Spirit-Filled Artists as Transformational Leaders in Post-Christian Francophone Quebec

by Christa Smith-Kingston
June 4th, 2022

The opportunity addressed through this qualitative research project is the contextualized discipleship of Spirit-filled artists, so they become transformational leaders, in order to bridge the power of the arts to the spiritual hunger of post-Christian Francophone Quebec. Through focus groups, one-on-one key informant interviews, and narrative inquiries, the results of the qualitative data collection were triangulated with conceptual professional frameworks drawn from the literature review: transformational leadership exercised through prophetic, shalom, and steward leadership, aesthetic engagement theory, and post-Christian theory. Alongside the theological frameworks of the Spirit of God in the artist and the prophetic voice of the artist, all these threads were woven together to demonstrate three primary findings: seeking solitude, community, and connectedness in the artist’s spiritual life; the Church’s empowerment of her artists through love, trust and freedom; and the Church sending her artists into the world to create beauty, practice compassion and speak prophetically through the arts. Utilizing community-based participatory action, the transformational intervention strategy informed by this research is a catalytic artists’ retreat with a 28-day spiritual formation guide with leader’s companion, in order to launch multiplicative communities of artists into the cities of Quebec, empowered by the Church.