Michael Gungor Quotes

You make beautiful things, You make beautiful things out of the dust

Burnout is what happens when you try to avoid being human for too long.

Art matters. It is not simply a leisure activity for the privileged or a hobby for the eccentric. It is a practical good for the world. The work of the artist is an expression of hope - it is homage to the value of human life, and it is vital to society. Art is a sacred expression of human creativity that shares the same ontological ground as all human work. Art, along with all work is the ordering of creation toward the intention of the creator.

The noise around us determines how we speak. And how we listen. Just as a conversation suffers in a war zone, art suffers in a culture built on noise. So does our enjoyment of it.

Any religious, philosophical or political idea that doesn't lead one towards love ought to be forsaken

Creativity is simply the human brain forming new connections between ideas, and we all are engaged in this process every day. The common idea that there are some people who are creative and some who are not is a myth. On some level, we are all artists. We are all creators.

Faith comes from listening to the right stories.

If leading worship is just about bringing a group of people into a room so we can get goosebumps and sing songs together, there's not much value in that. But if leading worship is a means to an end, that we leave this place as a different kind of people, as part of a new humanity that God wants to create... then that matters.

Money is not the root of all kinds of evil. The love of money is. It’s also the root of a lot of bad art.

Art is the body's pronunciation of the soul.

Spend your energy on things you believe in, and do them honestly and to the best of your ability.

I used to flirt with fundamentalism, and I had this idea that creation was something that happened. Now I see creation as something that is happening. Hundreds of millions of stars are still being born every day. Creation is an ongoing process. The Artist has not yet cleaned out the brushes. The paint is still wet. Human beings are the small clumps of clay and breath, and we have been handed brushes of our own, like young artist apprentices. The brushes aren't ours, nor the paint or canvas, but here they are in our hands, on loan. What shall we make?

We are all creators. Whether or not we create is not up to us. We are human, and creating is what we do. Every interaction, movement, and decision is creativity at work. We are all artists. We all order creation around us into the world that we want to make.

I don't want everybody to try to sound like something; I think that God has given us each unique talents and passions. The things that come out of me will be different than my neighbor, because I have a totally different set of relationships, totally different set influences and personality traits.

Art, along with all work is the ordering of creation toward the intention of the creator.

Pain is as common as skin, we all experience it. It unites us all. Fortunately, that's not the whole story.

I think I'm just trying to be myself and write songs that are honest. That's what I hear in artist's that I like.

I think everybody is different. We are trying to be ourselves, and other people are trying to be themselves. We all share commonalities with each other, but all of us have different thumbprints. We all have our own unique things.

To me, God is the basic Reality of the universe. God is what is. That's how Moses wrote that God introduced Himself, isn't it? "I am that I am." God is. Whatever is, that is God.

To me genres were always an imaginary things, they're just marketing channels.

The danger of art created to rise above the noise is that it may end up being noise itself.

The more successful the work, the more people will step in to try to influence and manipulate the work for their own benefit.

This kind of passionate faith can be painful. Not caring is easy. Caring hurts. Caring costs you something. But without this sort of faith, you will never create to your fullest potential. Faith is a gift. Like I've said, felt belief is not necessarily something that you choose to have or not to have. But it is a gift that you can open yourself to receive.

There is a reason we used to build Cathedrals that drew the eye upwards.

One of the things I love about art, is that it can say number of things to people. I broad hope is that it would just open people's hearts and that they would experience love, and that that would experience God.

To me music is music. A person of faith, a person that calls themselves a Christian, they are the Christian and they make music. Some music has more to do about God than other music, but in reality what makes the difference between "secular" and "Christian" music is simply a marketing channel.

I've found that limitations can be an artist's best friend sometimes.

I kind of grew up a guitar nerd and I tried to figure out how to shred on an acoustic guitar as a kid, while listening to jazz or whatever. So that is kind of a different thing and my church background, growing up with worship kind of the ground that I learned how to play music from. Those are all odd ways of growing up, compared to most people, so I think the music has plenty of uniqueness in that.

I'm not one to call out an individual and say "I don't think that is honest." Who am I to know what is in their heart while they are singing it?

Not just in Christian music but also in a lot of Christian culture there is a lot of pretending that everyone is perfect, nobody is really going through much.

It's hard to make a living in music, so a lot of times in the arts it's safer to kind of fit into a box.

If anyone should have a reason to not be afraid, to move beyond the expectations of culture, that is kind of the whole message of Christianity.

The whole idea of worship being associated with music, it gives you an impotence to make art that is true, that is honest and that opens the human heart to God and to reality.

You don't have to be afraid, even death itself does not have power. In Christ, everything is becoming new, everything is different.

The person who creates from the noise simply adds to the noise. The person who creates from a place of listening, however, can actually make something worthwhile and enjoy his work in the process.

When I think of Spirit, I think of that mysterious force that pulls us into being, into becoming, into love. That can get political rather quickly.

I do think that Christians will make music that oh should have some of the grandest visions of why we should create music and why we should seek to create beauty world.