Micro-Risk #5: The Art Swap

The Art Swap is #5 in the Micro-Risk Playbook, a resource for churches striving to be less reasonable, less predictable, and more adept when it comes to faithful risk-taking.   

Your church has art.  Probably lots of it.  Lots of pictures of dead people.  Am I right?  Dead former pastors, dead church founders, dead theologians... On one hand, they're a tribute to the past.  On the other hand, they're kind of creepy.  Oh, and let me guess - they're mostly male.  

Here's the micro-risk.  Swap the art in the main hallway of the church building with the art hanging in Sunday School classrooms or in the children’s education area. This will look different for each community, of course. It may be especially useful for churches where foyers and main hallways primarily display relics of years gone by, or just pictures that hang there because that's just where they've always been. What happens when we replace them for a time with our children’s artwork? What conversations do we start when we replace our wall of retired pastors with the faces of our young people? (Are they also not ministers?) What do we affirm when the first piece of art one encounters in the building is a 2nd grader’s drawing of the Holy Spirit?

Lots of our congregations have rich, faithful histories. But asking ourselves what we want people to encounter during their first ten steps in the building is a rich, faithful question. This micro-play explores what happens when we exchange symbols of our past with symbols of our present and future. It’s a playful way of asking, “Who are we and how do we tell our story?”
 
The Micro-Difference:

• Playfully upends what may be an unanalyzed attachment to relics of the past
• Affirms that our children are not our future – they’re our present
• Invites congregation to think creatively about how we communicate our story