A Great Art Video from Brenda Hendricks

My friend Brenda Hendricks is a fantastic artist and a writer. In this video inspirational video, she shares both. I’ll let the video speak for itself.

She has hidden a portrait of Jesus in it, do you see it?

In the video, Brenda gives us a message of hope, faith and comfort. How could you express your faith in what you do?

My Top Ten Videos

Well today (Lord willing) is my first day at Creation East. This year I am painting in the Youth Leaders Hospitality area sponsored by my friends at Interlinc. My guess is I will not be able to post from Creation as the cell reception is not the best so I prepped a few posts in advance. Today I wanted to give you a retrospective on some of my favorite videos. I haven’t posted any new videos in a little while largely because my camera has given out. I hope you like these. They are actually listed as part of my booking page above in case you’d like to refer your friends to any of them. Remember, these videos are free to use and share. Ideas that spread, win.

One of my favorite creative pursuits is to make videos of art in process and use them to tell part of God’s story. These are some of my favorites.
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Art Ministry Resource from My Friends At Interlinc

The other day I mentioned a lesson I was writing for the youth ministry resource Interlinc. I thought I’d give you a little better idea what they do. Now as you know, I am a huge fan of using the visual arts as a tool for ministry. Interlinc does the same thing with really cool music and every once in a while visual art and music collide. Such is the case with Circleslide’s video for the Song You Are Everything.

The band commissioned Artist Randy Elrod to do a time lapse painting video based on the song and turned it into their music video. As you can see they did a really great job.

My friends at Interlinc then got a youth worker to write a Bible lesson using the Circleslide video as a jumping off point. You can view that lesson by clicking here. As you can see this is a pretty useful tool for ministry to youth, especially those with a creative bent.

Now just to be sure I am not misrepresenting, Interlinc’s lessons do not all include painting and visual arts. Music is their thing, but it is still a great resource for working with creatives, especially their Music Video Loop which comes free four times a year with your subscription. The video loop just seems to click with visual learners.

I’ve written for Interlinc for years on a voluntary basis because I love this resource. This isn’t an ad. It’s just a recommendation of a resource that might be really useful to you.

By the way, I’ll be painting live at the Interlinc Youth Leaders Reception area at Creation East, Thursday, Friday and Saturday June 28-30, 2012. If you’re at Creation, be sure to look me up.

Book Store Plus Tons of Creativity=This

You have to see this to believe it. I don’t want to even imagine how much work this was, but I love it. Their message, there’s nothing like a real book. Now while I LOVE my Kindle, I appreciate their sentiment. They did a lot of work to express their passion for “real books.” What are you passionate about? What could you do to express that passion?

Now go and do it.

Perfection

For my latest piece from my heroes video, I wanted to do one of my favorite people from the Bible, my namesake, David. Now of course we have no photos of King David, so I had to go with the next best thing, Michelangelo’s David. I went searching for photos to reduce to the stark black and white I am using for the video and I was struck and amazed by this majestic work of art once again. It is as close to perfection as human beings can get and when I remember it was carved out of a solid block of marble, well I’m mesmerized. To attempt to paint it is to find your own imperfections.
Here’s what I came up with.

As soon as I finished, I began to see the flaws. It’s not perfect. It’s not as good as Michelangelo’s but here the thing. It doesn’t have to be and neither do I. I am not Michelangelo and as far as I know I was not asked to be. My mission is not to be him, my mission is to make the art God wants me to make to his glory. I will finish this video and I will put it up for the world to see. Some may be critical, some may even mock, that’s okay, I’m not here for them. I am making tis video and all this art for the person who will see it and be drawn, not by my talent but by the Holy Spirit, into a closer (or first time) relationship with Christ.

If this work does that even once, it’s perfect just the way it is.

Be what you were created to be, do what you were created to do. Live with Jesus and bring glory to His name.

What Makes a Hero?

This is the first image for my new video heroes.

First Image for the Heroes video

I decided to put this one out to the viewers. What attributes constitute a hero to you? I know the beginning of this piece and the end, but I am trying to fill in the middle. This will be another of my animated painting videos, one painting layered on top of another. Who in your opinion belongs on this video? They can be known or unknown, but I need you to tell me why they’re a hero. If your hero is unknown, I need a photo of the person. All the pieces will be done in a similar style to this one.

Why am I doing this video? Well one of my heroes has fallen into a controversy and has me doing a whole lot of soul searching right now.

I started with Lincoln because his legacy has stood the test of time, he helped to hold a nation together and set a whole group of people free. But I really want to know who I should add to the list.

So tell me, what makes a hero?

Don’t Be a Lemming! A free children/youth ministry resource from AMOKArts

I’m speaking at a Jr. High Lock-in tonight for about 300 kids. It’s just a short devotion before the sports and swimming and art projects kick in. I’m using one of my art videos and I thought I’d share with you the basic gist of what I am going to say.

Did you ever make a bad decision? Something that you ended up really paying for, something you regret. Now let me ask you a couple of questions.
Did you know it was wrong when you did it?
Was it your idea on your own or did somebody else talk you to it?
Did you ever say you did something because everybody else was doing it?
Now just to be clear, in most cases you can’t really blame the person you followed into a bad choice.
Most of the time the choice was yours. Will you go the right way or the wrong way?
And of course someone might be tempted to say who are you to say what’s right or what’s wrong?
Maybe I think what I’m doing is right after all my friends are doing it.

See the problem with that is most of the time even when you want to say that, deep down inside, you know you’re headed in the wrong direction.

The Bible says it like this, there’s a way that seems right to a man but in the end it leads to death.
Following the crowd is often a bad idea. In case you don’t believe me you might want to check out lemmings.

Does anybody know what a lemming is? Check out this video.

We’re responsible for our own choices, and if you make the wrong choices and follow the wrong crowd you could end up paying consequences. The scary thing is when you face those consequences it’s because you chose them. You might say, “No I didn’t. Of course you did. Most of the time you have an idea what will happen if you get caught doing what you’re doing and if you choose to do it anyway, you choose the consequences.

So how can we make better decisions, better choices. Well step one is you have to watch who you follow. If there’s a way that seems right to a man but it leads to death how can we make the choices that lead to life? We follow someone who is wiser than man. We follow Jesus. Romans 12:2 says “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of you mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is, His good pleasing and perfect will. In other words we need to let Jesus change the way we think, until we think like Him.

Did you ever notice that a lot of people in the Bible got really mad at Jesus and Jesus never did anything wrong? Do you know why that is? Jesus wasn’t a lemming. Jesus saw the people going the wrong way and said no, that’s not the right way. His way is always right and the people who followed Him loved Him and worshipped Him because He saved them. We need to follow Him too. We need to pray and read the scriptures and follow what they say. Not everyone will like it if you follow Jesus but you can always know you’re headed in the right direction and if you follow Jesus a strange thing happens, you become worth following. You might even become a leader which is almost always better. So you have a choice follow Jesus in the right direction or follow the crowd off a cliff. Don’t be a lemming…Follow Jesus!

To download the study guide for this lesson, click here.

Bible Reading Guide
An important part of following God is knowing what He wants and a great way to know what He wants is to read His Word. Follow this plan and you will finish reading the Bible in a year.
Matthew 13, Psalm 37
You can also download your own chart here.