Confessions of a “Christian” Art-ist

It’s hard to know what to write for a blog post. Not because I don’t have anything to say, but because I wonder what people will actually connect with. Does the world really need one more opinion, one more reflection, one more piece of content floating around out there? Sometimes that thought alone can stop me before I even begin.

And yet… I write songs. Somehow, without hesitation, I believe those are worth putting into the world. Why? Because it’s art.

When we write music, we don’t begin with an audience in mind. We don’t sit down thinking, What do people want to hear from us? Or worse, What do people need to hear from God? Instead, it almost always begins with inspiration: a prayer, a cry, or something we’re learning. From there, the lyrics unfold, the melody starts to take shape, and each of us adds our own style to create the sound that makes us collect.assembly.

The whole process is art. And as people created in the image of God, we echo His ability to create.

Here’s the thing: all art is a reflection of God, whether the artist acknowledges Him or not. Even if the art isn’t explicitly about God, it still carries the imprint of His nature, because that creative spark is something He planted in us.

Funny enough, the first music mentioned in the Bible came through Cain’s family line, the ones cast out of being God’s chosen people. And yet, even in exile, they still bore His image and carried the desire to worship and create.

Art doesn’t need to “preach” to be worship. It’s worship when it’s born out of truth, when it’s honest, when it’s an overflow of what God is doing in us.

We get asked a lot why, as a “Christian band,” we don’t write worship songs. I would argue that we do. They just may not look like what you expect.

Spoiler alert: in our second album, we barely mention God by name. If that’s a dealbreaker for you, then… sorry not sorry. But you’ll still clearly see that our values, our worldview, and our faith are the foundation and undertone of everything we do. As we worship God in our everyday lives, the overflow naturally comes out in our music, whether that’s joy, questions, or even angst.

It reminds me of the Psalms. They weren’t neat little worship songs written for a service. They were raw prayers, laments, celebrations, and cries from the heart. And we call those worship.

So maybe this blog post, too, doesn’t need to be “for an audience.” Maybe it just needs to be another form of art, honest and imperfect.

Because worship isn’t always about the words we say or the label we put on something. Sometimes worship is simply the act of creating.

By Morgan Groenewald