Michael Gungor Quotes & Sayings

Practice being fully present with something. Perhaps you may find something of God there. Go outside and look at the stars. Not for just a few seconds - lay a blanket in the yard, lie on your back and really look at the stars. Try to let your heart feel the incomprehensible size and grandeur of the universe. Take the time to really attend to a meal, a good book, a piece of music, or a sunrise. The point is to be fully present, to not be swept up into the distraction of a thousand voices, but to learn how to simply and fully attend to one. Then, when one enters back into the noisy world that we live in, even the million colors together are more vibrant because you have learned to better see color in its essence. To truly see is to find hope. — Michael Gungor

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. — Michael Gungor

You make beautiful things, You make beautiful things out of the dust — Michael Gungor

Faith comes from listening to the right stories. — Michael Gungor

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. — Michael Gungor

To truly see is to find hope. — Michael Gungor

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. — Michael Gungor

Here is a paradox for the creator: if you love your work, let it go.15 Because if you grip it too tightly, you will strangle it. If you hold it in open hands, you may actually find that the work has a life of its own. Creativity is more about listening and following than it is about forcing or manipulating. The truth for the creator is that you have a very limited control over anything in the world, even your own creation. You can work on it. You can help mold and shape its form. But there will come a point in the creative process where your creation is what it is. There comes a point where there is nothing left to do but to rest. To open your hands and let it go. You cannot control how others will receive it. They — Michael Gungor

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

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. — Michael Gungor

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. — Michael Gungor

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. — Michael Gungor

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. — Michael Gungor

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

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. — Michael Gungor

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. — Michael Gungor

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

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. — Michael Gungor

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. — Michael Gungor

We consume our art like moths. We gather, momentarily, around wherever the biggest, brightest light seems to be. So these days, the most successful art is the art that can elicit the quickest visceral reaction from the largest group of people. — Michael Gungor

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

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

A healthy faith is one that has aligned in word, thought, and action. — Michael Gungor

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. — Michael Gungor

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. — Michael Gungor

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. — Michael Gungor

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. — Michael Gungor

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

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. — Michael Gungor

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. — Michael Gungor

Art is the body's pronunciation of the soul. — Michael Gungor

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. — Michael Gungor

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. — Michael Gungor

Doubt purifies faith. Without doubt, belief calcifies into rigid fundamentalism. Without doubt, there are no questions; and without questions, there is no imagination. — Michael Gungor

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

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

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? — Michael Gungor

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

Entitlement is not a friend of art. Work is. Pain is. — Michael Gungor

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. — Michael Gungor

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

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? — Michael Gungor

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. — Michael Gungor