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…

"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?

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!

Check out Travis Silva’s (Forgiven! on Flickr) mission trip images from Gulu, Uganda… Beautiful and poignant images of children living in poverty…

If you photoshare on Flickr, join our group.

To see more of Ben’s work, click here to visit his Flickr photostream.  To view or join our group on Flickr, click here.

What are you called to give?

I just completed a fairly substantial redesign of the website for an organization called LifeChange International… They partner with missionaries on 4 continents to serve the needs of people and share the love of Jesus… I’m very pleased to be involved with the organization and happy to help them use social media to raise awareness of the work that they do.

My first project with LifeChange was working with Jack Fairweather at Arise Ministries in Manila, the Philippines.  Arise has opened an orphanage outside of the city proper, where they take in kids off the street and give them a safe and loving home… I first wrote about Jack when we launched our GiveBack feature last summer… You can read those articles and see a video about Arise by following this link.

The funny thing is that I know Jack and his family… his daughter and mine are the same age and went to each others birthday parties before they sold all of their worldly goods and moved to the Philippines to live in a dorm with a dozen or so homeless, street kids.  I had talked to him about that move for six months and it still kinda stunned me when they actually did it.  Now we Skype occasionally and I think of him as “my friend in Manila.”

Jack and his family have given themselves to God in a very literal, measurable way that many of us never will.  Even for me and my wife, as we move back into church staff ministry, the sacrifice isn’t as “real”… We still have a nice home, two cars, other stuff we like…

I wonder how I would respond to the call of God that Jack has on his life…

OR EVEN MORE POIGNANT, a woman in our church named Semsa (say: Shem-sa) Aydin, whose husband was martyred for his faith in Turkey in 2007,  shared her testimony on Sunday in halting ESL that somehow communicated the message of Jesus more eloquently than any preacher I’ve ever heard…

Semsa’s husband knew the men that murdered him for weeks before his death… They had been coming into the church and asking questions about Jesus.  And as a pastor, he had been talking with them, answering their questions and trying to share Jesus’ story to them and his own story of conversion from Islam.

He told his wife that he knew they were false… He used the illustration of Judas’ betrayal… He somehow saw what was coming but felt that the call of God on his life was to keep serving these men and sharing Christ with them…

On April 18, they made another appointment to talk about Jesus…

And they slit his throat.

I also thought about one young lady who was killed in the Columbine shooting, more than a decade ago… The shooters pointed guns at here and told her she would live if she would renounce her faith… she declined… they shot her…

What kind of faith?  What kind of relationship with Jesus makes a person do that?

There might be an answer in the life… or more pointedly in the death of Stephen (Acts 6)…

But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.

“Look,” he said, “I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.”

At this they covered their ears and, yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed at him, dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. (vs 55-58)

Painter, Moyra Blayney sells her landscape work through a coffeehouse that donates their consignment fees to charities…

Gloria Mendez teaches craft and beadwork classes at her church and works with a local nun to help her become self-supporting…

John Prichard, a student-filmmaker, produced a short film to promote the new work of a foreign missionary…

Mixed-media artist, Kathie Luther, mixes artistic expression with prophetic and end-times images to express provocative ideas about the Christian life…

Stagecraft-trained writer, Tim Jones, uses his gifts to produce dramatic presentations for church outreach…

What kind of service/ministry are you doing with your gifts?  Share thoughts and ideas here…

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CATCH THE VISION…
Visit our “About” page and find out what we’re… um… all about… 

GIVE BACK…
Encouraging artists to assist and support missions at home and around the world… 

THE WARRIOR…
We’re about half-way through Tim Jones’ spiritual warfare novella… Presented in serial format with weekly installments… Catch-up with what’s going on by clicking here.

FEATURED ARTISTS…
Starting in August, we’re going to feature new artists every two weeks… In the meantime, check out Kathie Luther (June) and Gloria Mendez (July)… 

CONTACT US…
Use our contact form to help us find artists to feature, give us feedback or become a contributor… 

…Welcome to WorshipOnPurpose.com…

In the Philippines, it is a very different story. There are unusually high adult mortality rates from opportunistic diseases like tuberculosis, which are virtually unheard of in the US. When you combine this with the trappings of extreme poverty like drug-use and crime, you get a situation that overwhelms the normal government and non-profit systems that exist to handle traditional “orphans”.

This is Joy-Joy, age 7

This is Joy-Joy, she’s 7 and she’s not a traditional “orphan”…

Joy-joy’s mother is a drug-addict who drifts around Manilla, picking pockets to support her habit.  She has 9 brothers and sisters who are scattered all over town. For the first few years of her life, he lived with her father, but now he has been in jail for several years.

So, Joy-Joy drifts too.

There’s not any family or foster-care program for her to go to and the overwhelmed government agency that is tasked with the care of these kids is little more than a kennel… A couple that abuses crystal-meth lets her sleep on their floor…

She has worms and lice and is malnourished… She has never been to school…

Joy-Joy needs a sponsor. For $40/month, you can provide food, clothing, a home with caring parents, school supplies and medical care. 

If you are interested in supporting the ministry of LifeChange Philippines to these kids through prayer or financial means, you can contact Jack Fairweather via email or by phone at (720)384-5820.

Twenty minutes into the interview, I start feeling like we need to change course… We’ve talked a lot about “people living in poverty” and “street kids” but I know that Jack spent four months building relationships with them… He has stories…

All missionaries have stories…

So I ask Jack to tell me about 2 of the street kids that he works with. I give him a numerical limit because I know how missionaries are with their stories… And I haven’t had lunch yet.

Raffy, age 6

He begins without hesitating. I want to tell you about Raffy… He’s the first child that we took in and he’s sort of the “poster child” for us right now… There are tens of thousands of kids in the same predicament as Raffy…

Jack goes on to recount the night he met Raffy. He was out in Manilla with a Filipino friend, riding around in a taxi and trying to identify kids who had no parents. They stopped in a place where there was a group of homeless people standing around and began asking questions. Soon, a woman introduced them to Raffy.

Raffy had been living on the streets alone for months… 6 years old and only 20 lbs. His mother had died of tuberculosis and his father was in jail.

So, Jack identified him to be involved with a missions group that was coming in March.

During the 2 weeks that the team from Colorado ministered alongside Jack, he continued to build a relationship with Raffy. It became more and more difficult to leave the little boy on the street at night.

But because Jack and Tammy knew that they were coming back to the US for several month in May, they planned on NOT taking in any kids until they returned to set up a permanent home there.

Finally, Jack’s heart couldn’t do it anymore. One night, when we were taking him back to sleep on the street, I just knew in my spirit that I couldn’t leave him there… Jack asked one of the ladies standing around about how Raffy got food at night and she told him that most nights, Raffy cried himself to sleep, alone and hungry…

Raffy lives with Jack and Tammy now.

At the doctor’s office, Raffy was diagnosed with malnutrition, worms, lice and tuberculosis. He had a 104 degree fever and perforated eardrums with seeping infections in both ears. Raffy had never been to school and had severely delayed language development.

Jack tells me that today, Raffy is gaining weight, he’s taking medication that will clear up his tuberculosis and he’s enrolled in school. I happen to also know that Jack personally visited with Raffy’s father in prison.

Remind you of anythimg?

“For I was hungry and you fed me, I was thirsty and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger and you took me in. Naked and you clothed me, sick and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.”
                                                                                        -Jesus, Matthew 25:35-36, The Bible

Raffy has a sponsor. An American family here in Colorado sponsors him at a cost of $40/month. Raffy will get food, clothing, a home with caring parents, school supplies and medical care.

Tomorrow, we’ll feature Jack’s story about Joy-Joy, a little girl with a similar story.

If you are interested in supporting Jack’s ministry to these kids through prayer or financial means, you can contact him via email or by phone at (720)384-5820.