Ferry Memorial Reformed Church Montague, Michigan Mary Kuiper Vermeulen Process: Our process began with a renewal grant for Children and Worship from CICW through Lilly Endowment Inc. We wished to more fully include children in the worship life of the church, and also to invite the children to lead us during worship services. Our renewal activities included four areas: Music arts, writing arts, movement arts, and visual arts. For the purpose of this presentation I will focus on the visual arts activities. We began by enjoying three summer art sessions. Children of various ages signed up to come and work together with artists from the congregation. First we read through the verse together, prayed, and discussed our first impressions. Then we used watercolor and pastels to paint the images that came to mind as we pondered God’s message to us through the verse. For example, one passage we worked with was Romans 11:33-36. “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable His judgments, and His paths beyond tracing out!” After talking about how wonderful and loving God is, one four-year-old, Megan, filled her paper with blue blobs, green lines, purple ovals, and yellow squiggles. As the children worked, adults circulated and chatted with them, writing down the children’s explanations of their pictures on a separate piece of paper. As she painted, Megan explained, “God made lots of colors!” After the children’s work was finished and the paint was dry, we used a digital camera to take a photograph of each watercolor. We then put these pictures into a PowerPoint presentation and created a responsive reading to use in a worship service. In worship, the process was as follows: Pastor reads scripture. Watercolor shown. Child’s explanation of picture is read by the child artist (or another young volunteer) as the child’s explanation is superimposed over the watercolor. Pastor reads another part of scripture. This continues until the end of the passage of Scripture. For one July session we took the children on a “field trip” to a local summer camp and borrowed a pontoon boat for a morning. We had a lot of fun tooling around the lake in an old boat, taking some time to put in the anchor and explore the tug and pull of the anchor as it kept the boat from straying. We also tried out a big orange life preserver and experienced how it kept us alive and afloat, even as it bobbed up and down in deep water. We had to trust the life preserver’s ability to keep us afloat. We wondered if life preservers and anchors help us understand God better. Then we wrote prayers and made sketches on notepads. These art sessions inspired a retired photographer from the congregation to take a small group of children, armed with camera and film, to a hidden place near Lake Michigan the following Spring. There they photographed hundreds of Trillium. This project is a work in progress. After each PowerPoint is lifted in worship, the watercolors are displayed in the church foyer, along with the verses and children’s explanations. We also take pictures of the children during the process and work these into the displays. After attending a workshop by Friends of the Groom, our grant committee also included Tableaux in our worship activities, using our bodies to create pictures as visuals in worship at Ferry. More Tableaux ideas can be found on the Friends of the Groom website. Our group of Tableaux actors was a generational mix from 6 to 61 years young. One of the stories we presented was Jesus healing the blind man as told in John 9:1-12. Context: Children leading in worship have helped us at Ferry seek out and focus on what matters most to God. Having our roots as a small country church, it’s clear that polished programs are not natural or effective for our church family. We want to approach God with simplicity and child-like faith, asking Him, “Who do you want us to be?”
Ferry Memorial Reformed Church Montague, Michigan Mary Kuiper Vermeulen We find that, as our children take leadership roles, we move away from perfectionism and open our hearts more and more to the Holy Spirit. As adults, we are becoming more generous with our own spiritual gifts than we were before these activities. The change has been subtle but powerful. Many Sundays, children are up in front, leading some part of the Sunday service. Sometimes they read opening prayers or calls to worship; other times Pastor Klaver reads a prayer that a child has written. You may see First Timothy, our youth praise band accompanying congregational singing, or see the Scripture passages shared by Tableaux. Sometimes a child will share artwork during the Scripture reading. Children have become one of the bright colors in the fabric of our worship times. Impact: The relationships that blossomed during our renewal activities are a gift to us and continue to have an impact on our faith community. During the art sessions, Tableaux practices, and writing workshops, adults and children get to know each other on deeper, personal, and even spiritual levels. Wanting to relate to teenagers and include them in the life of the church, we adults at Ferry hunger for ways to engage them and get to know each young person better. Our activities with paint, boats and materials like them are ways to do this. We are hopeful that the children feel loved. Sometimes they reflect God’s love back to us and to others in the community. One nine-year-old from Ferry’s neighborhood recently shouted to the crowd from our Nativity float in the Christmas parade, “Hey, you guys! This is my church! You can all come!” We pray we are ready to know them and include them when they accept this invitation. Another blessing from our renewal activities is a growing awareness that people with varied gifts have a home in our worshipping community. One of our church elders shared during the grant year that, even though he has been a member of our congregation for 35 years, he had felt disconnected to the activities up front during worship. As a person with undiagnosed dyslexia, he was uncomfortable with the written word. Words were cumbersome and frustrating to him. His gifts in the visual arena didn’t have a place during worship services in the past. He is grateful that the children in this generation can use movement, artwork, and music to glorify God. Truly our renewal grant activities and subsequent experiences have deepened and enriched our relationship with God at Ferry Memorial. The gifts and leadership of our young brothers and sisters help us hear God’s message in new ways, form fresh and authentic responses to Him, and are wonderful vehicles by which we share the blessing with each other.