Using the Arts
Ever wondered how you can make songs in a more African style? Have you wanted to make songs that are closer to your heart and speak deep to your Christian faith? "A Time to Sing" gives you biblical guidelines for making and singing new songs based on scripture in your church.
Available from Fuller Seminary Bookstore. [more...]
"Make a big effort to understand the full meaning of the text... Try to put yourself in the shoes of your character. Think of their character, their temperament, their behaviour. What do they like? What don’t they like?"
This is a list of advice for narrators and actors working on audio products for promoting Scripture Engagement. These could be dramatised Bible portions or Scripture relevance dramas.
The advice comes from a drama team with many years of experience in producing radio programmes in West Africa. [more...]
This “tool chest” of materials brings together a compilation of documents and research tools, each describing an idea, activity or concept to enable the missionary or Christian worker to encourage some aspect of indigenous hymnody.
Book & CD-ROM, available from Ethnodoxology at $29.00. [more...]
June 3-8, 2013 (USA) and July 7-12, 2013 (UK)
Arts for a Better Future (ABF) is a one-week workshop that trains participants to spark local, Scripture-infused creativity that moves communities toward the kingdom of God.
The training content follows the 7-step process contained in Creating Local Arts Together: A Manual to Help Communities Reach Their Kingdom Goals (2013, William Carey Library). Participants join in a condensed application of this flexible model to an existing cultural context. They then develop plans to implement principles for encouraging Scripture engagement through the arts to a community in which they work.
ABF focuses on discovering all artistic forms of communication in a community, and then helping local Christians communicate Scripture in these forms by a process of critical contextualization. The workshop is drenched in warm, artistic personal interaction with other people and God. A wide range of people interested in increasing the penetration of Scripture into a group have benefited from ABF: missionaries with artistic gifts, cross-cultural ministry strategic planners, pastors, worship leaders, people interested in developing multicultural worship, artists of all kinds, and others.
Sponsored by the International Council of Ethnodoxologists, SIL International, Pioneer Bible Translators, and the World Arts program at the Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics (and All Nations Christian College for the UK event).
Upcoming ABF workshops:
Dallas - June 3-8, 2013 (Registration ends May 15). See here for more details.
England - July 7-12, 2013 - See here for more details.
Videos:
England 2011 - http://tinyurl.com/AiMvideo6
Dallas 2012 - http://tinyurl.com/ABF2012video [more...]
"Good News" is an evangelistic Bible teaching audio-visual. It presents a quick Bible overview from Creation to Christ's resurrection in 20 pictures, with a further 20 pictures of basic teaching on the Christian Life.
The "Look, Listen and Live" series of 8 audio-visuals gives studies of Old Testament characters, the life of Jesus, and the young Church. There are 24 pictures in each book.
"The Living Christ" series of Bible pictures illustrates the Life of Christ, from Creation to His second coming. [more...]
A set of CDs containing illustrations for use in published materials, shell books, filmstrips, film, flipcharts, etc. for the purpose of furthering the cause of literacy and to encourage the use of the translated Scriptures.
 | from International Mission Board Link: Buy from IMB Store Coloured storying cloth with 42 pictures, designed for use in West Africa for chronological Bible storying. Includes a flier explaining the stories displayed on the cloth. |
Brian Schrag’s Creating Local Arts Together manual has both a stirring and exhilarating effect as the reader envisions the possibility of a community’s arts used for the purposes of God’s kingdom and, at the same time, is thorough and informative with respect to the research process involved in getting to know the arts and worldview of a community.
The manual contains seven sections which correspond to the seven steps of Creating Local Arts Together. They are:
- Meet a community and its arts
- Specify kingdom goals
- Select effects, content, genre, and events
- Analyze an event containing the chosen genre
- Spark creativity
- Improve new works
- Integrate and celebrate for continuity
Gunnhild Bremer has written a review of the book (downloadable below) which includes reasons why it is useful for Scripture Engagement practitioners. [more...]
The cassette dramas were very effective and listened to repeatedly.
The Ese Ejjas are a nomadic river people group of Bolivia. Joyce Prettol describes how no one was able to read Scripture with expression, as reading is a personal skill and not for entertaining others. So they decided to record dramatized Scripture. The cast spent time talking together about the story and then developed their dialogue. Prettol explains and gives examples of how they dramatized parables, miracles, and New Testament incidents. She also covers technical factors. [more...]
In this video trailer, Max McLean gives a powerful presentation of passages from Mark's Gospel.
In what ways could members of local language communities put on a dramatic presentation of passages from the translated Scriptures? Are there gifted actors who would be willing to take up the challenge to memorise large portions of the Bible to present before a crowd? [more...]