There’s a park in the foothills, about 20 minutes from our home, where you can see mountains that are 50 miles north and 50 miles south… It’s a gorgeous place to shoot the sun setting over the Rocky Mountains… If you come to Denver, be sure to check out the Mt Falcon Open Space…

PhotoFriday is a feature of my own photographic art. Join our group on Flickr.com to submit photos for post illustrations and FlickrFriday slideshows…

"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…

Travis Silva (Forgiven! on Flickr) is a regular contributor to our Flickr group. This image was taken on a recent mission trip to Uganda. Check out Travis’ photostream (which has some really dramatic HDR images) here.

If you photoshare on Flickr, why not join our group?

Have a great weekend!

Ben Darby (Ben_D on Flickr) is a regular contributor to the WOP group on Flickr. This image was captured at sunrise on Myrtle Point in the Great Smokey Mountains.

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…

Why is it that all of the Christians that I know seem to struggle through life? With rare exceptions, we all have some area of fear or weakness or wounding… And I have my doubts about the exceptions…

A Christian teen who is a contact on my social-grid made an interesting statement about sexual abstinence this week… He said it “doesn’t work.” It wasn’t completely clear whether he was talking about “abstinence education” or individual, moral abstinence… But here are a few little factoids to chew on:

The Bible clearly teaches that 1.) the Spirit of God dwells in the heart of everyone who submits to the Lordship of Jesus (Romans 8:9). 2.) This Spirit is characterized by power, love and self-discipline (2 Timothy 1:7). 3.) Self-control is evident in the life of a person who is filled with this Spirit, in the same way that you can tell that a tree is an apple tree because it has apples on it (Galatians 5:22-23).

In the life of a believer, something like abstinence certainly does work… At the very least, it can work… it should work… A Christ-follower who believes that it can’t work or doesn’t work doesn’t understand the power of God’s Spirit at work in a person…

(At this point, I cannot emphasize enough the power of God’s grace at work in us when we fail to walk in self-control… but that’s a different discussion.)

I’m talking about the potential power that lives in your heart… Potential for power over our weakness… Potential for love to heal our wounds… Potential for self-discipline and stability…

The trick is tapping into that potential.

Our culture has conditioned us to follow our urges… emotional urges… financial urges… sexual urges… But God has called us to a life of potential and tapping that potential requires that we control those urges. So, God expresses the expectation that we control our urges and then provides us with the means to do it…

Got that? We experience the power of self-control when we practice self-control… The willingness to obey God’s expectation fuels the spirit of self-discipline, which gives us greater power to obey under greater pressure…

Older English translations of 2 Timothy use the expression “sound mind” instead of “self-discipline” but the intended meaning is the same… A person who has a “sound mind” is consistent, purposeful and not a slave to “urges”… and that’s what self-discipline looks like too.

Jesus promised that we’d have trouble… But the wacky, constant struggle to make it through another day that some Christians experience is the very opposite of what God desires for us. That’s the reason He gave us this Spirit of power and love and self-discipline…

Cultivating discipline is a process with many nuances, but the most important thing to keep in mind is this:

God is for us and has given us what we need to finish well.

I knew I should've packed a map...

Good decisions leading to firm commitments are vital to developing discipline… BUT making good decisions requires discipline… This is the circular reality that always seems to bite me on the tush… So, I’ve given it some thought and reading this week and wanted to share with you guys…

Good decisions grow out of a life lived in conversational relationship with God… I can link almost every bad decision that I’ve made in my life to a lack of consistent prayer and Bible study… I have found that practicing this kind of intimacy with God is both energizing and exhausting, but well worth the effort in the face of any significant choice…

I don’t want to sound too mystical, but the truth is that when we saturate our minds with God’s Word and devote our hearts to intimacy with Him, He speaks… Often in an almost audible way (and I wouldn’t totally throw out the possibility of actual audibility either) to the simplest request for guidance…

Poor decisions grow out of a focus that is off of Jesus. So, make sure that your mind and heart are tuned to Him before you leap…

I recently found myself in the position of having already made a bad decision… I’ll tell you about it because it has a happy ending:

About a year ago, I wrote a post about artists helping missionaries tell their stories… After that, I had the opportunity to do a brand development and web presence project for an orphanage in the Philippines. This led to a similar project for the parent-ministry… Which led to an offer to join the administrative team of a small, but internationally-placed missions organization…

Up to that point, I was just using my gifts to serve these missionaries… Suddenly, faced with the decision of whether or not to join the leadership of this significant ministry, I jumped without really taking enough time to consider the decision…

I almost immediately regretted it… It wasn’t the kind of work that I feel called to do… I didn’t really enjoy it and it played to my administrative weaknesses… And it significantly sucked time away from my areas of deepest calling and vocation…

Fortunately, I was not financially bound to the position and I was able to pull-out of the higher administration role and stay connected to the promotional and marketing aspects that originally drew me into the organization…

There have been times in my life that I could not easily opt-out of a decision… I have several of these looming on the horizon… As I look forward to them, I see very clearly a truth that I’ve missed in the past:

Making a bad decision to a long-term commitment is not the end of the world IF you are positioned in close relationship to God so that He can guide you through the process of making the best of the situation… One bad decision doesn’t mean that you’re life is totally derailed… God is much bigger than that… But you may have to take the long road through the dessert to the Promised Land…

Wave encouragingly at the people you meet on that road, we like that…

NEXT in this series: A Sound Mind…