I’m not sure how I first came across Jan Edmiston’s blog, A Church for Starving Artists. (“Artists,” the tagline explains, quoting Seona Reid, “are simply people who are passionate enough to imagine things that do not yet exist.”)
I think it was in 2012, right around the time of North Carolina’s vote on Amendment 1, a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. That prompted Edmiston’s “An Open Letter to My North Carolina Kin,” which in turn prompted me to add her blog to my RSS feed.
Edmiston is an ordained Presbyterian minister (PCUSA), and she views the church with an artist’s eye — as someone passionate enough to imagine things that do not yet exist. So, yes, A Church for Starving Artists is kind of a church-y blog, and I don’t generally read church-y blogs because they tend to be written by and for clergy and church leaders, and I am neither of those. But A Church for Starving Artists is not mainly about church-management — it’s about trying to imagine a better church into existence. And I very much like the vision of the-church-that-could-be that Edmiston describes.
The conclusion of one recent post summarizes one central and recurring theme:
So many of our congregations have lost our purpose and we can’t remember why we exist. Too few of our churches have a clear grasp of what breaks God’s heart in our communities. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
If we are willing, we can be this church — or at least something a little closer to it.
Edmiston does write about church-management type stuff too. See for example the recent post, “The Pastor Is the Last Person Who Gets to Be an @*#0!%.” Or check out her fascinating post about working with her denomination’s Commission on Preparation for Ministry.
But most of what she writes isn’t directed to managers or to clergy, but just to church members, church-goers and church-avoiders — and speaking as all three of those, I like what she has to say to us.
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