The Work Of the People is  a community of artists who create visual media for the church to re-orient God's people around Jesus' good news and mission to make all things new.

THE MEANING OF THE NAME

Lit.ur.gy. noun. pl. liturgies. From the Greek word λειτουργια, (transliterated, “leitourgia”) meaning “the work of the people.” Liturgy may refer to, or include, elaborate formal rituals or simple daily activity. Liturgy unites the Christian Church; the Church comes together around liturgy to express its nature as a faithful and distinct people. Film in particular is one form of an emerging visual liturgy. Media has the ability to unite the Church, to tell stories shared by the Church, to mark the Church as distinct. The Church’s task is to create and share in liturgy. This is the work of the people.

WHO IS THE WORK OF THE PEOPLE? (TWOTP) 

We are a community of artists, storytellers, filmmakers, poets and theologians. Our work is to tell the story we share and to ask poignant questions through film, literature, art and music. We confess that we are created in the image of God and fulfill our calling by creating and recreating to the glory of God.

TWOTP exists to nurture, develop and facilitate the vocation of artists, equipping artists for a life of discipleship and
mission. WE DO THIS by being a tangible multimedia resource for telling God's story around the world. PRIMARILY we create, host, distribute and sell short videos that are true—not true, like disembodied propositional truth true; but true, like stumbling toward Jesus true. SECONDARILY we facilitate learning and teaching by being a network of artists interested in the hard work of using our gifts for God's kingdom here and now. 

FOUNDATION (Some Things To Which TWOTP Holds Tightly)

God's kingdom is true.

We believe the words of Jesus when he said the kingdom of God is at hand, not that it's coming some time soon, but is here, now. Because of this, things aren't only as they seem, God really is in charge, it's okay to be good. We chose to live as though this is true.

This is the work of God's people, imagining and bringing into existence as co-creators with Christ, more and more of what delights God, because it delights God. In our acts of creativity, restoration and transformation; lifting up the lowly, making things right, restoring relationships we acknowledge God’s worth. In other words, living as though God's kingdom really is true. By imagining and acting from God's invisible spiritual reality we bring his reality here and now, into space and time, into history. 

We as artists are to articulate the implications of God's kingdom being true.

We believe the role of artists as bringing voice to God's unseen kingdom, is a special one. We believe artists are to engage holy imagination in co-creating with Christ a world redeemed by Christ, in articulating God's upside down world of love, of making things right, of restoring all things. We are deeply passionate about this prophetic calling, especially as it pertains to artists who acknowledge God's kingdom.

Articulating God’s kingdom is a prophetic calling.

The prophetic voice re-orients God’s people to the realities of God’s kingdom. Creating, describing, articulating from a unique perspective within the kingdom, the prophetic voice gains this perspective through identity in The Creator for the purpose of mission. We co-create with Christ for this time, in this place, through the Holy Spirit, to the Glory of the Father.

God’s reality isn’t achieved, it is stepped into.

As artists we carry out our prophetic calling by simply and intentionally stepping into God’s kingdom, thereby describing what we see. Our future hope is not a matter of special status, self-construction, striving, achieving or planning. Our future hope is a matter of simply stepping inside God's reality. Once inside we are free to strive, achieve, build and plan to our hearts content.

Priorities are important.

If we want to build sustainable mission, we have to hold first to our foundation as described above, everything, including the pressing needs of business, come second. Future possibilities don’t come from our own cleverness, they come from the character of God. This simply means we defer first to what God is up to, we are then free to be as clever as we wish. Deferring first to God’s wishes requires knowing him well enough to defer to his wishes. This comes about through, among other things, prayer, contemplation, study and discernment. A highly technologized culture is not conducive to these practices, but we refuse to put the demands of being busy and seeming to know things before intimacy with God. We choose to be agents of God’s possibilities, not agents of our own cleverness.

Possibility is anchored to Creator God.

As agents of God’s possibility we want to enter the seemingly impossible tension of living fully in God’s kingdom while operating fully in the marketplace. We articulate God's kingdom not just in what we create but in how we create. Articulating God's kingdom isn't about creating prophetic products, it is about being in God’s kingdom in everything we do, the work we do, the structures we create, how we behave as an employer, how we behave in the marketplace.

AGENTS OF POSSIBILITY

Sustainable mission means relationships.

Being sustainable means running a business. Running a business means dealing with revenues, results, marketing and sales.  Yes, we put prophecy before profit as described above, however, we need to deal with issues of profit if we want our mission to be sustainable. Maintaining a balance of heart and love while dealing with necessary numbers is difficult. So difficult in fact, we don’t think we can do it alone. We think this is how God meant it to be, that life in the tension of the kingdom would be so difficult we’d need to rely on each other, to sustain each other and to keep each other on track. 

It seems to us the process of balancing prophecy before profit is most tenable when done in partnership. If we could find other companies with the same DNA, built on the same foundation, having the same priorities, looking ahead to the same impossible possibilities arising out of a future hope in Creator God, then a relationship with those companies would make us all stronger and better able to carry out our respective missions. We wouldn’t partner to get bigger for the sake of getting bigger or grow market share for the sake of growing market share, we would partner to sustain each other’s mission because we believe each other’s mission is important and worth sustaining. We wouldn’t seek profit for the sake of profit, profit is for the sake of sustainability, sustainability is for the sake of mission, and the mission is prophetic.

Our mission

Create visual media for the church to re-orient God's people around Jesus' good news and mission to make all things new.

FRAMEWORK

TWOTP is outside of structures but inside the kingdom.

We, that is those involved in beginning TWOTP, have been called to a livelihood outside of familiar structures; structures we might find safe and comforting; churches, seminaries, religious organizations. Our calling from the outside of structures is still from inside the body of Christ, connected by compassion and love to all the body of Christ for the sake of the body of Christ.

Our position outside of structures isn't for everybody, indeed we believe our specific calling outside of familiar structures is intimately connected to the task of articulating the implications of God's kingdom being true.

We’ve been living outside of structures and in the marketplace for a while and we feel like we’ve gotten some things right about living in the tension of prophecy before profit.