Ministers take photos at the 2023 creative retreat for art ministers at the Created Studio, San Antonio, Texas. Photos credit: Ashley Rogers/Created Ministry.
Over the years, preaching the Gospel and connecting people to Christ have been done through church settings, giving, community building, sharing stories about Jesus around dinner tables like the dinner church does and more. A ministry in Texas called Created is employing a new way of connecting people to Christ: creative arts.
Created Ministry describes themselves as a gathering place that helps people listen to God's voice and experience His hope and joy through restorative creative sessions.
How Created Ministry started
Ashley Rogers loves Jesus. She loves arts and people, too. She wanted a way to combine these three, leading people to Christ’s love and a purposeful life. She discovered that studying for a degree in art therapy would be the best way to make this desire come to life. But Rogers would later gain clarity and understanding that God wanted her to pioneer something new.
With clarity of purpose, she spent a year planning, praying and building, and in 2015, she opened the Created Studio.
“Created was born from a God-sized dream to reintroduce the arts to a world of people who are often terrified of it,” Rogers, Director of Created, told Koinesúnē in an email interview. “It’s for children and adults; painters and finger painters; thinkers and doers; musicians and writers.”
The years that followed saw Created providing a safe and quiet space for interaction and connection with the Holy Spirit, Rogers said, with many lives having experienced God since the ministry’s inception.
“Over the first several years of the ministry’s existence, hundreds of people walked through the old red doors of my studio to experience a session in which they were able to be still, listen to the Holy Spirit and create and express what God was speaking to them. God has used these sessions to bring healing, hope, joy, vision and encouragement,” she said.
Prayer banners on display during a 2023 session with seniors at Incarnate Word High School at the Retreat Center in Texas.
With the growth Created experienced in the first few years, Rogers said she knew God’s plan for the ministry was much bigger than she had initially envisioned. So, Created had to move outside of the studio. The ministry went into homes, conference rooms, nursing homes, communities, retreat centers and rehabs. God revealed how to use these creative sessions in new and deeply impactful ways, in order to reach diverse groups of people with the love of Jesus, Rogers explained.
With the new move, the impact increased, and people began requesting training from the ministry on how to use the arts as a ministry tool too. As the requests continued to come, Rogers sought further directions from God, and in 2019, the ministry launched the Created Arts Ministry Program, also known as CAMP.
The program, according to Created’s website, is purposed to prepare and equip God’s people to use the arts as a tool in their communities to bring healing, hope and the light of Jesus. It is designed to train leaders to guide groups of people or individuals through an artistic process that is encouraging to the soul.
The program, which could be in the form of a self-paced online course, equips participants to be confident and certified Created arts facilitators, who can take arts ministry anywhere they go.
How Created has impacted the Body of Christ
Created's growth has been achieved through God’s direction, Rogers and her team's dedication. But that does not mean the ministry has not faced challenges.
“Every challenge presents an opportunity to get back on my knees and ask Jesus how to adjust,” Rogers said, adding that there have been disappointments along the way—weariness, loneliness, purposelessness and wondering if the mission was even worthwhile.
“God frequently reminds me that adjusting and changing is always part of the journey. He has taught me that obedience is key—making people happy with what I offer or how much I do has to go. I face challenges with Created with open hands, remembering this is not ‘my baby’ but God's idea.”
Paint brushes in plastic cups filled with paint. Photo by Jadson Thomas for Pexels
One of the important successes of the ministry is obedience to start the ministry, Rogers said. “More than anything we have achieved by the world's standards, it could be said that I've obeyed,” she said, adding that hundreds of people have experienced God speaking to their hearts and (prayerfully) giving them hope and setting them free at Created.
“I believe through the process of creating, mess-making and simply having free space to be with God like a child, people have experienced joy to remember child-like love and faith,” Rogers said. “I believe God has healed deep wounds and pain and spoken to places that they otherwise wouldn't have access to. We have seen creative sessions on the streets, in recovery homes, with teen moms and with immigrant families.”
Almost a decade since Created’s studio was launched and a new kind of way of connecting people to God entrenched, the ministry’s influence through God’s words has now transcended the boundaries of Texas and the United States.
Created has trained ministers from 25 countries, Rogers said, and God is using them to change lives and connect people to Christ in their respective countries.
“There is no space that God's creativity doesn't like to go.”
Justice Nwafor is a freelance journalist based in Lagos, Nigeria. His works have been published by the BBC, Reuters, African Arguments, Climate Correspondent, SciDevNet, and many more. He is also an Earth Journalism Network grantee.
