So, when I first saw Hannah dancing in the back of our church during our Sunday worship time, I was thrilled and awed… This is one of the roots of our worship: one of the oldest practices of worship in the Bible… And it is also a foundational art form, found in the most primitive cultures and honed into one of the most challenging modern performing arts…

Hannah just flat-out rocks it.

She and I have worked together to add dance to our Night in Bethlehem event at LVC… By “worked together” I mean she does the choreography, recruiting, costuming and leads rehearsals… and I put it in the program. It is, by far, my most favorite moment in the evening… The energy, mood and emotion that the dance adds is amazing. And unlike the drama, which is scripted, or the costumes and sets, which are contrived, the dance draws from ancient forms and ancient music to present one of the most authentic moments as well.

But Hannah’s involvement at NiB is just the tip of the iceberg… Her primary outlet for dance as worship is at the Celebration Ministry of the Arts (CMA) a dance school and performing group here in the Denver-metro area. Hannah teaches preschoolers and participates in the organization’s performing company, both locally and abroad.

Of particular interest to me is the group’s numerous trips to perform and minister in Japan… Hannah tells me:

“Dance is a good fit for ministry in Japan. The culture there has a very high respect for the arts… They also like Americans, which makes it easier too.”

But Japanese culture is also very intolerant of individuals who defect from traditional beliefs… Christian converts are often disowned by their families. This makes sharing the Gospel a particular challenge. The troupe travels through the country, performing at churches and occasionally in public venues…

They dance and they talk about Jesus…

“I only know of one occasion where there were actual conversions, mostly we just ‘sow seeds’ by sharing personal stories of what God has done in our lives…”

I mention to Hannah that many of the artists that I’ve talked are largely unactivated in their church… We’ve worked together at LVC, but only on the one project… She is sympathetic:

“I’m working on a dance workshop at the church that I’m attending now… It’s the first opportunity I’ve had to do that and it’s very exciting. But CMA was actually started by dancers who wanted to worship through dance but had no outlet for that in their churches…”

I can’t help but be disappointed that Hannah isn’t doing her workshop at LVC… I think that it’s also interesting to add that CMA has almost 500 dancers in four locations around Colorado…

As a parent, I’m curious about CMA and why parents would choose a “christian” dance school over the many that are scattered around… I sometimes have observed a disparity between the quality of arts inside and outside the church… And I wonder:

Can the “christian” alternative be as good?

So, I visit the CMA website and watch the videos… and I came across this little nugget about their performing troupe:

Our performing company consists of women who are technically trained in classical dance, but most importantly, have the hearts of passionate worshipers.

And I think that says it…

Because as artists who are christians, we ought to pursue training and practice to hone our technique… It is in our hearts, focused on God, committed to Jesus and full of passion, that we worship… No matter what our medium….

For more information about Celebration Ministry of the Arts, click here…

I’ll be posting some video of Hannah, performing with CMA later this week…

Thanks again to Troy… If you like his work, then go like his page on Facebook.

"This is Joe, let me tell you his story..." Tree by brionnasweetie2 on flickr

Do you know any missionaries… personally?

I remember the very first conversation that I ever had with a missionary… I was 11. The conversation was about Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, which had just hit theaters. He was excited about the movie and I was feeling very mature because a bona-fide grown-up was having a conversation with me.

One minute we were debating whether Darth Vader was lying about being Luke’s father… the next minute, we were talking about hand-carved jewelry from Sri Lanka and how selling it was changing the socio-economic landscape of the village where he worked.

It’s been like that with virtually every missionary that I’ve known or talked to… They simply can’t help but tell their story.

Let’s help them…

Phil Cooke observes that “branding” is the visual hook for your story (in his book, Branding Faith: Why Some Churches and Non-profits Impact Culture and Others Don’t).  What a number of independent missionaries need is a branded presentation that provides audiences with a visual hook. For a skilled graphics designer, this isn’t much more than a doodle. I work with a missions organization that recently had a pro designer volunteer to rework the branding… it has had a tremendous impact.

The other thing that could really change the impact of a missions presentation is a video or some quality photo images.  We’re going to talk later in the week with a student filmmaker who has put together a brief documentary-style presentation for a missionary.  Watch that video here. It presents the vision and mission in a powerful and engaging way that makes a great opener for the missionary’s presentation…

I mentioned poor photo quality yesterday and I wanted to touch on that again. Church groups that go on mission trips should take a photographer and let that be her designated job for the duration of the trip. I have been trawling through Flickr.com, looking for mission trip photos to invite to our Flickr Friday slideshow. There are LOTS of photos of the “people on the team” but almost never any with the missionary and very few good shots of the people being served. In other words, the photos are for the home church, not the missionary. I met a guy on Flickr who goes on missions trips with his church as “the photographer” and I’ll be sharing his story in the FeaturedArtist slot sometime in November…

This is where the focus needs to change and this is the practical reason that the artist should initiate contact with the missionary.  We’ve got to find out what his story is… then we’ll know which photos to take, what footage to grab, which of the people being served has a story that the missionary likes to tell in presentations.

The other reason that we need to initiate contact is spiritual… Artists have so-called critical thoughts like, I could take a better photo than that one, often because the Holy Spirit is speaking to our hearts about a need we can fill in that person’s ministry. Initiating contact becomes a matter of obedience to God.

In the parable of the sheep and the goats (Matt 25:31-46), Jesus makes it clear that once we become aware of a need, we are responsible to meet it as if it were Jesus himself in need. These missionaries that we’re talking about live that out in their daily lives and we can contribute to that work in ways that are empowering and engaging.

And remember that offering the works of our bodies as living sacrifices is our own spiritual act of worship (Rom 12:1)…

Are you getting any ideas?

"I want to tell you a story about Joe. He's the little boy on the left... the one looking at the camera... can you see him?"

Bring a missionary with a compelling story into my church for a presentation and I am almost instantly reduced to a blubbering wad of tears and snot… It doesn’t matter if they have slides or media or authentic costumes… I am drawn into the stories.

I am the exception… not the rule.

Most people, especially in the US, are over-stimulated by media.  So, if the presentation is dull or too long or not visually engaging, they check out about 45 seconds into it.  And we’ve all seen that mission trip picture: underexposed foreground that makes the 4 African children playing in the street 100 feet away look like tiny, black specks.

Take a quick look and go back to text-messaging your girlfriend… and totally miss the amazing story of Joe (third speck from the left) and how he came in dying from malnutrition and malaria three years ago…

Great stories + lousy media = boring presentation.

So, in the minds of church-goers there are basically 2 types of missionaries: interesting and boring.  The interesting ones raise lots of money and the boring ones struggle to get the support they need to make ends meet.

Ironically, the interesting ones often get the support of a couple of rock bands who end up raising money for them so that they can keep doing the work of their ministry… But the boring ones tend to spend a third of their time going from church to church asking for support which comes in the form of pathetic, little love-offerings.

The sad thing is that the boring ones almost always have a great story to tell.  They just need a little help in telling it.

And that’s where we come in…

We’re artists:  photographers, graphic artists, media designers, filmmakers, songwriters, indie bands… The visual and emotional flash that these missionaries need to engage their audiences, hold their attention and get help for Joe and other kids like him… it’s just a “doodle” for us.  Seriously, a day of pro-bono work from you could make the difference for a ministry that provides food for street children in India or an orphanage in Uganda.

THURSDAY: Why artists should make the first move…

Troy is different… I know Troy very well… in real life.

Sitting down over Chick-fil-A sandwiches, while my daughter terrorizes the boys in the playland, we talked for a half-hour about projects that we’re working on at LVC, our families and painting his house.

Troy has this off-grain sense of humor that makes me vaguely uncomfortable in public… He doesn’t mind being the center of attention… It totally freaks me out. He’s one of THOSE people who has never met a stranger, while I’m one of those people who learned to never talk to strangers…

After several years and a number of outings with him and our kids, I’m more accustomed to the way he reaches out to everyone he encounters… He’s charming, really… But being in public with Troy is still very similar to the experience of riding on a parade float…

So, I wave helplessly at the passers-by and ask my questions.

I already know quite a bit about Troy… He’s been interested in photography since he was a small child, growing up in Michigan. His first pictures were captured with a MagiMatic camera; images of the outdoors and Canadian geese whose heads were often out of frame. He studied later at the Art Institute of CO and spent a number of years working in a portrait studio before starting his own business about 2 years ago…

I have worked with Troy at LVC as well… He does free portraits for guests at our Night in Bethlehem event and has submitted work for our galleries. He has also done work for 2=1 (a marriage ministry) and CO-AID (a non-profit that does work in India and Haiti).

What I’ve been wanting to share with you guys for a while is Troy’s work with Shiloh House, a foster-care home for boys that have difficult and often troubled backgrounds…

He shared his vision with me more than a year ago:

…To photograph the boys at Shiloh House… To affirm them in who they are by portraying their hearts through imagery and portraiture (that) uses their ideas…

Which is the sort of thing that Troy does with high school seniors and brides-to-be and other characters he meets… His portrait work begins with building a relationship with his clients, finding out what they like and who they are; then going out to locations where they feel comfortable and shooting pictures…

There is a strong sense of collaboration with his clients… Capturing their loves and aspirations and stories is as important to Troy as getting the light and composition right…

Relationship is vital to his work and that personal understanding comes through in the images he captures… His portraits are intimate and compelling…

He has been working with Shiloh House, shooting their events, as a part-time member of their volunteer staff…

It seemed to take forever to get through the paperwork and training. They do background checks and training about interacting with the kids… It was quite a process…

I had the opportunity to be around while Troy was doing a shoot… His outgoing nature is at its best in these situations to draw out his subjects, to make them feel at ease, to be their friend…

No doubt, this is a tremendous experience for boys who come out of poverty, neglect and abuse…

You can see more of Troy’s work on his website: www.TroyRowe.com or become a fan on Facebook.

All of Troy’s images are copyrighted and used by permission.

For more information about Mary and her ministry through visual journaling, read my interview with her.

You can read my interview with Mary by clicking here or explore more of Mary’s visual journal on her Flickr page.

"Hope" by Mary Freeman

I was really encouraged by my chat with FeaturedArtist: Mary Freeman last week. Mary uses her art to poignantly impact the lives of people… And I love to hear stories like that…

Stories about God using people are the absolute best kind… The Bible is FULL of these stories. We need them in the church today to encourage others to do the same and to remind us that the stories didn’t just end in the first century…

After I published the interview, Mary sent me a note that expressed her own surprise at the way that I had summed her up…

“I am reading it and saying, ‘This is not me…’ But then I realize it is.  This is what God has been doing… continues to do in my life.”

I think that most people need to hear that what they do has a significant impact… I know I do… When you give from your heart and gifts to serve God, it’s nice to know that the offering is going somewhere…

When you see someone else giving and serving and making an impact, it’s probably a good idea to tell them. The encouragement might come at a critical time in their life… It might inspire them to dig in when they were thinking about giving up. It might confirm to them something that they already knew. It might just help them see their ministry from a different perspective.

I know, without much doubt, that God has called me to encourage and equip artists to use their gifts in ministry… When an artist (in this case, Mary) tells me that they’ve been encouraged, it confirms that calling, inspires me to press on and helps me to recognize what it looks like when I’m walking in my own gifts…

And this is true of everyone who serves… not just artists.

Give encouragement freely… It won’t cost you anything.

Accept praise authentically… It isn’t prideful to recognize the work of God in your own life.

Mary Freeman is a well-read, mom-of-three from Georgia, USA… I love people from the South: there is an frank realism and open-hearted truth about them. Mary did not disappoint… She shared with me about her art… About how God used it to heal her heart-wounds… About how she shares that with other women… About moving her youngest child off to college this year… About her own lingering insecurities over calling herself an “artist”…

I came away with over an hour of recorded interview and a sense that art really CAN change people… That artists really DO build the Kingdom of God… And most importantly, that God places great importance on what we do to touch the hearts of people in the way we practice our gifts.

Mary has always kept a journal… But a few year ago, with a desire to dig deeper into her own heart-wounds and invite God into those areas of hurt, she began experimenting with layering images, patterns and text into journal pages that captured words and feelings in a more coherent and impacting way.

As she shared this experience with her friends, the opportunities to share the technique with other women began to open… First, in a retreat setting…

“We were combining visual journaling with the practice of solitude… there were 80 women in the room and no one spoke for over an hour… It was amazing…”

Opportunities to combine journal demonstrations with small-group counseling followed and she is setting up now to begin teaching workshops in the church she attends…

Along the way, Mary started taking the mixed-media techniques that she used in her journals into larger formats…

“The painting has several layers because I would paint something and be totally unhappy with it, (then) cover it and begin again. The finished painting was really a happy accident…”

Undeterred, Mary created the image you see on the right… And more after it…

If you were to visit Mary’s photostream on Flickr, you’d see that her large-format work has evolved to include the top of her worktable.

“That project made me realize just how much fun the bigger (paintings) can be… Standing on a bench and splashing paint everywhere…”

Since being a Christian is at the core of Mary’s identity, she has no problem acknowledging that her gifts come straight from God and that her life (including her creativity and artistic work) has the ultimate goal of deepening her relationship with Jesus… She passes this transforming experience along every chance she gets.

“Being a Christian is someone I am, not something I do.”

Mary speaks a “heart-language” that is very familiar to me… So, I asked her about her favorite author… I smiled as she began to rattle-off a list of who’s who in Christian counseling: Brennan Manning, John Eldredge, Larry Crabb… writers with differing methodologies but the similar theme:

Your heart matters to God and wholeness is possible…

Mary’s creativity and work echo that truth… and the key: God rewrote the text of my life when I opened the book of my heart to His eyes…

If you haven’t checked it out yet, go take a look… Mary also has an inspiring blog that combines her work with story-telling and personal meditations…

Be sure to check out Jason’s photostream on Flickr and his blog…