward, but we learn backward. We will work on the subject of mnemonics this week, the art of memory. Inspiring ourselves to remember will enhance our walk with God and our creativity.

Focus & Growth

Personal growth is often linked to understanding more about our identity. It’s even possible that the more focused the identity the more focused the artistic expression. Confusion always obscures the message, and focus brings clarity. This will be a week to learn more about ourselves, who we are and what we have. Learning how to strengthen and clarify values that shape our worldview and thus our decisions. Our goal this week would also be to tap into more of the personal fulfillment aspects of creativity and find out what inspires and motivates us.

Week 6 Writing

M 04/08 If You Want to Write | Take Them There

T 05/08 Tell Your Story | Dealing With Criticism

W 06/08 Writing Exercises | The Glass Palace

T 07/08 George MacDonald | C.S. Lewis

F 08/08 J.R.R. Tolkien | John Donne

Week 6 - Creative Writing

I think there has been a breakthrough in this 21^stcentury in creative writing. Not just in the Church, but it is apparent in film-making and even television. Writing has gone to a new depth. People are learning to go deeper into touching where people live. This is a craft that can have a huge effect on other forms of art. Writing can not only create a picture, or give someone an impression, it can take them there. We also hope to explore the power of words this week. God spoke the world into being. Do we have some authority in that area as well? We also plan to impart something old from the literary heroes of the past and capture something new from today’s new pioneers. We also hope to present helpful ways of dealing with criticism as well as breaking through barriers in finding personal inspiration.

Week 7 Music & Songwriting

M 11/08 Music Appreciation | Creative Listening

T 12/08 Speaking Thru the Music | Instrumentation

W 13/08 Musical Arrangement

T 14/08 Purpose Building | Concepts On Lyric

F 15/08 Needs to be Written? | Theology and Music

Week 7 - Music & Songwriting

Music is unquestionably one of the most powerful forms of communication on the planet, it’s a language. It speaks to something inside us. It draws us, it ministers to us, it impassions us, it empowers us, and the need it fills inside of us is a need for beauty and creativity and joy. Music is an art form or creative expression that makes it easy for us to get in touch with beauty and that’s when the joy surfaces. Because of this, listeners of music can actually feel like they are participating in the music, just by appreciating it. One of our goals this week will be to learn more about sound itself. The key is learning to listen, learning what sounds do in us. We will try and become more familiar with instrumentation and arrangement and tempo, instrumentally or combined with lyric, and we will take a closer look at painting pictures and telling stories with sounds. By learning more about how music works, maybe we can learn to “purpose build” music to accomplish what we desire. We will also talk about “songs that still need to be written”. What does God want to say through music and lyrics?

Week 8 Sketching/Painting

M 18/08 Capturing Images | Moments in Time

T 19/08 1,000 Words | Style

W 20/08 Art History

T 21/08 Prophetic Art

F 22/08 Technique | Colour

Week 8 - Sketching/Painting

This is a skill that can bring great satisfaction to our personal need to express or communicate, but it can also be incredibly inspiring to others. This subject will begin our journey into the visual arts. Visual arts, and in particular still life through painting, sketching, graphic arts and photography, can help us visualize moments in time. This form of art gave us a vision of history, paintings were photographs before photography. They also provide a time for us to pay attention to detail and reflect, and we need that time. Add colour, texture and light, and an expertise in technique to the theme, and lines on a page come alive and tell a story. Rendered pictures have the advantage also of coming purely out of the memory, or the imagination, or something we have never seen. Visual arts can be creativity in its purest form, something out of nothing. Learn how to partner with the Lord and pull the supernatural into our artistic expression.

Week 9 Photography & Film

M 25/08 Basic Photography | Light

T 26/08 Technique | Composition

W 27/08 A Way of Seeing | It’s About the Story

T 28/08 Film History

F 29/08 The Future | Short Film

Week 9 - Photography

These are more recent forms of art in our history of expressional tools, but on the forefront of inspiration to the world we now live in. Photography has that ability to capture, whether something of beauty, something of interest, or documenting a historical moment, or even something that cannot be seen with the naked eye, a skill that everyone can easily benefit from. We will we learn the basics of photography in this class, as well as technique, lighting and composition.

Film

Film has changed the world. It’s really the combination and blending of the arts that is the power in film making. It’s the art of telling a story with visuals, real people (and personalities), and music. Combine that with skillful editing and directing that control the intensity and timing of a story, and a film can become more like a real life experience than just watching an image on a screen. With a well made film we can almost feel we’ve stepped into a story. Add the technology of computer graphics used to create what doesn’t exist, and it brings the imaginative so close it looks like reality. These are the ingredients that give film the greatest potential of all. Most of these classes will be about understanding essential components of a good film.

Week 10 Creative Synergy & Collaboration

M 01/09 The Passion Factor | Oneness

T 02/09 Unity In Diversity | Communication

W 03/09 Dealing w/Complexities | Revealing Mysteries

T 04/09 Orchestration | Prophetic Collaboration

F 05/09 Team Building

Week 10 - Creative Synergy & Collaboration

It seemed right to spend the last week on learning how to take it all to the next level. The Bible says “In a multitude of counselors there is victory”, easier said than done. Collaboration can be a powerful vehicle in the arts, but it can also restrain creativity and frustrate our efforts, it’s kind of an art in itself. We do have an advantage in the Kingdom. We have Godly guidelines to clarify what is helpful and what is not, and we have the Comforter, to lead us into all truth (and revelation). Collaboration can be a big source of inspiration to us and multiply our efforts if we learn how. The key is getting past ourselves (which is always helpful anyway) and letting the Master conduct the orchestra. This week will be an exciting culmination of all that we have learned and we look forward to an explosion of life-giving expression.

DAILY SCHEDULE: The course is full time with classes every morning Monday – Friday, 9:30-12:30, every afternoon will be a combination of workshops, outreaches and events, and field trips. The field trips will be to visit museums, scenic areas, etc.

REQUIRED READING:

Dreaming With God - Bill Johnson

Art and the Bible - Francis Schaeffer

If You Want To Write - Brenda Ueland

The Artist’s Way - Julia Cameron

Hidden Art - Edith Schaeffer

SUGGESTED READING:

Abba’s Child - Brennan Manning

Strengthen Yourself In The Lord - Bill Johnson