In the early 1960s, John Byron came to faith after playing Hamlet on British television. Joining up with an established London church, one of its members asked what he did for a living. When he replied that he was an actor, the member told him, ?You cannot be an actor and a Christian?. When he asked what he should be instead, he was told, ?A missionary ? go to Africa?. And that is what he did.
Nigel Goodwin, the actor who told me this story continued, ?The amazing thing was that he did not lose his faith, nor his gift as an actor. What he lost was his audience. Years later, shortly before I met him and heard this terrible story, he came back to England knowing that God had called him and gifted him as an actor. Sadly, he tried to pick up his career once more and died without ever achieving the success he had earlier.
?This story could be repeated hundreds of times right across the arts disciplines. It is why those in the arts who were coming to Christ in the early 1960s found each other and discovered that what they were hearing in their churches was largely cultural baggage, rather than biblical truth.
?All of us in the arts were under enormous pressure from the evangelical Church to come out of our gifting and calling unless we could make it more explicitly Christian in content.
?It was from this pressure that the Arts Centre Group (ACG) was formed after six years of prayer with Cliff Richard and others in the arts.?
This year the ACG is celebrating 40 years of helping Christian artists to integrate their faith and their gifting.
Sir Cliff told CEN about the ?unspoken pressure? he felt at the time, recalling that when he came to faith, ?the first thing I did was want to be like my friends who were in schools teaching religious instruction or helping run TEAR fund and things like that. I felt that maybe my lifestyle was not conducive to being an active participant in the Christian life?.
This pressure led him to tell the press that he was giving up his singing, in order to go into a vocational career. However, he had to re-think his assumptions after his producer suggested that he make an album of gospel songs, Billy Graham asked him to do a movie and a TV company asked for a TV series about parables.
Sir Cliff suddenly realised that although ?God doesn?t speak to us with a great big booming voice ? not unless you go and see the movies ? he does indicate what maybe you should be thinking.
?I was surrounded by mature Christian people, who advised me. One of the big decisions I had to make was whether or not I would appear on the Billy Graham platform. I kept thinking, ?Oh my goodness, this is public! Is it going to affect my career??
?In one of my books, I called a chapter My Little Isaac. When I actually sat down one night and prayed and thought about it with friends, I decided, ?Look, if I believe this; if I know it to be true as I do, then it?s got to be more important than anything else. So if I lost my career, I don?t think God would dump me; there would be something else that I would perhaps have to do?. So that to me was a huge step, that I could get up and say, ?I actually don?t care what happens; I?m going to say what I believe?.
?It was the summer of ?66 at Earls Court, and a few months later I was doing a pantomime and we broke all Palladium pantomime box office records. I felt that was a major step in my life.?
If Sir Cliff saw that pantomime run as a reward for his faith, it was far outweighed by his later record of being the only act to make the UK singles charts in all of its first six decades.
David Winter, who was just beginning his twenty-year career at the BBC at the time, told CEN about the friends that joined him and his late wife Christine in their Finchley living room as they formed the ACG.
?Nigel Goodwin had been pressing for something to be done to bring together Christians who were professionally engaged in the world of the arts, media and entertainment. Cliff Richard was also keen on the idea, and joined with Cindy Kent (then the lead singer with the ?Settlers? folk band), Ronald Allison (a BBC newsreader and later an ITV executive) and a young lawyer friend, David Thompson, who guided us through the practical and legal minefield we were entering.
?Our objects were simple: to provide somewhere for Christians in this field to meet, support each other and work on the issues raised and the opportunities created by our faith and our work.
?We were driven on by two things: Nigel?s enthusiasm, and Cliff?s generosity. We felt a place was needed for this new project to flower, but with Cliff?s help we got two! One was in the heart of London, the other in the Essex countryside. Eventually we realised that the kind of people we were hoping to draw in were too busy to spend quiet days in rural England, and our efforts were then concentrated on what we thought of as ?Nigel?s pad?.?
To find these bases, some of the friends drove around London, looking for the right venue. ?We?d stop and pray,? remembered Sir Cliff. ?Finally we found a place. When we all agreed, we kind of assumed that that was an answer in itself. That?s how we did things in those days; it was all so early and so new.?
To support Christian artists properly, churches had to be encouraged to pastor their own artists and understand how faith and art go together. As a public face and free of his earlier concerns, Sir Cliff was the ideal man to go out as an ambassador for the arts.
?We were prepared to be used by the Church when they wanted to have us,? he told me. ?A good friend of mine, Bill Latham, had a journalist background, and he used this journalese on me to go to churches and colleges. We wouldn?t speak as such; we would do an interview. It left us free to joke. If he felt the need to move in another direction, he would just take me that way with questions; and it was a really successful way of presenting practicalities of being a Christian in a very contemporary world.?
Once the ACG?s home venue was established, however, Christian artists could use it as a base to connect with their colleagues.
Sir Cliff explained, ?We used to have these late nights after a show time, so that people who were doing shows could come ? and an amazing amount of people came. We?d have a buffet dinner; we?d sit around on the floor; we?d have wine, talk and discuss.
?Now, all of us have an intellect ? on a scale of ten, mine?s probably two ? but from number two you still have to think, ?How do I believe this? Why do I believe it?? and sometimes it is just heart stuff. But other people at the top of the scale need to go through everything at a high intellectual level.?
The group had to engage rationally with the interface of faith and art, and that theology came from two major thinkers: Francis Schaeffer and Hans Rookmaaker. Schaeffer was an American evangelical theologian and pastor, who founded the L?Abri Community in 1955 in Switzerland. Dutch professor Rookmaaker joined L?Abri and centred his career on urging Christians to take culture seriously.
As the ACG grew from a group of friends to a national organisation, it had to find new ways of supporting Christian artists around the country and passing its collective experience on.
For a decade, the ACG has run a mentoring programme, where experienced artists from various disciplines give practical support to younger colleagues in a faith-based approach to building a career. Mentees can see how faith works in practice.
Proud of such achievements, Sir Cliff has also benefitted strongly from his Christian contacts in the arts world, but has felt it right to step back. ?Age doesn?t bother me, but I think it bothers other people,? he said. ?I still speak about my faith when I can, but it seems to me that the push has got to come from a new generation.?
His dreams of a renewed ACG presenting the gospel to the arts world and nurturing new Christian artists are shared by Chair Susanne Scott, who also has a vision for the future.
?We believe that being an artist is to be called, rather than to have chosen,? she told CEN. ?This calling is to be nurtured throughout life?s journey and embedded in our relationship with God.
?We realise that to have been given a talent bears a responsibility to develop and hone to the highest possibilities of creativity. We believe we need to be right in the Centre, Christian artists contributing to the world around us.
?As artists, we are called to bring fresh insight to long held opinions and to life?s stories.
?As Christians, we are called to be people of hope; transformers and rebuilders of the breach. We?re not called to fame and success ? these are but trappings. However, we are called ?to shine like stars? and to show the love of God.?
Derek Walker
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Pat Harvey is a visual artist, specialising in watercolour and film, who joined the ACG a few years after it began.
She has also found that one of the organisation?s strengths is connecting like-minded people, who are positive about both artistic and spiritual matters.
?Whatever the occasion, whether high level debate, informal gathering, or stellar event, the same heady cocktail of excitement and spiritual encouragement prevails. There is simply nowhere else like it.?
She sees no sign of the ACG?s importance fading, even though several similar organisations have sprung up since. ?The need for the ACG is greater than ever. A plethora of related organisations, many of them excellent, would not have emerged but for the pioneering template laid down by the ACG. However none, in my opinion, has that cutting-edge mixture of spiritual dynamism and robust ?in the market-place? debate which originally birthed the ACG, and still marks it at its best.?
For her, the organisation has succeeded at both a personal and national level, thanks to the commitment of some persevering people during spells of struggle.
Personally, she has forged lifelong friendships with some of the people who crammed into one of its earliest homes in London?s Short Street.
Nationally, ?given the artistic stupor of Evangelical Christendom, it has had its work cut out doing what it did!? she comments with feeling, adding that the work was worthwhile, as ?the believing professional artist, be he or she obscure or famous, is no longer seen as an unthinkable aberration.?
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Globe-trotting guitarist Jason Carter joined the ACG, aged 20, when he found himself in London fresh from Cornwall. He recalls that he was ?feeling a bit out of place and wanted to connect with other artists of similar faith worldviews. I met a bunch of brilliantly mad people and felt right at home.?
?They were sympathetic to my outlook and I found it to be a place of encouragement. I was still finding my place and vision as a musician, and the ACG really gave me the space to explore that, through various friendships and conversations.?
He is sure that the organisation still fulfils a need. ?The creative soul still struggles to find a place within the evangelical Church. This disturbs me, as the same questions are coming up time and time again. ?Is it OK to be a Christian and an artist??
?This quote, written by a Catholic priest, Mathew Fox, has stayed with me for many years, and still encourages me: ?If the world is primarily not a machine but a mystery, then those who lead others more deeply into mysteries are the primary workers of the emerging culture. Therefore, artists are real workers?.?
When asked how he would like to see the ACG change over the coming decade, he spoke of the need to still educate churches in how to nurture their own artists.
?If this does not happen, then the Church will lose part of its soul. The body of Christ is made up of bits, some of whose functions are easy to recognise, some of which are not so easily recognised. Acceptance of the artist within the Church context is crucial to the development of the soul of the Church. If the Church is going to be salt and light to the community, and the wider world, then part of this expression should be creative and dynamic. Why is the Christian artist seemingly always one step behind of the ?non-Christian? artist? It should be the other way around. And the Church needs to take full responsibility for this.?
Carter now lives in the South of France, but still benefits from the ACG connection. ?I see the both the ACG and Nigel Goodwin (Genesis Arts) as a constant support for my journey, and I just wish that something like this existed in my area. Something like that exists in Paris, but it?s miles from here. The ACG/Genesis connection has been a vital part of my development, faith and art-wise, and it feels like family.
?The ACG plays a vital role in bridging that gap between the Church and the artist. I wish it did not have to exist, but I am thankful it does.?
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