Ben Lippen Podcast
Welcome to the Ben Lippen Podcast, where we explore life’s challenges through the lens of Biblical truth and expert advice. We aim to equip families with practical, faith-centered tools for today’s world. Tune in for inspiring conversations that encourage and strengthen your walk in faith!
Ben Lippen Podcast
The Art of Reflecting God's Image
What happens when your identity is shaken to its foundation? Taylor Nelson, Director of Fine Arts at Ben Lippen School, takes us on an intimate journey through the defining moments that shaped his understanding of art, faith, and purpose.
As Taylor shares stories from his six years at Ben Lippen and his previous teaching experience in Charlotte, we discover a man driven by more than just artistic excellence. His personal narrative weaves through travels across continents (with a goal of "seven continents by 70"), a loving marriage, and the joy of new parenthood with five-month-old son Davis. But beneath these achievements lies a powerful testimony of transformation.
During college, Taylor faced a crisis that would redefine everything. As a vocal performance major whose entire identity was wrapped up in being "the music guy," he suddenly lost his voice for months. Through this challenging season, Taylor discovered the danger of making good things—like artistic talent—into ultimate things. "Nothing is strong enough or firm enough to root my identity on the inside except Christ," he realized, a lesson that now permeates his educational philosophy.
This revelation shapes how Taylor leads Ben Lippen’s thriving arts program. Rather than teaching students to create for self-glory or recognition, he instills a three-fold purpose: creating "for God, for others, and for fun." This approach frees young artists from the crushing weight of perfectionism and redirects their focus toward reflecting their Creator's excellence.
Under Taylor's leadership, Ben Lippen’s arts department has flourished with expanded opportunities, expert instruction, and a biblical worldview. Recent musical productions have nearly sold out, demonstrating growing community support. Looking ahead, Taylor hints at exciting developments including potential tours and international experiences that will further enrich students' artistic journeys.
Want to support this vision of arts education that transforms not just skills but hearts? Connect with Taylor at taylornelson@benlippin.com or join the Friends of Fine Arts Booster Club at benlippin.com/fofa.
All right, everyone, welcome to another episode of the Ben Lippin podcast, and today I have a colleague, a coworker and someone that the Ben Lippin community is very familiar with in the room with me, and he is going to be one of our voices of Ben Lippin as we are exploring the stories of who is in Ben Lippin that makes our community thrive. It's just so important to tell these stories and to connect the community together in a deeper and a richer way. So, without further ado, I have Mr Taylor Nelson with us. He's our director of fine arts here at Ben Lippin and I'm just going to turn it over to him and let him share a little bit about who he is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you, erin. So I'm Taylor Nelson. I serve as the director of fine arts at Ben Lippin. I'm finishing up year number six here, which is half of my teaching career. I had six years in Charlotte and now six years at Ben Lippin, which is awesome. I love being a Falcon. I'm married to Kayla. She's a PA at Prisma and we have a five month old son named Davis, who is precious and just learning to roll over and pretty soon he'll be sitting up and he is the light of our lives. We love being with him every day. We are members of First Presbyterian Church downtown, which is actually where my wife and I met a few years ago. We've been married two and a half years and loving every second of it.
Speaker 1:So, mr Nelson, tell us some things that you like to do in your spare time. What are some of your hobbies?
Speaker 2:My spare time is usually spent directing musicals at the Performing Arts Center. I have a great team that helps me with that. When I'm at home with my wife and my son, we love to go on walks at the Columbia River Walks, whether it's the Riverfront Park, whether it's the one by the zoo or whether it's the one down in West Columbia in Casey. We love going down to all three of those and doing walks with our puppy, rudy, and getting some of his energy out. We love into coffee. You can catch us there regularly. We love doing that.
Speaker 2:And my wife and I love to travel. We have made it one of our goals in our marriage to step foot on every continent. We say seven continents by 70 and 50 states by 50 is our goal. And then we also want to have a bottle of water from every ocean in our home. So we've like tailored our travel around going places where we can go to the different oceans. So we've been to Hawaii and gotten water from the Pacific Ocean. We have been to Myrtle Beach and gotten water from the Atlantic. We've gone to Norway and gotten water from the Arctic Ocean and we've been to the Maldives for our honeymoon and that's how we got the Indian Ocean, so the last one we still have to go is the Southern Ocean, around Antarctica, and that will be a long time from now, when we've saved up enough money to afford that.
Speaker 1:So what has been your favorite trip that y'all have taken?
Speaker 2:It depends on if you're looking for relaxation or adventure. If you're looking for relaxation, man, it was the Maldives. It was the place where we stayed. My wife found this awesome resort where we were able to stay for about a week and it was very relaxing and lots of fun snorkeling and it was really beautiful just seeing all the different types of fish and marine life that was there in the Maldives. It's so untouched, you know, it was just really beautiful.
Speaker 2:But I think, in terms of adventure, my favorite one had to be Norway. We did all kinds of hiking in the snow. It was winter January when we went to Norway and the city where we stayed is above the Arctic circle, so it was like negative 20 degrees when we were there and we're climbing mountains covered in snow. We went on several fjord cruises and we even did a polar plunge jumping in part of the Arctic Ocean, which is super fun. But the best part of it was we went dog sledding while we were there and I thought, hey, this is going to be fun. We get to sit on the sled and they're going to drive us around and do all these fun things. No, no, no, I got to drive the dog sled. I did not realize how much cardio that was going to be, because when you get to the hills you have to help them push the sled up the hills, so the dogs aren't doing it alone. So that was a lot of work, but man, it was so fun. We had the best time doing that together.
Speaker 1:The beauty of his handiwork when you go to all these different places.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. Especially in Norway, we saw the Northern Lights when we were there. And Especially in Norway, we saw the Northern Lights when we were there and it was just stunning. We were out in a field feeding reindeer. It was one of the things that we had signed up to do. And out of nowhere you never know when the Northern Lights are going to show up and out of nowhere, here they come, and it was stunning. We just stopped and we laid down on the snow, looked up at the sky and saw it and it was beautiful. And it made me think of the hymn the Honors Choir has sung the past couple of years. This is my father's world. The second verse talks about he shines in all. That's fair. We see him in everything good, we see him in everything beautiful, because he's the source of goodness, he's the source of beauty and so of course, it comes from him.
Speaker 1:I mean it points our hearts back to him as the creator when we see the beauty of creation. So one of the pillars that we have here at Ben Lippin is to know him and to make him known. So share with the listeners how you learned who the Lord is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great question I have. I don't really remember a time without knowing and loving the Lord and that's something I kind of came to terms with after college when I became a Presbyterian. I started studying Reformed theology and thinking about that and I kind of wrestled with man. I don't really remember this time without knowing the Lord and I don't really remember this drastic change from death to life that I see in my life. And I started talking with some of my elders at my church up in Charlotte and they were like Taylor, that's a good thing, like the Lord.
Speaker 2:Some people there's a drastic moment of conversion where you immediately go from death to life. And some people the Lord is just gradually drawing to himself over a season of years. And some people the Lord draws to himself really early. Parents have you involved in the church. You're hearing the gospel from an early age. You don't really remember anything else and that's kind of my story. The Lord drew me to himself pretty early in my life and I don't really remember a time without knowing and loving the Lord Jesus and wanting to turn away from sin and follow him. So praise the Lord for that. That's the testimony. I pray that my children have as well, and I'm thankful that the Lord is the one who draws us to himself. In spite of our stubbornness and our sin. He does that.
Speaker 2:A moment where I really remember the Lord revealing himself to me and graciously teaching me and continuing to sanctify me and take away sin from me was probably my freshman year of college. All throughout high school, I mean, you guys know me, you know I love theater, I love music, I love all things in the arts, and I've been that way my whole life. I've loved singing forever. My mom said when she was pregnant with me I would move around anytime she sang and I would respond to the music that early. So in high school I was known as the music guy, the theater guy. My Instagram handle is Mr Music man. That was a big part of my identity in high school and it's a good thing to be involved in that. It's a bad thing, as Tim Keller says in his book Counterfeit Gods. It's a bad thing to take a good thing and make it an ultimate thing. So nothing besides the Lord should be an ultimate thing in our lives. Everything else should fall behind our relationship to him. And I didn't quite understand that in high school. I looked at the core of my identity to be my ability to perform music, my ability to perform theater, and so I made that kind of the core of who I was and I went to college to study music.
Speaker 2:I had a music scholarship up in Ohio and started studying voice my freshman year vocal music education and I started taking college private lessons in voice and was doing well. I was doing well, I was being successful. I had been selected to some groups and I was scheduled to lead worship at my school. This was a Christian college and I was scheduled to lead worship on a Friday in November. I was in front of about 3000 people I was supposed to lead and I woke up that morning and my voice was just gone. It was, it was not there anymore, and so I stumbled through leading worship as best as I could and I went to my voice professor afterwards and said what's going on with my voice? This is new, I've never experienced this before. And he said hey, take the weekend, it's a Friday, your voice is probably just tired, take some time to rest and you'll be back to normal on Monday. Long story short, I wasn't, and I had to go see several doctors. My vocal range started decreasing and it hurt to sing, and so I knew something was more serious going on in my larynx, and so, after seeing several doctors, I had to be put on voice rest for about two and a half months Spring semester. I had to drop out of private lessons, drop out of choir.
Speaker 2:All these things that, I thought, made me who I was, and I was very much in a season that felt dark for me. Different people go through different seasons of darkness, and that was a season of darkness for me, and I couldn't tell where the Lord was and I couldn't tell what he was doing, because I clearly knew he wanted me to use my gifts and music for His kingdom in some way, and I didn't understand why he was taking those away for that season. And during that time the Lord drew me to himself in prayer. The Lord drew me to himself through his word he's so faithful to do that and he drew me to himself through the good counsel, the good wise counsel, of godly believers who were smarter than me and wiser than me and love the Lord and have walked with him longer. And in that season the Lord did two things he most importantly taught me that he's with me all the time, even though I walked through the valley of the shadow of death Psalm 23, the Lord is still my shepherd and he's the one who is with me in that season.
Speaker 2:And then, number two he taught me through that that nothing is strong enough or firm enough to root my identity on the inside except himself, that nothing I do or nothing that I earn or I achieve can ever earn his love, that he loves me just because of who he is, not because of anything I do.
Speaker 2:And then he also tore down the idol of my voice and the I, the idol of being identified as the music man. And he said, no, I want you to be identified by me, I want you to be identified by the blood of my identified as the music man. And he said, no, I want you to be identified by me, I want you to be identified by the blood of my son that was shed for you, to redeem you and to draw you to myself. So praise the Lord for that season where he worked in my heart and uprooted sin, uprooted idols, and also was graciously teaching me that he was with me in hard seasons. And after about two and a half months of vocal therapy, my voice came back and I was able to continue studying, graduated from Cedarville University and started teaching.
Speaker 1:Beautiful story, you know, in recent history, where the Lord has really been moving and developing you, that you would like to share with our listeners.
Speaker 2:Students who are listening, I encourage you to grow up and get married. Marriage is awesome and marriage is sanctifying. The Lord is faithful to use my wife to uproot my selfishness and show me my selfishness. You never know how selfish you are until you get married or until you have a roommate or different seasons of life. You start seeing different sides of yourself and your sin comes out in different ways, and even being a parent ever since my son was born, it has shown me my selfishness more too, and so I would say the Lord is faithful to use the different seasons he puts you in to uproot your sin and to sanctify you. He promises to sanctify us.
Speaker 1:So, speaking of that, in what ways do you make him known?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that's the other half of to know him and to make him known the biggest way that he really it's him making himself known. Right, the Psalms teach us that the heavens declare the glory of God. We see him making himself known everywhere and he is gracious and kind to include us in that process. He commands us to be a part of that process and the Great Commission, and what a privilege that is to do that. And you can do that in a lot of ways. You can do that with specifically evangelizing and telling people the gospel, and that's a really important way and a really good way that we should all be doing. Another way is to bear the image of God and to reflect him, make him known by reflecting his image to the world, which is probably where my world lines up, more so in terms of fine arts. Obviously, we share the gospel as much as we can, but my day job every day is to help students embrace their roles as creators who reflect the image of the ultimate creator to the world, and so we tell them you are made in the image of God. Genesis teaches us that, and we see his image stamped on us in a lot of ways, and one of the biggest ways that we see it is you can create. You can create music, you can create theater, you can create art, and that's not an accident. The reason you can create these things is because you're made in the image of a creative God, because God is the big creator. You can be a little creator, you can be a mini creator who reflects him when you create music, art and theater. And that begs the question okay, how should I create If I'm a reflection of the creator, how should I create? And our answer to that at Ben Lippin School is you should be an excellent reflection of your creator, and that's why we push ourselves in the arts to be the best that we can be, not for the sake of saying, look, how great Ben Lippin's school is, not for the sake of saying, look, how great Taylor Nelson is. That was the mistake I made in high school before I had that experience with my voice. The better thing to do is to say I want to pursue excellence because the Lord is excellent. When I create, I want to reflect him as well as I can, and I know that our reflections are broken because of sin, but we should still be pursuing excellence as we create because we serve an excellent God who's in the process of remaking us to, into the image of his son, and so we teach them that. Then we also teach them that's music, art and theater for God, right. And then we say music, art and theater for God, right. And then we say music, art and theater for others.
Speaker 2:We teach them that the second reason to create with excellence is because we want to give away a good gift to our audience. We want to take that reflection of the creator and give it to the people who are looking at our artwork or the people who are listening to our music or the people who are attending the performance of our musical. We want to give them the best possible reflection of the creator because we want to get their attention. We want to open doors for the second part of making him known, which is evangelizing, and we want to open doors and say, hey, we want to present to you the very best because we serve an awesome God. We serve a creative God who is excellent, and not only who is excellent and not only made you but loves you and gave his son to die for you, to redeem you and draw you to himself and all those who turn away from their sin and believe in the Lord Jesus can be saved. And so that's the second reason why we want to be excellent. We want to give away a good gift to our audience that helps point our audience to something greater.
Speaker 2:And then we say for fun, we believe that life should be enjoyed. We believe that God is a God of joy. Scripture teaches us that. All over the Psalms, all over Isaiah points to that the coming joy of the fullness of God's kingdom at the end of time. And so we believe that God is a God of joy, and music and art and theater are a big way that we can celebrate that. It's a big way that we can have fun and build relationships and be excited together. And so we teach students to create for fun, because we want them to embrace good things in life. We want them to embrace good relationships with each other. We want them to have fun as they create because our God is a God of joy have fun as they create, because our God is a God of joy.
Speaker 1:Reflecting back to now, how have you seen these pillars of the fine arts department grow and develop and help some of these students grow closer to him?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great question. I think, in order for us to provide that well, we have to have three main things. Number one we have to have a great vision that is aligned with scripture and a great vision that is aligned with scripture and a great vision that is aligned with the mission of Ben Lippin School. And so we want to make sure that we are teaching truth and teaching a biblical worldview in all of our arts classes and all of our arts programs after school. And that's where we summarize the For God, for Others, for Fun kind of philosophy making sure we're teaching them aligns with scripture and reflects our love for the Lord. That's why we're selective in the content we choose to introduce our students to. But then I think the second thing it needs is we have to be able to teach students to develop their skills to the highest possible level, and so we have to be on the cutting edge of pedagogy and teaching them the best vocal techniques, teaching them the best artistic techniques, giving them the best real world opportunities to grow these skills. And I think the third thing is it takes the right people in the right seats on the bus. We have to have the right teachers, who love the Lord, who are experts in the arts and who are experts at teaching, to be able to help our students develop these skills and build them. For the glory of God, ben Lippin School has always been excellent.
Speaker 2:I'm grateful for the maybe renewed interest and renewed investment and emphasis on the arts over the past six years that the school administration and leadership has chosen to invest. Well, this position was created and it didn't exist before. And this position is important to help lead those things and provide those things. Whether it's me in this seat or somebody else, this position is important and the funding for this area has has dramatically increased as well over the past six years to provide some of those opportunities. That's why we can hire a full orchestra to play for our high school musicals and give our student, our students, that level of experience. That level of excellence in their experience is why we can hire 10 people to be on our directing team for our musicals, because it takes that many people to do it well. So I'm grateful to the leadership for providing those opportunities and investing well in the arts through positions and also through funding. It has been a joy to see how that has impacted students.
Speaker 2:Those three things right the worldview and philosophy. Teaching at the highest level and having the right people to do that has impacted students in a massive way that I could tell you story after story of students who have grown their worldview through the arts at Ben Lippin and learned and began to understand that the arts are not about them. The arts are not about themselves. The world will tell you hey, make great art to make a name for yourself. Make great music to make a name for yourself. How many monthly subscribers can you get on YouTube? How many monthly subscribers can you get on I'm sorry, not Instagram, spotify, monthly listeners. How many people will like your post if you post a video of yourself singing? That's what the world tells you it's about. And at Ben Lippin, we tell you that's not what it's about. The arts are not about you.
Speaker 2:The arts are about glorifying the Lord by reflecting him well and giving a good gift to other people and enjoying building relationships with those around you. That's what it's about and that's so freeing, right, it is so freeing because it takes the pressure off of you. You don't have to say, oh, my word, my identity rests in this and I better be perfect at this. There's room to make mistakes and there's room to grow because we're not perfect, right. And so it's important that our students understand the arts are not about them.
Speaker 2:That's why it's not devastating. It's why it shouldn't be devastating if you don't get the role you want in a play, because it's not about you. You have the opportunity to reflect the Lord, no matter where we put you. That's why it's not devastating if you make a mistake on a song, because it's not about you. You should be pursuing excellence and you should be building your skills, but at the end of the day, that's not where your identity lies. It's not about making a name for yourself. It's about raising the name that's greater than your name, and that's what I believe the difference is at Ben Lippin School in the arts.
Speaker 1:All right, so are there any closing thoughts you'd like to share with our listeners?
Speaker 2:I would say keep supporting the arts, keep coming and keep being a part of it. It is a joy for our team to help our students produce music, art and theater and we love sharing that with the Ben Lippin School community and it's been so fun to watch that interest grow in the community over the past several years. We sold out Beauty and the Beast, we sold out Mary Poppins, except for 14 tickets. We had 14 tickets left this past year. So keep coming.
Speaker 2:It's so encouraging to our students, who are being vulnerable and learning to build their skills and share them with other people in a vulnerable way, to get the support of the community. We just love that and we're so grateful for the fantastic support the Ben Lippin community has provided so far and I'm thankful for the administrative leadership investing in this department, helping our students shine. We have some exciting things in store for next year. We're working on some things, hoping to get our students out in the real world even more in the arts, whether that's through tours, whether that's through some collaborative opportunities, whether that's through some international trips. We would love to start moving in those directions, but we'll see. We'll keep praying and asking the Lord to guide us and provide for our needs as we continue to help our students build their skills.
Speaker 1:Knowing him and making him known.
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you so much for being here with us today. And if people have questions for you or want to reach out to you, what is the best way for them to get in touch with you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. My email is taylornelson at benlippincom. I'd be happy to talk to you If you love what you hear and want to invest in fine arts. At Ben Lippin we have the Friends of Fine Arts Booster Club and you can join at different membership levels at benlippincom. Slash, f-o-f-a and Erin. Thank you so much for having me All right.
Speaker 1:Thank you everyone and we look forward to seeing you on the next episode of the Ben Lippin Podcast.