PRESBYTERY BUDGET CHALLENGES
InPrint a publication of the presbytery of the twin cities area
Fall 2013
You Gotta Have Art Art and the Christian Faith
ANDREW-RIVERSIDE COMES HOME inprint/presbytery of the twin cities area/ fall 2013
Words from the Editor
InPrint
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“What is the future of the Presbytery of the Twin Cities area?�
Minnesota is extremely diverse. 1 in 5 Minnesotans today is a person of color. And the diversity of our foreign -born populations are now coming from Africa, Latin America, and Asia. The percent of persons of color in Minnesota has grown approximately 7% from 10% to 17%. (source: Minnesota State Demographers Office). The percent of persons of color in the Presbytery has grown by approximately 1% from 6% to 7%. (source: PTCA).
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The Offering will be collected in most churches on October 6.
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FOCUS
YOU GOTTA HAVE
ART inprint/presbytery of the twin cities area/ fall 2013 6
Worshipping God Through the Arts “Presbyterians believe that painting, sculpture and other art forms are gifts of God, who inspires people with the ability to create artistic designs and to teach these skills. We read in the Bible of artisans who were called by God (see Exodus 31), and we know it still happens today. Throughout the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) faithful artist-members gather together at conferences and retreats, celebrating God’s gifts of creativity and exploring together with heart and hands and voices what it means to be made in the image of a creating God. “ -P.Lynn Miller, Presbyterians Today, April 2006.
The connection between
faith and the arts has always been contentious, at least in the Western Church. In some periods in the history of the church, artists were welcomed and produced works that resonate today. In other periods though, people saw art as taking away from worshipping God. Indeed, some Christians saw the arts as sinners, making idol images to worship instead of God. We don’t live in age where art is banned in churches. But Christians in general don’t always see how the arts can express the kyrgma or proclamation of the gospel. How does a play or painting or piece of music tells others about the good news in Christ? In this issue of InPrint, we will explore the connection between faith and art and we will answer how the artist is just as important in proclaiming Christ as the preacher. Join us as we talk to musicians, painters, actors, playwrights and others in our Presbytery who serve God through pianos, organs, paintbrushes and pencils.
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...evil is not the final word. The Art of Kirsten Malcolm Berry, where word and vision come together to create an inspiring message. actually born in the US but was three years old when we moved there. Except for periodic “furloughs”, the Philippines was our home for fifteen years. That influence is evident in my use of patterns, prevalent on Filipino baskets and woven mats – and on the batiks particular to the area where we lived in the southern part of the country. In your Artist’s statement, you said that you paint specific passages from the Bible in order to make the abstract tangible. Is art in its many forms a way to contextualize faith, to make it understandable in a way that reason or words might fail?
You’ve seen her art before. Maybe it was at your local church or at Luther Seminary. You might have seen her art in a PC(USA) publication. Kirsten Malcolm Berry has created paintings that combine the visual with the written word. A member of Hope Presbyterian in Richfield, Kirsten did an email interview with InPrint. How did you get started? In the late eighties, my husband and I attended a concert at the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis. Of all the Basilica’s ornamentation, I was most taken with the Alpha and Omega, carved in stone on either side of the chancel. I had recently been incorporating indigenous patterns into my artwork. After the concert, I used these kinds of shapes to create a painting of the Alpha and Omega letters. My college Greek classes then came into play in a second painting as I included the full Greek text of one of the Alpha and Omega verses in Revelation. I was stopped short seeing the Greek in a visual context and began searching for other Biblical symbols to paint in this way. I discovered three or four. Soon after, rotating art exhibits began at my church (Hope/Richfield) and I was asked if I could create ten of these paintings for a show. I remember wondering if I could find that many symbols. Somehow I managed and finished with “I Am the Vine”. I thought surely now I had exhausted the supply. To my surprise, I then continued to come across Biblical images to paint – and other exhibition opportunities started coming my way. Since that Basilica concert, by God’s grace, I have painted 250+ New Testament images. Your parents were missionaries and you were born abroad. How did that background influence your art? How does it still do so today? Yes, my parents were in the Philippines as Presbyterian missionaries, called “fraternal workers” by the denomination in those days. I was
Yes, certain art forms can express faith in ways words alone cannot. But words too have the capacity to be transcendent: Jesus’ parables are elegant forms of verbal art. Conversely, much visual art is not transcendent – especially when drearily didactic or marked by gratuitous hopelessness. But the latent power in any art form is its potential to point us to beauty. Beauty’s significance lies in its link to the wholeness of New Creation – or the new heaven and earth of Revelation 21. Some may counter that beauty is superfluous when many around us lack even basic necessities. Indeed, when a woman anointed Jesus with costly perfume, his disciples also wondered: “Why this waste? … This perfume could have been sold at a high price and the money given to the poor.” But Jesus defended her: “She has done a beautiful thing to me.” Matt. 26:8-10, NIV (“A beautiful thing” has also been prosaically translated “a good service” or “good deed”, but the Greek word has an aesthetic connotation, as much as it has an ethical one, making “beautiful thing” accurate for this context.) Jesus was indeed acutely sensitive to the suffering around him. At the same time, his response to the woman says that the kind of act she performed for him is pivotal to the purposes of his kingdom. In fact, could it not be that such encounters with beauty are those very moments when New Creation breaks into our present world?
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What Christian artists can offer in this landscape is work informed by our conviction that evil is not the final word. Can our art somehow exhibit this good news in its very rendering of color, shape and form?
Have you ever done any art focusing on the Old Tes- seeing or hearing for the first time. This is my hope for tament? my art – that fresh visual contexts will bring well-known texts back into focus. No, because I haven’t studied the Hebrew of the Old Testament. Also, there are already gifted Jewish artists Historically, Protestantism and especially, the Rewho are incorporating Hebrew into their work, but I formed Tradition was not always keen on the use of have not found much art doing the same with the visual art. What do you think has brought about Greek of the New Testament. So I am thankful for a that change? How does your art reflect your Reniche creating my particular combination of New Testa- formed background? ment text and image. The Reformation’s emphasis on the spoken and written Your art always has a Biblical passage in Greek. Did word was a necessary corrective. That tradition of word you take any courses in Greek? If so, what have you -centeredness is reflected in my art – each painting inlearned in reading Scripture in its original lan- corporates a specific New Testament verse, written in Greek. But the Reformation also tore us from of a legaguage? cy of visual faith-symbols. Searching behind the ReforYes, I took four classes of Koine Greek in college, but I mation, I have found other mentors – among them the am not a Greek scholar. For me, the value of seeing creators of monastic illustrated manuscripts and Byzanbeloved and familiar passages in a language and script tine mosaics, for example. so unlike my own is in keeping me humbly mindful that the Bible did not come out of my particular people- What advice would you give a young artist that group. Indeed, Scripture’s Greek and Hebrew origins – wants to fuse their faith and their art? and subsequent world-wide translations, pull us into a much bigger story: that of God’s claim on “every tribe A well-intentioned desire to authentically engage the diffuculties of life sometimes fosters contemporary art and language”. that is anywhere from bleak to darkly ironic to absurIn an interview you did, you talked about how the dist. What Christian artists can offer in this landscape is words and images found in the Bible tend to wash work informed by our conviction that evil is not the final over us and that we need something to snap us word. Can our art somehow exhibit this good news in back to attention. How do you think your art does its very rendering of color, shape and form? this? It is a great gift to have grown up in the church and to have heard and read the Scriptures since childhood. But the flip side of such a background is that the vibrancy of Scripture can erode over time. But when we encounter a familiar passage portrayed in a new way in song, image or dramatic reading, etc., it is as if we are inprint/presbytery of the twin cities area/ fall 2013 9
From Pulpit‌.to Stage Presbyterian Pastor Kristine Holmgren has gone from writing sermons to writing plays.
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Provoking the Gospel
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Lydia is Still at Work
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A Year With “Up With People”
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Forgiveness of Our Debts
Forgiveness on the Small Screen
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“Glory to God!
The new Presbyterian Church (USA) Hymnal arrives in your pews this fall. One church musician talks about the first new hymnal since 1990.
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Hymnal FAQs
To order or for more information, please go to the new hymnal website: presbyterterianhymnal.org.
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In:Volve-Missional Stories
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NEWSLETTER TITLE • Spring/Fall 20XX
Praying Twice InPrint asked several church musicians in the PTCA to respond to the following question:
How does music help proclaim the Gospel?
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What does it mean to be created in the image of a creating God?
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NEWSLETTER TITLE • Spring/Fall 20XX
PTCA Pix 1
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3 5 4
6 1. At May Stated Meeting: Ruling Elder and Moderator Barbara Lutter con-
gratulates Teaching Elder Betty Raitt for five years of perfect Presbytery Meeting attendance. 2. Also during the meeting, PCUSA Mission Worker Kurt Esslinger speaks to the Presbytery about mission, the Young Adult Volunteer program and his up coming move with his family to South Korea. 3. Teaching Elder Paul Moore participates in Ice Cream eating contest. 4. At the May Stated Meeting, Ruling Elder Barbara Van Loenen looks on while Ruling Elder Barbara Lutter speaks to the Presbytery. 5. Participants converse at Wired
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MISSION
“Once we were no people, now we are God’s people.” An update from PTCA Teaching Elder Josh Heikkila on his work with West African Presbyterians.
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Living Water in Ghana
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MISSION
Dismantling the Prison Pipeline Kwanzaa Presbyterian in Minneapolis launches a new program to help Middle School children in Minnesota’s Largest City and aims to end the state’s Cradle-to-Prison Pipeline. By Anthony Jermaine Ross Allam inprint/presbytery of the twin cities area/ fall 2013 24
NEWSLETTER TITLE • Spring/Fall 20XX
In their 2012 biennial review on African-American boys in education, the Schott Foundation for Public Education reports that in Minnesota only 65% of AfricanAmerican males and 59% of Latino males leave high school with regular diplomas in four years. The rate for White students in the same period stands at 89%.
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PERSPECTIVES
Perspectives on the 2014 PTCA Budget As the PTCA plans its budget for 2014, news spread about the impending budget deficit that the Presbytery faces. InPrint shares two perspectives The State of the Presbytery’s Finances
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NEWSLETTER TITLE • Spring/Fall 20XX
Faith the size of a mustard seed--the Presbytery budget deficit
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CONGREGATIONAL SPOTLIGHT
After a decade, a church returns home Andrew-Riverside Presbyterian Church has returned to Marcy-Holmes in a luxury apartment complex.
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Mission offerings from congregations and individuals go towards supporting New Church Developments, the training of future pastors, offering aid to those in need after a disaster through Presbyterian Disaster Assistance and several other important functions of the Presbyterian Church (USA). Give your tax-deductible donation today! www.presbyterytwincities.org/support-ptca-mission/
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Around the presbytery
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In:Form-News and Resources Transitions
5-Year Ordination Anniversaries
"Come to me, all you who are weary and
burdened, and I will give you rest." Matthew 11:28 OASIS is an annual conference held in Kansas City, offering high-quality workshops and speakers and the promotion of sabbath time among its participants.
Kansas City, MO
To register go to: synodma.org/oasis/
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September Presbytery Meeting Highlights
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Calendar
Connect w/PTCA Become a GA Commissioner!
June 14-21, 2014
Learn more: www.presbyterytwincities.org
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In the Resource Center DVDs
Books
Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area 122 W. Franklin Ave. Suite 508 Minneapolis, MN 55404