Now that the delightful craziness that was our Season of Giving has passed (or has it really?) and we are establishing the foundations for 2012, it’s a good time to reflect on what made 2011 special.  We had times of exhausting depletion, amazing rejuvenation, thoughtful redemption and revitalized production.  Without going into detail because this would no longer be a ‘thought’ but a ‘thesis’, 2011 was pivotal for our Faith family.  We started looking outward and moving toward what and who we saw, whether it was a neighbor, an outreach or a family member…it was a year of “not so much about us”!

Jake Allen http://jellsolutions.net/ and I worked together from the platform of capturing the Season of Giving in a visual art form.  This birthed the “God Gave Himself” video.  Our hope was that the spirit of the season would be illustrated. The original thought was to have different readers narrate the short film…but due to time constraints  and audio choreographing to the musical background we defaulted to Jakes baritone vocal attributes.  Thanks to all the folks that read, you helped the project immensley.  Thanks to Jake for donating your skills to this project.  It was truly a gift of love!  It was such a pleasure seeing our Faith family blessing others in so many different areas.

Thank you for giving!

God gave Himself

In the silence of the night

A child, a king, a treasure

Pure

Intentional

Sacrifice 

Holy

Devoted

Obedience 

Exquisite

Beautiful

Love 

The gift of the divine… 

How do we find Christmas in the chaos and where do we see Jesus in the giving? 

We see Him

In the eyes of a child hearing the Christmas story in a new way… 

In the life of a single mom when her needs are met 

In the heartbeat on a monitor  

In the hands of the elderly held in love 

In the box of food given to a man out of work so his family may eat 

In the dance of a special needs child

When a yard is mowed, a car is fixed and a washer repaired. 

In the simplicity of a worship song 

In a mended relationship 

Christmas is about giving.  Not about the perfect gift or even presents at all.  

It’s about giving ourselves.   

Father 

Son 

Spirit 

God gave Himself 

To the world… 

But most importantly… 

To you. 

Christmas is now.   

What will you do with this divine gift? 

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.”  John 1:14  

What started as a “wouldn’t it be cool if…” statement in a brainstorming session, ended in a night of beautiful worship and fellowship with our Faith family led by Audrey Assad.  We had originally asked Liza Pollok if she and some of her troupe at Ballet Excelsior could come and join us for a special Christmas presentation.  When they chose “Winter Snow” as their song to choreograph, we loved it so we decided to ask Audrey if she could come and sing it live while the dancers performed.  This was only three weeks before the performance, this idea (along with many of our others) coming at the last minute, made us think that it was a possibility, but not a probability.  Ryan searched out Audrey’s agency online and we sent in the question…much to our surprise she accepted the invitation!  I think God lets it happen this way just to show us how big He is and how important our little dreams are to Him…

Then we scrambled to pull everything together, and I mean scrambled.  Getting ready for three special performances was challenging and exciting.  We checked out our sound system and rented pieces to optimize her performances.  Setting the stage where the five ballerinas could dance and have Audrey on the piano required some movement, then to rearrange for the evening performance some more movement…and LOTS of candles!  We are loving the simplicity of a bare stage with candles and lights for this Christmas season.

The Sunday morning performance was wonderful with Christ’s coming beautifully illustrated in song and dance.  How grateful we are to have such gifts in our body and their willlingness to share!  Liza, Rebecca, Jenni, Faith and Ashley performing for Ballet Excelsior were amazing.  Audrey sang “Winter Snow” in perfect time for them and the union was delightful.
Following the dance, Audrey sang “Restless” and even taught us the chorus.  Our folks embraced her and her music, which set the stage for an intimate atmosphere for the evening performance.  With very little time to promote the event and with all our Christmas schedules that are so crazy, our Faith family came ready to enjoy their evening gift.  We sang carols together, Audrey shared her heart for the Lord and for people and all in all it was a blessed evening.  If you missed out on a CD, then visit Audrey on her website: http://audreyassad.com/ or on Itunes and pick one up!

Our Faith family has been so awesome at sharing their time, their gifts and their services during this Season of Giving, this was our way to give back…we hope that everyone enjoyed having Audrey with us and the lovely dance offering from Ballet Excelsior as much as we loved putting these offerings together for you!

The Season Of Giving has self titled this Christmas at Faith Bible Church and led us to another way of thinking about how we celebrate decoratively…as a body we are thinking outside of ourselves, how can we reflect that visually.  The themes for the messages made it, well maybe not ‘easy’, but they shed a light on our direction.  If we’re Giving Life and Light, then what better says that than candles.  So as we (literally) closed the curtain on Acts of the Apostles, we found our inspiration in the Light Of The World, Jesus Christ.

“In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.” John 1:4-5

This Christmas season, it seems natural to visually celebrate Christ’s birth with candles representing the light in darkness as we as a body go out into our community to share this light with our neighbors.  Bringing the splats back, (remember from Jonah?) was Tray’s idea and provides a background of color to offset the simplicity of candles in the dark.  Displaying the candles on iron candelabras was a decision sparked by much discussion and a fast and furious shopping trip to Don Quixote’s in Old Town Spring, where it warmed my heart to find a half price sale…on wrought iron candelabras!  Thanks Amber Gallaway for the great source!

Taking the focus off of ourselves and the commercialism that has become Christmas in our society and putting it back on Jesus has been artistically refreshing.  The baskets on stage represent our giving life to those around us, and I so look forward to the 18th and having our body come forward to collect them and take them out to our community filled with all sorts of fun gifts, but most importantly Jesus’ love.  We have such an amazing Faith family that delights in sharing with others, it is a privilege to be a part!

Going from a jam packed three week series to a deep and wide series covering all the book of Acts was challenged from the design aspect.  What is something that communicates the richness of Acts and all the incredible lives that are depicted in this book in a way that will last the whole nine months?  Scot had in his mind a photo mosaic so we started down that path with thoughts, sketches, mock-ups and possibilities of using computer programs.  What we found out is that a 63 foot long, 8 foot wide mural is too big for a computer program with the time frames that we had to work with…so it was back to the literal drawing board.  I am always amazed at how God puts just the right people on the path for the creation of these illustrations.  Just when I left to lead a team to Guatemala, Ryan Callahan showed up to get us rolling on Acts.  We pow-wowed about a strategy, tested adhesives and patterns and I left it in his capable hands

Ryan painted 20 4′ x 8′ panels with flat white wall paint and started printing out our collection of Acts of the Apostles paintings, drawings and location photos in shades of gray, black and white and color.  Upon my return from Guatemala, thank you Jesus not sick, we went to work with spray adhesive on the sidewalk outside the sanctuary.  Kenya Gaede joined us and we started working on the panels in 8′ x 8′ sections.  As each section finished we would bring out a new one and line up the centers, then keep on moving.  Midweek Erin Wychopen joined us and things picked up with the extra hands.  It was a process of blending the shades of dark and light, finding the right combinations of patterns and not repeating the pictures in a certain range.  Each picture had to be lined up exactly making a complete border around the edges.  Ryan was a great job foreman overseeing all the workers.

One thing I’ve learned about these art projects is that a fringe benefit is that relationships are formed as we work side by side to illustrate God’s word.  Art is such a powerful communicator and creating art projects brings us together in a unique way.  Lesli Bothel and Taye Morgan joined us on Thursday afternoon and evening for the final production push.  We were bound and determined to finish the adhesion job that night and pulled out of the church parking lot at 12:30 AM! Whew, no more gluing!

Scot had picked a different font for the lettering and we projected the letters on to foam boards to sketch then cut.  Once again the Romain’s came to the rescue by finding us a hot knife to borrow, that really made cutting out letters so much easier.  Shelley Chalas came on board to help paint the letters black on Friday and we were ready to hang on Saturday.

Getting that monster up in the air took more than 80 lb test line we discovered!  First try hit the floor as Scot, Ryan, Greg Hillegeist and I manuevered the 8 x 8 foot sections into place, adhered them on the back and sealed the fronts with glue, then watched it drop!  We discovered that wire is the best hanging solution and the rest went up like clock work, slow clock work, but clock work none the less.

It was all worth it when we saw the final product hanging on the stage and knew that we were about to start the life changing study of the book of Acts of the Apostles and learn about reaching out to others for Christ…after all, that’s what it’s all about, right?

As we thought about how best to illustrate Our Magnificent God…in what we called the Design series the word that came to mind over and over was…”Wow”.  You can’t help but say “Wow” when you even get a glimpse of how great God is and how perfect is His design for all creation.  How could we somehow in our small and finite space communicate this “Wow”?  It had to be BIG.

So we called our friends at Sew?What.inc and asked if they could create a cambio for us that would fill our stage space.  They are amazing!  I talked to Violet on Friday morning the week before our series started and the 19′ x 32′ cambio was finished and shipped by Friday afternoon so we could install it the next week.  Thanks Sew?What.inc.!

Then our faithful ‘how to guys’, John Houston and John Romain came on the scene and we installed a series of eye bolts across the ceiling and were able to use a continuous rope to hoist the whole thing up.  Wow, that thing is BIG!

Collecting images that would illustrate God’ magnificence took lots of time and research and that’s what Mark Lancaster is so amazing at.  He and Scot Pollok gathered facts and photos to pull together a presentation that “wowed” us all.  Getting those images up on the BIG screen took all the extra laptops and projectors we could muster. Until it was all plugged in for the first time, we had no idea if it would even work!  As with all of our projects we learned as we went along, necessity is the mother of invention…

The band moved forward on the stage, thanks to Tray’s patience and flexibility, the backstage was cleared and Chavier lights were installed.  We had some great technicians planted in the congregation that kept the show moving with multiple remotes, Phillip Villareal, Tony Chalas and Ryan Callahan all had their fingers on the trigger and for three weeks we were all awed by God’s design of us and for us.

Wow, how Magnificent is our God!  We stand amazed.

As Jonah came to life as a sermon series, there were so many obvious choices for art many of which were cliche. The question became how do we best illustrate the major concepts in support of the message without distracting from the message. Therefore the giant fish for Scot to emerge from was cut from the line of possibilities. Oh well, it would have been fun! Jonah was sent, and even though he chose to run, he still had to go, and go, and go. The dock symbolizes Jonah’s ‘going’. It came into being by the hard work of two of our church carpenters, Buck Yates and John Houston along with the dismantled bridge from Scot’s front yard. It was amazing to watch the vision emerge as a weathered old pier right in our sanctuary. When you see the dock, think “Where is God sending me?” and will I “Go”?

The other part of illustrating Jonah came from the idea of sails, since he went on a ship. Albeit the wrong direction, still God used his disobedience to make a grand point for us all. The large sail shaped pieces of fabric are actually called stage splats and were created just for us by a wonderful company, Sew?What.inc They worked with our dimensions and vision to create splats that both reflect and absorb light using fabric that is both tough and flame retardant meeting all stage standards. These pieces will be a welcome addition to our stage decor line up.

Jonah is going to be so much fun to work with as he makes his journey to Nineveh! We hope that you’re blessed and inspired by the message and the illustrations.