How Churches Can Relearn Beauty (and Lead the Arts Again)
The Church once taught the world how to see. For centuries, painters learned from Scripture, composers wrote theology into melody, and builders carved sermons into stone. The Church’s imagination gave the world some of its most breathtaking art because believers once believed that beauty was an act of worship. Somewhere along the way, that imagination went quiet. But it is not gone. It is sleeping, waiting for the Church to remember what beauty is for.
Relearning beauty does not begin with a building campaign or a bigger budget. It begins with a renewed conviction that beauty belongs to God. When a congregation believes that, everything changes. Suddenly, the sanctuary is not just a room but a story. The songs we sing are not just emotional moments but sacred expressions. Even something as simple as color, light, or design becomes part of our witness.
This vision starts small. A church might invite a member who paints to create art inspired by a sermon series. Another might encourage its musicians to write songs that come from within their community instead of downloading what is popular. A church could partner with local artisans to design furniture, stained glass, or sculpture that reflects its own neighborhood. None of this has to be expensive. It just has to be intentional. Beauty begins when we stop asking, “What will attract people?” and start asking, “What will honor God?”
The early Church led the arts because it believed beauty told the truth about heaven. It did not imitate the world. It showed the world what holiness looked like when expressed through human hands. We can recover that same confidence today. The Church has storytellers, songwriters, designers, and dreamers sitting quietly in its pews. Most of them have never been told that their creativity is ministry. Imagine what would happen if they were.
When churches encourage creativity, they do more than make things look nice. They train the imagination to see what is possible. They teach people that God’s glory cannot be reduced to bullet points or blueprints. And they remind the next generation that faith can still inspire wonder.
To lead the arts again, the Church must stop thinking of beauty as optional. Beauty is not extra. It is essential. God created color before He created sight. He placed Adam in a garden before giving him a mission. He built beauty into the bones of the world because He knew we would need it to understand Him. When we treat beauty as a distraction, we lose one of the clearest ways God reveals Himself.
Leading the arts again does not mean competing with Hollywood or Nashville. It means showing the world what beauty looks like when it is born from holiness. It means creating not for applause but for adoration. It means teaching that creativity is not a side project but a sacred responsibility. The Church should be the place where imagination feels most alive because it flows from the One who imagined everything into being.
If the Church dares to dream again, if we choose to make things that are beautiful simply because God is, we might surprise the world. We might remind it that there is still such a thing as awe. And maybe, just maybe, when the Church learns to make beautiful things again, the world will remember why it once came to listen.