Equipped to Serve: Music & Creative Arts Leaders Gather for Renewal and Calling
The work of a divisional music or creative arts director isn’t easy to explain. It’s part musician, part administrator, part pastor, part teacher, and part visionary, shaping worship arts ministry across an entire division while nurturing the leaders and musicians who carry it out locally.
This January, nearly 100 of these leaders gathered at the Evangeline Booth College in Atlanta for the North American Divisional Music & Arts Conference, experiencing several days of worship, retreat, and equipping for the ministry to which God has called them.
“We all need the same thing,” Captain Norman Polusca, corps officer of Norridge Citadel in Illinois, told the group during Wednesday morning devotions. “You might say you need more money, a better horn, better instruments, better costumes, a better resource room.” He paused before emphasizing that what we really need is “a greater manifestation of the Spirit’s power in the work we have been called to do.”
Much of the conference focused on understanding and reaching the next generation. Dr. Brian Hull, professor at Asbury University and director of The Salvation Army’s Forged youth ministry coaching program, led multiple sessions on young people navigating deep anxiety and loneliness, yet hungry for meaningful community and spiritual connection. “Without a shadow of a doubt, the biggest need – if you want to understand Gen Z, Gen Alpha – is this: they need community.”
For music and creative arts leaders, that message carries particular weight. These aren’t just program directors; they lead ministries where generations sit side by side, where young people learn discipline and skill alongside adults who know their names. Music draws people together. It creates space for real community. And within that community, discipleship takes shape — not as a program, but as the natural fruit of doing something meaningful together, pointed toward Jesus.
The conference also offered practical equipping — sharpening skills in audio, musical notation, strategic planning, songwriting, and dance ministry. Other sessions addressed what it takes to remain faithful in the work over time: the reality of burnout, the importance of community, and the spiritual grit required to stay the course.
Captain Polusca’s powerful words reframed the week for all: “Don’t confuse what you’re paid to do with who you are called to be.”
On Friday morning, leaders gathered for a consecration service before departing equipped, encouraged, and reminded of the calling they carry.