Grafitti Wall

[Scott Smith]

In one of our sessions, I asked how can a small urban church with few
resources and awash in a sea of economic and cultural impoverishment
employ the arts in meaningful and affordable ways. In her response,
Jacqui mentioned graffiti as an urban art form. As soon as I got to
the office yesterday, I wrote our ministry council (Baptist equivalant
to consistry) and asked them if we could create some space in our
building for a graffiti wall for our youth. THEY SAID YES!!!!

We are going to create a graffiti wall on a wall that is adjacent to
our sanctuary entrance. The space is 12 feet tall by 16 feet wide.
We will have 4 panels (12' tall by 4'wide) hanging on that wall. Our
youth group will be our cadre of graffiiti artists.

I visited with our youth group this evening and we talked about the
idea. We talked about the fact that grafitti is a "temporary" art
form (sort of an urban mandala made with spray paint). Grafitti goes
up. It gets painted over. They decided that I would be "the man".
They will be doing their first grafitti project during a youth lockin
next weekend. As "the man", my job will be to paint over the grafitti
every once in a while. Whenever "the man" strikes they will simply do
some more grafitti. I am going to give them themes from the
lectionary as seasonal guidance for the grafitti.

After youth group, I took my 16 year old son and his friends on a
grafitti expedition. We drove up and down alleys and found some
incredible graffiti art. They are truly energized by the fact that
their church wants them to do grafitti INSIDE the building.

I also suggested that we create a position on our ministry council for
a "Minister of the Arts." As I envision it, the role of the Minister
of the Arts would be to encourage artistic expression in our
congregation. The woman who teaches our youth Sunday School class has
one of those artist souls, and she has agreed to give it a whirl (a
whirl is better than nothing at all). Her first suggestion was to
hang a quilt that one of our very senior members made decades ago
beside the proposed grafitti wall.

All of this confirms how incredibly life giving it is when we give
people the space and freedom to tell their stories.

Scott Smith, Pastor
Arlington Heights Baptist Church
Indianapolis, IN

[Scott Smith]

[Middle Church]

This is excellent. Several of us from Middle church are speaking to
some urban Presbyterian churches in Baltimore this weekend and this
will provide us a great example of what they might be able to do as
well.

Thanks for sharing this. Sounds like you are off to an action-
oriented start!

[kyk...@msn.com]

Hi Scott,

Another way to reach out to the community is to have a Ten Thousand
Villages
store near the church but this takes time and effort. Blessings to you
and your
church.

Keith Ross-

On May 3, 10:20 pm, Scott Smith <scottsm...@indy.rr.com> wrote: