Darrow Miller and Friends

How to Disciple a Nation with a Paintbrush

In a post last January we mentioned a friend in India who is using art to disciple his nation. We are happy to bring you this update.

India MPs review artists' messages about tuberculosisDiscipling Nations. In the last few months we have had surprising opportunities to share our paintings on Tuberculosis with Members of Parliament, both from France and India. These were meetings organized in February and March by our partners ‘Global Health Advocates’ to convince legislators about the need to respond to the problem of Tuberculosis in India. With paintings made by artists we took into Delhi’s Tuberculosis hospital, we sought to share the human story behind the statistics. Our paintings were well received, and this continues to be part of our experiment seeing art ‘disciple a nation’ through influencing the influencers with Kingdom truth, in this case the truth about the sacredness of human life.

art gallery shapes societyBeautifying the World. In April we ran a public exhibition/fundraiser/outreach ‘Art Fair’ in partnership with a church in the middle of the city. Over the last nine years, with our vision being ‘to see art shape society with beauty and truth,’ we have perhaps focused more on the truth than the beauty. With the church’s mission to communicate Christ through ‘loving the city’, we launched the exhibition with the tagline: ‘Make our city beautiful, put art on your walls.’ The goal was to get beauty into regular middle-class homes by sourcing small paintings from struggling local artists. In the process the artists get encouraged because their work is bought and they can pay their rent, folks who have never owned a work of art are able to afford it, we are able to raise some funds towards our work (about $800 this time), and finally, we get to see a little bit more of the Kingdom come, through beauty. As Bob Moffit of Harvest taught us: “The Kingdom of God is that place where God’s intentions are fulfilled” and beauty has always been part of God’s intentions.

 

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4 Comments

  1. Victoria Ashadu

    February 10, 2013 - 12:09 am

    I am encouraged by the fact that there people out there who are using art in such a powerful yet subtle way to reach people who usually would not know how to respond to the need around us.

    Thank you for your heart and intentions.

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