Oasis of Imagination: Engaging Our World Through a Better Creativity

What should the church’s cultural witness be?

Too often, it has been marked by political strong-arming or fearful withdrawal into the ＂Christian bubble.＂ There is another way: creative cultural engagement, using our imaginations to plant oases in the desert, breathable spaces that refresh, challenge, and draw together Christians and non-Christians alike. Oases refresh the soul, provoke discussion, challenge assumptions, and lead the imagination to a new place.

In Oasis of Imagination, Ted Turnau lays out the Biblical mandate for engaging culture, and why the imaginative path holds promise. He explores the nature of the imagination from both Scripture and nature. He asks, ＂What makes a Christian imagination that resonates with non-Christians different?＂ He explores examples of Christian creativity done well from video games to movies to music to The Lord of the Rings. He challenges the church, artist and non-artist alike, to be intentional about their own imaginative lives, how artists and non-artists can support each other, as they together engage in building bridges and being cultural ambassadors to the wider community.

In-depth and wide-ranging, Oasis of Imagination equips and encourages Christians, whatever their calling, to consider how to imaginatively enter into the broader cultural conversation, beyond the culture-warring and Christian bubbles. It seeks to provoke a conversation within the church between its artists and non-artists about how best to unleash our God-given creativity to shine light into the broader culture.

Ted Turnau is chair of Journalism and Media Studies at Anglo-American University, Prague. He speaks widely on culture, media, and Christian cultural engagement and is the author of Popologetics (P&R) and The Pop Culture Parent (New Growth Press). He and his wife Carolyn have three children and two cats.