wfn.org | Pilgrimage from the Past

["Daphne Martin_Gnanadason" <Daphne.Martin_Gnanadason@warc.ch>]

Uniting General Council 2010                                    

>News Release 
>22 June 2010

>Pilgrimage from the Past
>By Jackie Macadam, UGC correspondent

For many delegates at the Uniting General Council in Grand
Rapids, Michigan, USA, one of the most striking displays in the
foyer is the long banners that trace the hundred years of
mission, starting with the Edinburgh 1910 Missionary Conference
until the present day. 

Artist Judith Rempel Smucker is the designer behind the images
you can see. A Mennonite, from Akron, Pennsylvania, she leapt at
the chance to take part in the ecumenical project, brainchild of
Jet den Hollander, Executive Secretary WARC Mission Project,
2006-2010.

“The way we imagined the exhibition is as a pilgrimage through
time. You start one hundred years ago, with the 1910 conference,
and move through the years represented by the banners until the
present day. I worked with the stories and quotes Jet had
selected to make sure that each banner didn’t just tell an
interesting story but also showed the work of a different
denomination from around the world. There’s a map on each banner
with an indication where the events you are reading about
happened. 

“I struggled a little initially to find a concept that would
pull it all together. I played around with a lot of imagery –
flames, windows, and so on, but nothing seemed right. Then one
day I went to a quilting convention in Pennsylvania. I’m not a
quilter, but they use lots of different fabrics, and as I
incorporate many different fabrics in my collage work, I decided
to attend. After browsing through all the regular stands with
conventional quilting materials on offer, I rounded a corner and
found a stand where a woman from Ghana was selling lots of batik
scraps for using in quilts. The colors were spectacular. I bought
many, many of them!

“As I scanned them in to my computer that night, I realized I
had found my way of linking the stories with each other. There
were colors there and scraps of cloth from Indonesia, Africa –
everywhere, and they tied the banner stories together
beautifully. I didn’t realize that many of the designs and colors
on the batik work can actually identify where a person has come
from, or what their tribe is. It was fascinating.

“The batik scraps gave a ‘color language’ that allows the
banners – and the booklet that accompanies them – to be
accessible to everyone. Each banner has a different batik scrap
that guides the eye down into the story below. As a designer, you
have to consider the different types of people who will look at
the banners – there are those who’ll only look at the pictures,
so you need good, dynamic visuals that will grab the attention
with perhaps an interesting caption; there are those who will
engage more, so you need good quotes and context, and then you
have those who will participate completely, and will read every
word. Your job as designer is to accommodate them all.

“My hope is that as people move along the banners, they will
read the tremendously varied and moving stories on each one, and
then read the reflections on the pages of the handbook that
relate to a particular banner and consider the questions at each
‘station’ to see how it applies to their own faith. That way
they’ll get the most out of the story being told.”

The banners took Judith two months to design and left her
wanting to find out more about some of the people that appear in
them. 

“I was particularly interested in the stories of Jorgelina
Lozada from Argentina, Anna Wuhrmann and Lydia Mengwelune from
Switzerland and the Cameroons respectively and the modern story
from the 1990s of Muhammad Nurayn Ashafa and James Movel Wuye
from Northern Nigeria, men who were in opposing armed militias,
and suffered terribly due to the fighting, one losing a hand and
the other, members of his family, but who came together to become
co-directors of a Muslim-Christian Interfaith Mediation Centre to
instigate peace. They now lead task forces to resolve conflict in
Nigeria and other countries.”

The Uniting General Council 2010 in Grand Rapids, United States
(June 18-28) marks the merger of the World Alliance of Reformed
Churches and the Reformed Ecumenical Council to form the World
Communion of Reformed Churches. 

>Contact: Kristine Greenaway
>Executive Secretary, Communications
>World Communion of Reformed Churches

UGC News Room – Calvin College - Hoogenboom Center Room HC 204
Cell phone: 1-616-826-5540 or 1-616-826-8636
News Room: 1-616-526-7885
email: kgr@warc.ch
web: www.reformedchurches.org (
http://www.reformedchurches.org/#_blank )