Graphic Design and the Missional Church: An Unlikely Partnership
by Kristin Myers Fuller Theological Seminary Reorienting the Church For Mission Alan Hirsch and Eddie Gibbs MC549 | Summer 2007
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omething is happening in church these days. Or rather, something is not happening. While worship keeps getting louder and more casual, attendance is dropping and churches are closing up shop at an alarming rate. Yet there is a recognition that something is on the horizon. Something that will radically change the way we understand and participate in church. But what is it? How to we engage with it? What does it look like? This is an important conversation to engage in, not only as people of faith, but also as people living in the world. In addition, it is increasingly important to participate in the dialogue from our individual contexts. I am engaged in this conversation not only as a woman of faith, but as a working graphic designer. What would a graphic designer have to add to this conversation besides sleek fliers for the latest event or a book cover for the latest emerging author? Actually, quite a lot. The field of design can offer much more than sleek artwork: a radically creative and innovative partnership.
Context My context as a graphic designer is the foundation for my perspectives in this paper. To frame those perspectives, one must understand more of my Eddie Gibbs and Ryan K. Bolger, Emerging Churches : Creating
Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2005), 19. See footnotes for further studies with specific numbers.
background. I spent five years studying graphic design at California State University, Chico, a university whose graphic design program was part of the communication department rather than the art department. The framework of this program turned out to be quite influential to my design approach. Seeped in communication theory, my education lead me to discern that art is aesthetic and graphic design communicates. While these two disciplines can be mistaken just as easily as identical twins, they are, in fact, two completely different practices. My curriculum, classmates, professors and campus internships indoctrinated me with the iconic work of Paul Rand, April Griman and David Carson among others. I was taught to revere classic fonts, grids and exacto knifes. Writings from Paul Rand, Jessica Helfand, and Katherine McCoy were not only assigned readings but content for book design and poster assignments. Interacting with this unique class of creatives left me confident in the capability of visual communications. Even today when I identify myself as a graphic designer, it is to assert that I am a communicator first and foremost, and artist second. Finally, the most important principle was a more subtle thought that underlined all the assignments and interactions: find context, identify issues, and solve them as aesthetically as possible. This collegiate phase of my design development coincided with critical development in my faith. During
these years, I came to understand that salvation was not earned, but was a gift freely given by Jesus Christ. It was then natural to see my developing talent for design as a gift also freely given. I was intentional about integrating it into my discipleship. Throughout this journey, I discovered that the practice of design, unlike fine arts, cannot stand on its own. It remains a vacuum in need of a muse, input, or more likely a client. With an issue to solve, or a message to promote design can do what it does best: communicate. Since my faith contains a message to steward, and my gift needs a message to communicate, the connection became obvious. Therefore, the context I bring to this missional church discussion is graphic design. I am bound to this connection, and it is bound to me. Design is not only my day job; it’s my life passion and the Church is my life-long client.
Focus This paper will reflect on the missional church and the practice of graphic design in order to build a bridge between them. While this connection exists within my own personal context, I have begun to notice similarities between the two that extend into the larger transition from modern to postmodern society, and the grey in-between. The design field obviously cannot offer salvation or a faith of any kind. However, it can offer its practice of clear thinking and visual communication to engage with such realities. By doing so, the practice of design becomes missional and brings ethical and faith sentiments tangibly into the environment where we live our lives. This client/designer relationship with the Church (as with any other organization or business) is not new, and is usually accepted by both church leaders and designers. However, limiting the role of design as an outsourced vendor is cutting short the innate capabilities of visual communication. Granted, a partnership is an unconventional arrangement. Yet as both church leaders and designers are grappling to live out meaningful lives in a culture becoming more and more visual, they could both benefit from an innovative change in their traditional roles. As it is, the missional church and the design field have several striking similarities that put them on the parallel paths of negotiating these cultural shifts. In this paper, I will address the basic background and perspectives of the missional church and the design profession respectively, and then highlight the parallels I see between them: (1) both have a strong ethic of
service in the messages they steward, (2) both have a prophetic voice by filtering information to provide meaning for an audience, (3) both are peacemakers in diverse groups, and (4) both engage with power structures with the intent of transformation. In addition, I will give examples of how design and the church are already working together in the Christendom mode and how they could be more effective working together in a missional context partnership.
Understanding: Missional Church Christendom is ending. The institutional pillars of church and state that supported Western Europe’s culture between the eleventh and twentieth centuries have undergone a paradigm shift. Christian faith was originally started in the margins of Jewish culture and spread throughout the Roman Empire as an underground movement simply known as “the Way.” One thousand years later it found itself institutionalized with its own buildings, staff, and societal roles. This model maintained a status quo for several centuries, but with the onset of the Enlightenment society began placing its trust in rational information, new sciences and the developing technology of Modernity. Pluralism and cultural relativism during the mid-twentieth century cemented this transition. While remnants of Christendom still remain, ironically only within existing church communities, society largely lives in a post-Christendom context. This shift has been exaggerated even more with additional cultural changes in the twenty-first century: modernity to post-modernity, Westernization to globalization, and print to electronic oriented culture. In the midst of these radical changes, the traditional church still operates from a Christendom mode while attendance is understandably dropping. For those who were not raised in a church environment, attending a worship service is a cross-cultural experience. The linear communication and organization of the body of believers is foreign, and certainly not appealing to a new generation of seekers. Ironically, it is not for lack Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch, The Shaping of Things to Come : Innovation and Mission for the 21st-Century Church (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 2003), 8-9. Gibbs and Bolger, Emerging Churches : Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures, 17. Frost and Hirsch, The Shaping of Things to Come : Innovation and Mission for the 21st-Century Church, 8-9. Gibbs and Bolger, Emerging Churches : Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures, 18. Ibid, 19.
of spirituality in those who seek. This cultural divide raises a missional red flag. Engaging a people group with the gospel in their own cultural setting is basic mission theory. Without the common bond of a shared way of life, the likelihood that people will resonate with the story of Jesus Christ dramatically decreases. Thankfully some do respond in another cultural context, yet they face the dilemma of continuing a path of discipleship outside of their native framework. In addition, they could be more effective in evangelizing others within their own culture. In response to these cultural shifts and the church’s lack of reply, unconventional movements coined ‘emerging’, ‘emergent’ or ‘missional’ are becoming more common. These unusual communities of faith focus solely on central traits of the Christian faith, stripping everything else away. Bolger and Gibbs identify nine practices of these communities: Emerging churches (1) identify with the life of Jesus, (2) transform the secular realm, and (3) live highly communal lives. Because of these three activities, they (4) welcome the stranger, (5) serve with generosity, (6) participate as producers, (7) create as created beings, (8) lead as a body, and (9) take part in spiritual activities. These groups are organic and decentralized. Author Peter Ward adds to the conversation it is a, “…shift from seeing church as a gathering of people meeting in one place at one time– that is, a congregation– to a notion of church as a series of relationships and communications.” They meet in nightclubs, bars, cafes or homes where the local culture thrives around them. They appropriate the gospel into their own cultural context and mimic the ministry of Jesus himself. This is most effective when concentrated in local communities. This is “…where the rubber hits the road, where the gospel of Jesus Christ engages real people in real-life situations, and where the church needs to negotiate its way onto new ground. This is the real front line of the kingdom of God as it expresses itself Theologian and author John Drane addresses the paradox of a spiritual society actively seeking meaning while the church remains unresponsive and surprisingly secular. See his book:John William Drane, Do Christians Know How to Be Spiritual? : The Rise of New Spirituality, and the Mission of the Church (London: Darton Longman & Todd, 2005). Pete Ward, Liquid Church (Carlisle, Cumbria Peabody, Mass.: Paternoster Press ; Hendrickson Publishers, 2002), 45. Ibid, 2.
through local communities of faith.”10 In this context, church is not a building or event, but series of daily interactions and networks of people. These communities and their missional commitment to social service in their daily lives have made church a verb rather than a noun.11 For example, in Manchester England the church plant Extreme sent volunteers into the worst part of town to paint over graffiti, pick up trash, and work in gardens. With six thousand young people camping out for a week of service, an area with the highest rate of crime in Europe saw a week without a single incident. Long-term teams of volunteers moved into the neighborhood, found local jobs and created relationships with those in the community. Their incarnational presence is believed to be responsible for the steady reduction in crime in the area.12 Such use of time and physical presence sends a strong message of hope and salvation to a community that direly needs it. Though admittedly all churches will not be shifting into such a radical new model. Some existing faith communities are functioning and even growing. Yet for those who are ready to make the radical shift from Christendom to a missional church, the practice of graphic design is in a parallel transition that could speak into the church’s new direction.
Understanding: Design The process of design is metaphorically like framing artwork. Art does not have to be in a frame to be seen and displayed; others will see it regardless. Yet when a piece of art is framed and hung, it becomes set apart attracting a new level of attention and respect. In the same way when designers engage with content or a message, they are able to utilize visual communication to fulfill the needs of the message and their client. Whether the objective is to make a project more visible, set apart or special, “The profession of graphic design is principally about engineering a connection between a message and an audience.13 Essentially that engineering is like framing (designing) a piece of artwork (or message). Regardless if the message is good or bad, when it is designed it connects and showcases its content with an audience. 10 Alan Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways : Reactivating the Missional Church (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Brazos Press, 2006), 50. 11 Ward, Liquid Church, 3. 12 Gibbs and Bolger, Emerging Churches : Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures, 141. 13 John Bielenberg, Thinking About Communication, ed. Michael Bierut, Looking Closer 2, Critical Writings on Graphic Design (New York: Allworth Press, 1996), 184.
That connection is the fundamental core of design: communication. While design strongly relies on aesthetic as its means, the ends are always (or should be) effective communication. This goal of communication begs the question of content: if designers are able to communicate so effectively, what are they saying and do they know the power they wield with their talents? As Katherine McCoy affirms, “Graphic design is a powerful tool, capable of informing, publicizing, and propagandizing social, environmental, and political messages as well as commercial ones.”14 Just as church communities are unaware of how their nominal Christendom models of church practice can become limiting to the effectiveness of their outreach, designers can also sink into a similar rut of working within a limited scope of clients and projects. Until recently, there was little to spark the capability of communication design beyond a steady paycheck and digital-artistic innovation for its own sake. Professional Katherine McCoy, writing in 1994, argues this is because designers are guilty of selfcensorship. Remaining silent on controversial issues was more accepted as clients usually gave the message and agenda to the designer. No one thought to approach the process differently. Challenging this input, particularly on public social issues, remained a non-option simply because it had not been done before. McCoy speaks for designers at the time, “Remove our freedom of speech, and graphic designer might never notice. We have trained a profession that feels political or social concerns are either extraneous to our work, or inappropriate.15 Steven Heller, a well-respected design author and historian, would attribute this self-absorption by designers to their status quo. During the 1980s and 1990s, the introduction of the personal computer into the workspace suddenly allowed an explosion of experimental design throughout this era of design history. New typefaces and the ease of laying them out led to a newfound freedom, though for little benefit to the field. Heller comments, “Having so much power on the desktop ushered in a wave of narcissism and selfindulgence.”16 Heller prophetically saw the design profession needed to drop the role of a digital artist and get back to its role of communication first. He notes, “Although individual personality routinely plays a key role in visual 14 Katherine McCoy, Countering the Tradition of the Apolitical Designer, ed. Michael Bierut, Looking Closer 2, Critical Writings on Graphic Design (New York: Allworth Press, 1996), 216. 15 Ibid, 213. 16 Steven Heller, The Graphic Design Reader (New York: Allworth Press, 2002), 5.
communication, it must be the result, not the goal of solving design problems. Confusion ensues when the desire to express that singular “me” overpowers the client’s message.”17 Thankfully over the past fifteen years designers have shifted and are more willing than ever to engage their skills to help solve communication problems in the world around them.
Parallel: Service As Heller points out above, the first priority of the design profession is to serve clients by producing effective visual communication to meet their needs. In order to reach that goal, designers may need to set aside or tailor their personal artistic vision to find the best solution for their client’s message. Similarly, pursuing personal gain in the context of faith comes through the paradoxical road of service. Jesus himself tells believers: “If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all.”18 In both areas, service is the means to achieving a better end in community when individual efforts would not be as effective. The ethic of service within design is found deep in the roots of Modernism, and before that, “from a pure set of principles that went back before the industrial revolution to a time when the master craftsmen of the Renaissance [or medieval cathedrals] built from out of the impulses of the people.”19 In the opening essay to his 2002 Graphic Design Reader Heller points to the innovation of the Macintosh on the designer’s desk as the largest reason for a temporary digression of the field in the past few decades into digital artistry and exploration of experimental typography and layout, sometimes at the cost of the client’s project needs. Heller notes there is a rise in the popularity of the idea that design should respond not only to clients, but societal needs as well. After coining design from the 1990’s as the “me too generation” he poses the question: “Perhaps this could be the dawning of the age of ‘You Too Design?’” 20 This shift in design motives and responsibility is perhaps most clearly captured in The First Things First Manifesto signed by 33 designers (and published simultaneously Adbusters, the AIGA journal, Blueprint, Emigre, Eye, Form, and Items) in 1999, saying: 17 Ibid, 4. 18 Mark 9:35 NIV 19 Tom Wolfe, From Bauhaus to Our House (New York: Farrar
Straus Giroux, 1981). as quoted in David Versluis, “What Directs Design?,” Pro Rege XXXIV, no. 1 (2005). 20 Heller, The Graphic Design Reader, 6.
… Designers who devote their efforts primarily to advertising, marketing and brand development are supporting, and implicitly endorsing, a mental environment so saturated with commercial messages that it is changing the very way citizenconsumers speak, think, feel, respond and interact. To some extent we are all helping draft a reductive and immeasurably harmful code of public discourse. There are pursuits more worthy of our problemsolving skills. Unprecedented environmental, social and cultural crises demand our attention. Many cultural interventions, social marketing campaigns, books, magazines, exhibitions, educational tools, television programs, films, charitable causes and other information design projects urgently require our expertise and help. We propose a reversal of priorities in favor of more useful, lasting and democratic forms of communication - a mindshift away from product marketing and toward the exploration and production of a new kind of meaning. The scope of debate is shrinking; it must expand. Consumerism is running uncontested; it must be challenged by other perspectives expressed, in part, through the visual languages and resources of design. 21 Though supported by many, this document received heavy criticism from inside and out of the design profession. Designers who earned a living from advertising work were incensed, and saw the call to action as idealistic and unrealistic. Yet in the past years it has served as tangible touch point in countless articles and writings that the design field is ready to do things differently: it is ready to serve. Although, how to proceed with these motivations is a question still unanswered.
Parallel: Prophetic Voice After talking to clients and before beginning creative work, designers will often create a document called a design brief. This concise document highlights the characteristics of the client, project, intended market, any competition and goal of the project. In this vital first step, the designer begins to process the communication need and potential design solutions. To write a brief and find a solution takes 21 First Things First Manifesto online. Fall 1999 / Spring
2000. 13 Sept. 2007. <http://www.xs4all.nl/~maxb/ ftf2000.htm>.
great insight and a prophetic voice to call the client from preconceived notions, competitor’s materials, and current fads towards a solution that will work for their needs. In the same way, church leaders wade through competing ideologies, fads, and idleness that can distract church members and communities away from the central tenets of faith. Through sermons, books and interactions with members, they rely on their spiritual insight and a prophetic voice to call their communities back into faithfulness towards God. This ability to filter information for a desired outcome is a vital part to both roles. Natalia Ilyin, in her short essay Fabulous Us: Speaking the Language of Exclusion details how this skill is innate in visual communication training, and separates design from other industries – especially designers from their clients. Because of this, designers are often seen as odd at best, and as snobs at worst. However Ilyin gives her fellow designers encouragement to hold to the visual fluency that sets them apart: Graphic designers have the opportunity to influence the way average people are informed. This influence affects people, and it involves real responsibility – responsibility that has proved terrifying enough to drive the best design minds of the generation into a tailspin of tangential stylistics. Grappling with the issues confronting our society head-on takes guts. … we need to strop pretending that we are egoless and egalitarian, and start saying something with our language of exclusion.22 This content filtering and “grappling with issues confronting our society” is a chance to give great service, similar to a call Hirsch gives to missional church leaders. Not only must these leaders be able to filter the steady stream of input coming from society, they “…must know how to handle meaning in order to motivate a group of people from the inside out.”23 With this motivation, they will be able to engage a community and spur them towards relationship with God in a native, yet holy, expression of faith.
22 Natalia Ilyin, Fabulous Us: Speaking the Language of
Exculsion, ed. Michael Bierut, Looking Closer 2, Critical Writings on Graphic Design (New York: Allworth Press, 1996), 39. 23 Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways : Reactivating the Missional Church, 184.
Parallel: Peacemakers Developing an organization’s visual communications can bring the unsaid norms, hierarchies, and ethics of an organization previously unspoken to the surface. Designers have a unique place to mediate with their clients as peacemakers advocating for their best interests. Church leaders also interact with a range of motivations and must facilitate alternative views, conflict and injustice. Maintaining a peaceful approach to these challenges is vital in both practices. In worst cases, designers find themselves witnessing shouting matches and vicious power plays as their clients struggle to reach consensus within their own organizations regarding their visual communications. Good designers will not get drawn into the internal politics of their clients, but rather step back to discern the real needs by taking on the role of a peacemaker. They then become a trusted ally who listens and gently guides their clients to make the best decisions for effective communication. Nico McDonald encourages designers to branch out in their own perspectives to facilitate this healthy interaction with clients: Design, being a discipline that orients itself around the experience of the user, is uniquely positioned to mediate between all the parties in product development, and bringing a wider understanding of the world would help designers understand the interests of each group in this process more acutely.24 Design has a unique role to engage with a wide range of clients, working with several industries and providing a peaceful presence in the lives of many. In the same way the missional leadership reflects a unique position between different members in their groups, and ultimately, between different groups in the community. As Mark Palmer of Landing Place in Columbus Ohio says, “At out house groups, I function as a facilitative leader, and I speak little.”25 In this role as a peacemaker, Palmer is fostering a healthy environment where spiritual transformation can take place. Though the later is much more common, there have been certain points in history Church 24 Nico Macdonald, Can Designers Save the World? (and
Should They Try?), ed. Michael Bierut, William Drenttel, and Steven Heller, Looking Closer 4, Critical Writings on Graphic Design (New York: Allworth Press, 2002), 20. 25 Gibbs and Bolger, Emerging Churches : Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures, 159.
leaders have found themselves engaged with issues outside their own faith communities and in the larger society. By not avoiding conflict and standing up for those harmed by injustice, these leaders have brought untold peace and resolution in the name of Jesus Christ. In fact being a peacemaker has put believers such as Martin Luther King Jr. or Mother Teresa into the limelight as they advocated for truth and justice on a larger scale.
Parallel: Engage the Powers Designers regularly interact with the largest and richest corporations in the world while Church leaders can find themselves counseling and advising politicians, movie stars, and other influential figures. Encountering power structures within these frameworks, whether positive or negative, is the norm. Monika Parrinder calls designers to become aware of these structures and find empowerment to rather than despair to engage them: The fact that we are involved in the power structures we oppose does not negate opposition– it reinforces it. In each scenario, the individual needs to understand how power acts and through which methods. Rather than making individual voices feel lost in the mire, this empowers them because it means they can draw upon their own knowledge and intervene on their own terms, on their own ground.26 Along the same lines, theologian Walter Wink is well known for his writings on engaging powers.27 He asserts these powers are simultaneously “a necessary part of the good creation … part of creation as fallen … and part of creation as the object of God’s redeeming work.”28 As summarized by Ted Grimsrud, “In Wink’s view, this awareness is essential for us today if we are to be able to accurately understand the world we live in and fulfill God’s calling that we be agents for healing in this world.”29 This level of awareness can help identify 26 Monika Parrinder, Just Say No ... Quietly, ed. Michael
Bierut, William Drenttel, and Steven Heller, Looking Closer 4, Critical Writings on Graphic Design (New York: Allworth Press, 2002), 15. 27 See Wink’s trilogy of books: Naming the Powers, Unmasking the Powers and Engaging the Powers 28 Ray C. Gingerich and Ted Grimsrud, Transforming the Powers : Peace, Justice, and the Domination System (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006), 1. 29 Ibid, 2.
powers, like for example, the consumer culture in the western world. Both the design profession and the missional church have addressed concerns regarding the effects of consumerism and acknowledge a motivation to engage it. As design legend Milton Glaser30 comments: “In the struggle between commerce an culture, commerce has triumphed and the war is over.”31 Even the art world has embraced and integrated consumerism into its visual vocabulary. Images of Campbell’s soup cans appear both in the local grocery store and in museums of fine art thanks to Andy Warhol. As Hirch notes, we have started to identify ourselves by “…class conspicuous consumption (metro sexuals, urban grunge, etc.)”32 It is interesting to note that advertising industry and churches have confused roles: while marketers are using religious imagery in their ads33 churches are being modeled after the shopping mall and the consumer experience.34 Much more danger exists in the later as Gibbs and Bolger expound: “Consumer churches promote self-interested exchange and this violates an inherent part of the gospel, that of the gift.”35 Alan Hirsch speaking from years of ministry experience laments, “I have come to the dreaded conclusion that we simply cannot consume our way into discipleship.”36 It is obvious that consumerism is a fallen power in our midst, yet our mindsets and economy is currently seeped in its ideology for better or worse. Is there a way to redeem this power? Peter Ward in Liquid Church identifies the shift that consumerism has made in our motivations over the past century; “Consumption is no longer about meeting basic material requirements of life. Instead, it has become something much more central to our sense of self. Shopping is not about need but about desire.”37 He offers a solution: translate the image of the church from fulfilling needs to meeting a spiritual desire. Since this desire is already core in the drive to consume, Ward 30 Well known for his iconic, “I Love NY” logo. 31 Milton Glaser, Design and Business: The War Is Over, ed.
Michael Bierut, Looking Closer 2, Critical Writings on Graphic Design (New York: Allworth Press, 1996), 181. 32 Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways : Reactivating the Missional Church, 61.
33 Ibid, 107. 34 Frost and Hirsch, The Shaping of Things to Come : Innova-
tion and Mission for the 21st-Century Church, 149. 35 Gibbs and Bolger, Emerging Churches : Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures, 138. 36 Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways : Reactivating the Missional Church, 110. 37 Ward, Liquid Church, 73.
suggests this is not merely a new marketing spin, but rather a native way to communicate the gospel within our culture. Engaging commerce from a design point of view is complicated because it is the primary patron of the profession. Yet as seen with the First Things First Manifesto, designers understand their role of, “implicitly endorsing, a mental environment so saturated with commercial messages that it is changing the very way citizen-consumers speak, think, feel, respond and interact.” Many are already working to rectify the situation though realistically, engaging with the advertising industry and commerce will take some compromise. Nancy Skolos, both a design educator at Rhode Island School of Design and a principal of a design firm says, “’I don’t think we can change the world just by deciding that we’re not going to design ads anymore. It’s a mistake that design schools don’t teach advertising, because maybe if we understood it better, we could participate in a more constructive way.”38 It’s clear that advertising and commerce have already shifted our mindsets. Yet the good news is this awareness will allow missional leaders and designers to engage this power with creative insight. Finding new approaches to understand and function in our changing society is a challenge to foster the best of design’s abilities and maintain the holistic message of faith communities.
Praxis: Christendom For the most part, graphic design in the local church is used to promote its current programs and as a result propel its Christendom paradigms. Frost and Hirsh give an evangelistic example that is common: a specialized message meant to reach a particular sub-culture, but ultimately brings them out of their context and into the church’s: If the nearby church decided that this suburban tribe [of those interested in model cars] needed to hear about the saving work of Christ, how would they reach them? The attractional church would hold special services for model-car racers. It would design an excellent flyer explaining that Jesus loves model-car enthusiasts, and they would place one under the windshield wipers of each pickup. It would try to find a recently converted model-car 38 Carolyn McCarron, First Things First: A Second Look, ed. D.
K. Holland, Design Issues : How Graphic Design Informs Society (New York: Allworth Press, 2001), 119.
enthusiast and have him share his testimony one Sunday morning. The attractional church would seek to do anything it could to draw the car racing fraternity into its church building.39 Along with this evangelistic tactic, this use of design is misplaced. The visuals and message of the flier itself would no doubt succeed in appealing to this audience of model car racers. Yet the message does not ultimately serve the unique sub-culture of this community because it does not present the gospel in its native context. Instead, the church is sending the message to these model-car enthusiasts that to hear the message of salvation they will need to step out of their cultural context into an unfamiliar environment. The message of hope and salvation is better sent incarnationally: “…if a few members of a local church, so moved by compassion for the car enthusiasts right across the road, chose to buy a model car and join the club! … By racing cares and repairing case, they could earn the right of relationship to share their thoughts on life and their love for Jesus.”40 This shift from the traditional “come to us” to the missional “we come to you” gets to a core question within Christendom and developing ecclesiology. Is our communication goal to maintain Christendom or to honestly spur people to Christ? Just as computer engineers look at developing better computers, Hirsch looks at church in three levels: “Programs (interface with the user), Operating system (mediates between program and machine), and Machine language/ hardware (basic code of hardware).”41 This is a useful metaphor with which to analyze our approaches to change and reform. Many efforts to revitalize the church aim at simply adding or developing new programs or sharpening the theology and doctrinal base of the church, but seldom do we ever get to address the “hardware” or the machine language” on which all this depends. This means that efforts to fundamentally reorient the church around its mission fail, because the foundational system, in this case the Christendom code or understanding of church, cancels out what the “software” is requiring. Leadership must go deeper and develop the assumptions 39 Frost and Hirsch, The Shaping of Things to Come : Innovation and Mission for the 21st-Century Church, 43. 40 Ibid. 41 Ibid, 52.
and configurations on which a more missional expression of ecclesia can be built.42 The model-car enthusiasts do not need a sleek flyer beckoning them to church. They have more potential to flourish in a missional community rather than in the pews of a Christendom church. Yet this non-design solution is hard to accept. Church Marketing Sucks (CMS) is an online offshoot of the Center for Church Communication. They host a blog (web log) and foster a community to promote better marketing materials for the churches in the West. This is a noble effort, but another example of Christians trying to fix their “software” when the “hardware” is really what’s in need of repair. Their name, Church Marketing Sucks, has a clever double layer of meaning: First, they recognize current church marketing is generally terrible. Secondly, the name reveals a deeper theological insight that marketing God, the creator of the universe, will fall short regardless of our best attempts: We’re not here to impress. We’re here to help the church bring people to God. That might happen through helping churches avoid cheesy clipart and bad design decisions. But it also might happen when churches drop the facade and embrace the fact that we’re all broken. Church marketing sucks. But church marketing that acknowledges we suck might be on the right track.43 Their honest critique is touching and has a solid theological grounding. While acknowledging that church marketing is weak at best is “heading in the right track,” it does not go far enough. Better marketing and design decisions for Christendom churches are not solving the root problem: church isn’t reaching a large majority of the population. Peter Ward comments: “the onesize-fits-all environment is adapted only for one or two kinds of spiritual consumers. The need to keep the congregation happy, the club members active, and those who are seeking refuge safe, means that solid church us unable to maneuver in this fluid environment.”44 Church leaders must be careful, and designers aware, of the tendency to use design and 42 Ibid. 43 Kevin D. Hendricks, “No Need to Impress,” Church Marketing Sucks Blog (2004). 44 Ward, Liquid Church, 64.
marketing as a life preserver on a sinking ship of Christendom. While many churches are still functional and require a steady stream of communications for their operation, missional outreach the rest of society, such as the model-car group, should be at the forefront of our minds.
of working designers on their leadership team. This allows these designers to maintain a working practice, yet engage with the spiritual development in their neighborhood in an ongoing and grassroots level where they could be effective for the long-term, not just the length of a specific project.
Praxis: Missional
Larger picture: Call to partnership
The missional church looks very different from its traditional counterpart. Common traits of current missional communities include members living close to those they minister to, actively working along side them even in commercial or for-profit projects, and they are keeping the emerging faith communities native to the local culture, without pressing conformity to a church model.45 An example of such a community noted by Frost and Hirsh is located in Pomona, California. This college town has a vibrant local community of art, music, and literature attracting a range of freespirited “bohemians, punks, hip-hoppers, taggers, and performance artists”46 Within this context, Brian Ollman started a missional community made up of several diverse centers of activity called Millennia coops. These ranged from the Millennia art lounge, art studio, a fully operative design group, Jiu-Jitsu classes, and a growing church that meets in cell groups.47 The Millennia Design Group is an excellent example (though not the only one) of partnership with the missional church. As part of the larger missional co-op, they are contributing to the expression of a local community and engaging the talents of the church’s members in relevant ways. Yet they are also an independent studio with clients from within the community and beyond. The work the studio produces benefits the neighborhood in a natural way because it is already part of the community. Their design is actually meeting needs rather than the design used to bait the modelcar enthusiasts into a homogenous church experience. As a result, their presence in the downtown area gives opportunity for genuine relationships among staff workers and clients. The connection of the design staff with the church leadership is radical. The entire Millennia church and co-op has the benefit of insight and unique perspective
Change is in the air for both the Church and the design profession. In her column, “Inch by Inch,” Carolyn McCarron Sienicki lists several examples of current designers and business leaders making choices and developing projects that promote social intangibles such as political change, human happiness, and environmental responsibility. These are all calls to social justice issues that could have been issued from the church community, yet instead they come from a trade journal for graphic design. She notes,
45 Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways : Reactivating the Missional Church, 24-27. 46 Frost and Hirsch, The Shaping of Things to Come : Innovation and Mission for the 21st-Century Church, 28. 47 Ibid, 29.
It may sound like these designers and business leaders are quoting different theories, but they are not. They’re all talking about the same thing: using our creative thinking and design skills to help redirect the present course of the world – economically, socially, and environmentally. Maybe it was Hurricane Katrina that finally did it. Maybe it was Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth. Maybe it’s the never-ending casualties and ever-growing troops in Iraq. Whatever the trigger, there’s a collective feeling that we can no longer afford to go on working and living the way we have. In a world that grows smaller every day– where we are economically interdependent on each other, where cultural and social clashes create terrorism, where the changes in the environment are now too disturbing to ignore– the things we are creating no longer feel sustainable.48 The good news is that those in the design field, like many in today’s changing society, are seeking to make a difference in today’s world. Yet while design has the means to communicate meaning, they are not sure what meaning is worthy of their messaging, and are lost in a sea of ideologies: Dan Wieden, cofounder of Nike agency-of-record Wieden & Kennedy, [asked] … whether “we are trying to save the world for capitalism, socialism, 48 Carolyn McCarron Sienicki, “Inch by Inch,” Communication Arts May/June 2007, no. 352 (2007).
technology, or ourselves?” The lack of focus for discussion is very telling. The end of any substantial social conflict has made it very easy to be a critic and to be against any and everything.49 These designers are looking for worthy clients and causes to steward their skills. Yet they also want to find clarity in today’s sea of information and chaos, which lies beyond their own resources. Monika Parrinder summarizes the sentiment of many designer when she says, “The future still needs to be shaped, and creativity may not be enough.”50 If the missional church can see it, they have a chance to step in and foster an amazing partnership. Church leaders can foster relationships and partnerships with these creative thinkers for a collaborative vision to engage the missio dei of the Church. Who knows, perhaps followers of Jesus Christ could even reclaim a relevant and moral voice that society could trust during such major change. 10
49 Macdonald, Can Designers Save the World? (and Should They Try?), 18. 50 Parrinder, Just Say No ... Quietly, 14.
Bibliography Bielenberg, John. Thinking About Communication. Edited by Michael Bierut, Looking Closer 2, Critical Writings on Graphic Design. New York: Allworth Press, 1996. Drane, John William. Do Christians Know How to Be Spiritual? : The Rise of New Spirituality, and the Mission of the Church. London: Darton Longman & Todd, 2005. Frost, Michael, and Alan Hirsch. The Shaping of Things to Come : Innovation and Mission for the 21st-Century Church. Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 2003. Gibbs, Eddie, and Ryan K. Bolger. Emerging Churches : Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2005. Gingerich, Ray C., and Ted Grimsrud. Transforming the Powers : Peace, Justice, and the Domination System. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006. Glaser, Milton. Design and Business: The War Is Over. Edited by Michael Bierut, Looking Closer 2, Critical Writings on Graphic Design. New York: Allworth Press, 1996. Heller, Steven. The Graphic Design Reader. New York: Allworth Press, 2002. Hendricks, Kevin D. “No Need to Impress.” Church Marketing Sucks Blog (2004). Hirsch, Alan. The Forgotten Ways : Reactivating the Missional Church. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Brazos Press, 2006. Ilyin, Natalia. Fabulous Us: Speaking the Language of Exculsion. Edited by Michael Bierut, Looking Closer 2, Critical Writings on Graphic Design. New York: Allworth Press, 1996. Macdonald, Nico. Can Designers Save the World? (and Should They Try?). Edited by Michael Bierut, William Drenttel and Steven Heller, Looking Closer 4, Critical Writings on Graphic Design. New York: Allworth Press, 2002.
McCarron, Carolyn. First Things First: A Second Look. Edited by D. K. Holland, Design Issues : How Graphic Design Informs Society. New York: Allworth Press, 2001. McCoy, Katherine. Countering the Tradition of the Apolitical Designer. Edited by Michael Bierut, Looking Closer 2, Critical Writings on Graphic Design. New York: Allworth Press, 1996. Parrinder, Monika. Just Say No ... Quietly. Edited by Michael Bierut, William Drenttel and Steven Heller, Looking Closer 4, Critical Writings on Graphic Design. New York: Allworth Press, 2002. Sienicki, Carolyn McCarron. “Inch by Inch.” Communication Arts May/June 2007, no. 352 (2007): 14-23. Versluis, David. “What Directs Design?” Pro Rege XXXIV, no. 1 (2005): 36. Ward, Pete. Liquid Church. Carlisle, Cumbria Peabody, Mass.: Paternoster Press ; Hendrickson Publishers, 2002. Wolfe, Tom. From Bauhaus to Our House. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1981.
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