Artists and Puppets

eric posted on June 23, 2009

“Artists and Puppets” by Marlon Hall of the Awakenings Movement in Houston, Texas

I go to the Breakfast Klub a lot to eat wings and waffles and meet with folks throughout the week. It’s known in Houston as a haven for young urban professionals, musicians and artists, whose progressive works are often featured in the restaurant. One such artist, Nathaniel uses objects he finds on the street to create beautiful sculptures, telling stories of tragedy and triumph in urban life. In fact, he’s more of a ghetto documentarian than an artist.

The owner of the Breakfast Klub introduced me to Nathaniel, because he believed the young artist had great spiritual potential, but was falling short due to hypocrisy he’d seen in religion. He said Nathaniel knew that God was around, but earnestly believed He could not be found in religious organizations.

When I met Nathaniel for the first time, I had the church planter’s itch to use a five point plan and lead him through the doors of our church by convincing him I was a cool and relevant exception to the religious rule. If Nathaniel came, then a whole group of meaningful artists might follow him.

But I had to shut up the opportunist in my church-planting mind. The end of our conversation could not be church because the Church does not exist for itself, but for a lost world. The dissonance between the mind of church-planting Marlon and world-changing Marlon grew louder. I could almost imagine the two Marlons of my conscience, battling from my shoulders like a classic angel and devil.

On my left, instead of an angel, stood a naked and vulnerable Marlon puppet with no church-planting agenda and only a fig leaf of protection. On my right stood something far more dangerous than a tiny devil: a little Marlon puppet with a Vintage t-shirt, designer jeans and a cool wood-grained Bible in his hand.

Nathaniel and I had been talking for a few minutes when out of nowhere I felt the urge to give him an invitation. Not an invitation to our church or one of the small groups. It wasn’t even an invitation to paint a portrait during one of our worship experiences. I gave him instead an invitation to use his art as an inspiration for—and not just a reflection of—life in the ghetto.

The Vintage t-shirt Marlon puppet began to laugh, telling me that I was only as good to Nathaniel as I was cool enough to bait him into the Christian experience, but I ignored his taunts. I wanted to call Nathaniel out of spiritual paralysis to change the world from the inside out. The naked and vulnerable Marlon smiled his encouragement.

I challenged Nathaniel to understand that his God given gift of art came with instructions to be a social servant of our community. As a servant, he would discover a deepened creativity that could only be realized through service. Only if his hands were dirty and planted firmly beneath the surface of the community in service could he produce flowers of art in the garden of Houston’s northern Third Ward.

At this point the Marlon puppet who used his cool Bible as an accessory scorned me with a holy frustration, telling me I was not trying hard enough to get this great asset of an artist connected to our worship community.

But Nathaniel had already begun to respond, a clinched fist over his lips. He became emotional as he let me know he’d just begun his latest work around the issue of hypocritical pastoral leadership in our city. He let me know he would accept my challenge, but that it would not stop him from finishing his untitled piece meant to challenge Christian authority in the city.

Now, it’s been a year since we first met at the Breakfast Klub, where two puppets battled on my shoulders. And while Nathaniel’s still not a Christian, we’ve grown a friendship and have collaborated in the community on levels beyond my expectation. Nathaniel and his family even come to our worship experience sometimes, and he’s sent a number of folks to our church who are now followers of Christ. There are huge victories with Nathaniel, but the biggest victory of all can be discovered in the progress of his still untitled piece on the hypocrisy of church leaders.

He hasn’t painted even one more stroke toward its completion since the day we met.