Living Our Baptism, the Lenten Way
To thrive during the season of Lent, we remember our baptism and prepare for living it out. In baptism, we’re called into the three-fold ministry
Here’s how ministries and churches are using Visual Faith to spark deep conversations about the intersection of God in daily life. We’ve collected a few stories from churches around the country so you can gather ideas about how to use Visual Faith in your community.
“The questions the other participants asked were so powerful.”
“I asked one of the participants to share her favorite Bible story, which happened to be Jesus and the Woman at Jacob’s Well (John 6). I had another participant read that story. Then I asked the two participants on each side of the person who selected the story to go and find an image that connects to this story. The image each of them selected, their sharing of how they saw and felt the connection, plus questions the other participants asked were powerful. It went so well that one of the other participants asked me after we had closed, “Did you set that up? Did you give them a passage and let them know that you were going to use them?” to which I said, “No. Everything was their choices.” He responded, “Wow! That was tremendous.” The participants truly were engaged. We are moving a movement.”
~ Dick Hardel, Columbus, MT
“A beautiful experience for all ages together.”
“We held an Intergenerational celebration where God spoke through all the ages about how “we love because God loved us first.” With the cross in the center, I asked everyone to focus on a picture and listen to the passage, then share what God showed you about how much He loves you. Then we put our name on a piece of yellow paper and placed them on the pictures. Next we put names of people we love on blue paper, then I put 1000’s of pieces of paper around the represent the sea of faces that God loves. Finally, we walked across the oceans of faces to light our candle from Jesus and placed it where we want to be God’s love and light. It was a beautiful experience for all ages together.”
~ Tammy Tolman, Nashville, TN
“People felt a shift from cognitive understand of faith to whole life discipleship.”
“I gave a workshop for local churches on how to use The Visual Faith Project. The Aha’s were seeing people start talking about the shifts from mind to heart, or having a cognitive understanding of faith to whole life discipleship, before we even got to that part of the workshop! One person said he wants to use the images to help his congregation engage with Scripture as they take a whole year-long approach to stewardship. He said they will be exploring how God is calling them to be stewards in all of life: as a part of creation, as a neighbor in their church’s physical location and so on. He was excited about using the images to expand people’s ideas of stewardship from the once-a-year money focus to a whole-life, heart-engaged understanding of stewardship.”
~ Paige Evers, Milford, Deleware
Learn more about Visual Faith here.
Rick Lawrence is Executive Director of Vibrant Faith—he created the new curriculum Following Jesus. He’s editor of the Jesus-Centered Bible and author of 40 books, including The Suicide Solution,The Jesus-Centered Life and Jesus-Centered Daily. He hosts the podcast Paying Ridiculous Attention to Jesus.
Share:
Share on facebook
Share on twitter
Share on linkedin
Share on email
Share on skype
How Daylight Saving Time & Reconciliation Are Related
We’ve just moved through the collective jet lag we call Daylight Saving Time, and we’re all adjusting to life in exhaustion-overdrive. We know it’ll all
A Cold Splash of Water for Your Personal Worship Time
We need new and creative ways to practice our personal worship during Lent—a bracing splash of water on the face of our familiar Lenten practices.
The Future of Faith
As ministry leaders, we’ve embraced a common narrative about the exodus of young people and young adults from the church—we know this generation is fed