#392: Spiritual Formation, Art, And The Beauty And The Tragedy of Worship Music with John Mark McMillan

About this episode

David Santistevan interviews John Mark McMillan about the tension between creativity and functionality in worship music and its implications for church culture.

Throughout church history there has always been an interesting tension between creativity and functionality. What is more important? Creating beautiful things or getting a certain message across? What is more important to worship? Right theology or beautiful art that displays the glory of God? Do we need better theology in our songs or more honesty? We intuitively know this is a tension to manage, not a problem to solv e. No one would argue that theology doesn’t matter. But has our pursuit of rightness caused us to lose some imagination? Some humanity? Has our church culture fixation on efficiency, productivity, and uniformity formed us to forget the mystery and wonder of singing together as people? My guest today is John Mark McMillan. John Mark is a brilliant artist, singer-songwriter, and lyricist. He has existed at this interesting intersection of artistry that most people don’t understand while also writing some of the most popular worship songs of the last 30 years. We talk about a lot of things. We talk worship. We talk church. We talk spiritually formative practices. We dive into guitar tone, abuse in the church, and the real story behind the infamous line, “sloppy wet…

People in this episode

Host: David Santistevan

Guest: John Mark McMillan

Topics covered

• spiritual formation
• worship music
• creativity vs functionality
• theology
• church culture
• artistry

Keywords

• worship
• theology
• art
• creativity
• church
• music
• spirituality

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