Arts for the
Kingdom

EthnoArts Training for Everyone

Spring 2025 (Dates TBD) | Tbilisi, Georgia | Languages: English, Русский

Arts for the Kingdom is a 1-week intensive training event in the foundations of arts in cross-cultural ministry. Grounded in decades of real-life field experience and scholarly insights, this course equips God’s people with practical ministry tools.

Who is it for?

  • Team Leaders

  • Pastors

  • Administrators

  • Field practitioners

  • Artists

  • Non-Artists :)

  • Worship leaders

  • Local community members

What will I gain?

  • Inspiration, encouragement, and networking

  • Broaden your palette of tools for cross-cultural arts engagement

  • Learn more about being catalysts and co-creators for local, indigenous creativity

  • Learn to use the EthnoArts Field Manual to help communities you know and care about draw on their artistic resources to respond to spiritual, social, and physical needs.

Featuring: The EthnoArts Manual

Creating Local Arts Together

by Brian Schrag &
James A. Krabil

AFK grounds its learning and planning in Creating Local Arts Together: A Manual to Help Communities Reach their Kingdom Goals (Schrag 2013). The Manual was developed in response to requests for a text book and field guide for people working in arts and mission. It is a condensation and reformulation of ideas and experiences of scores of field workers in SIL and other organizations, over decades.

What Kind of Projects Have Participants Developed?

Here is a small sample of the plans connecting arts and kingdom goals that previous participants have created:

  • Trauma healing classes for Syrian refugee children facilitate expressions of lament through storytelling, poetry, calligraphy, and music, bringing healing, hope, and increased shalom to their traumatized communities.

  • A heritage festival for music and arts increases shalom and positive cultural identity in a underserved Jamaican neighborhood

  • Children’s songs show that the Kaqchikel language (in Guatemala) can be sung, integrating Scripture into their lives.

  • Scripture-infused Yurak (dance) helps a Yupik community in Alaska affirm traditional values and bring the community together, decreasing alcohol and drug dependency and helping people to engage with God.

  • Kenyan grandmothers tell Bible stories and sing songs in indigenous styles to their grandchildren and the women of their compound, moving believers to identify as fully indigenous followers of Christ and embedding the Word of God into the community.

  • A birth ceremony with songs, dances, and storytelling encourages the development of godly families in Cameroon.

  • Gospel music and dance increase identity in Christ for learners in a Jamaican school for the blind.

  • The Fur (in Sudan) use juru dance with tombol drum to teach Bible stories, resulting in people of all ages dancing together and celebrating the Word of God.