Tony Cummings grilled Martin Wroe and Martin Evans about Europe's biggest Christian arts festival GREENBELT.

You've never come across any flak?

ME: We raised the issue of (non-Christian) guests with our public. And we certainly had some letters of concern. Their concern was that we didn't get to a position where we were just becoming a "rock festival" and loosing our distinctive Christian underpinning and we would absolutely support that position if we thought for a second that Greenbelt was becoming just a festival and wasn't one imbued with a Christian perspective. If that happened we'd know that we'd lost our direction.

MW: To add to that, we don't want to confuse the audience either. We don't want to pretend that people who play are evangelical Christians when they're not. But rather than say 'they're not Christian' what we're more likely to do is interview them in the programme or in 'Strait' or somewhere where they make clear in their own words where they're coming from. But we don't want to be a judge and jury for them. Because lots of them are on a path and in due course maybe they'll decide that Christianity is the right thing for them.

Where does ministry come into all this? It has been suggested that for today's Greenbelt organisers, artistic excellence is the thing that you're striving for primarily and the ministry dimension, particularly evangelism, is a bit of an embarrassment.

ME: Good art is a powerful tool of communication, it catches the spirit, it gets to the heart of what men and women are about. And I believe that when Christian men and women are doing their art well and purposefully and to the glory of God then that is a powerful evangelistic tool. And that's the evidence we've got at Greenbelt anyway. As a matter of fact a lot of men and women, boys and girls, become Christians at Greenbelt every year. They become Christians because the gospel in its reality gets to people through what they hear and see.

Now that's a very interesting point. Some conservative evangelicals wouldn't be aware of conversions at Greenbelt.

MW: What do you think we should do about that?

Better communication. I think it important that we understand each other better. Clearly at the moment some conservatives in the church don't appreciate all that you're doing.

MW: I'm glad you raised this question of mutual understanding. We had a meeting about two weeks ago. We made a list of people we're writing to, offering complimentary tickets to, specifically because they need to know what's going on at the festival. There's a lot of rumour and half-truth, lots of myths that go around about Greenbelt.

But it's hard to combat them without reinforcing them in people's minds. It would be easy to take an advert in a magazine that said there is not a drugs problem at Greenbelt. But lots of people would immediately think 'drugs... Greenbelt'. It's much easier to invite movers and shakers from the evangelical scene and say, come and have a look at our festival...judge for yourself.

My point of view is this. Many evangelicals are enculturalised and live and move within a very stunted aesthetic world and I believe there is much that Greenbelt can contribute to expanding their appreciation of art, per se. But unless you can show conservative evangelicals that there are dimensions other than artistic excellence - particularly, though not exclusively, evangelism - going on there, you'll never convince many conservative evangelical leaders that Greenbelt is an event worthy of support. Is it true to say you've chosen to engage in evangelism in a less overt, less direct way?

MW: Yes, that's right. We don't think of ourselves as primarily an evangelistic event. But because we believe in the evangel, the Good News, if we present the Good News in an exciting way we're going to be evangelistic accidentally.

ME: To add to that there's an important historical point. The people who organised Greenbelt over the years have never felt that Greenbelt's meaning and purpose is to be an evangelistic event.

No, surely, in the early days Kenneth Frampton thought Greenbelt should have a strong evangelistic content.