Graphic Design and the Missional Church: An Unlikey Partnership

July 29, 2009

Details

This paper was written for a class at Fuller Theological Seminary, and will be published in the September issue of the Pro Rege, a quarterly publication of Dordt College in Iowa. Below is an excerpt that summarizes its content and goals:

Focus
This paper will reflect on the missional church and the practice of graphic design in order to build a bridge between them. While this connection exists within my own personal context, I have begun to notice similarities between the two that extend into the larger transition from modern to postmodern society, and the grey in-between.

The design field obviously cannot offer salvation or a faith of any kind. However, it can offer its practice of clear thinking and visual communication to engage with such realities. By doing so, the practice of design becomes missional and brings ethical and faith
sentiments tangibly into the environment where we live our lives. This client/designer relationship with the Church (as with any other organization or business) is not new, and is usually accepted by both church leaders and designers. However, limiting the role of
design as an outsourced vendor is cutting short the innate capabilities of visual communication. Granted, a partnership is an unconventional arrangement. Yet as both church leaders and designers are grappling to live out meaningful lives in a culture becoming more and more visual, they could both benefit from an innovative change in their traditional roles. As it is, the missional church and the design field have several striking similarities that put them on the parallel paths of negotiating these cultural shifts.

In this paper, I will address the basic background and perspectives of the missional church and the design profession respectively, and then highlight the parallels I see between them: (1) both have a strong ethic of service in the messages they steward, (2) both have a prophetic voice by filtering information to provide meaning for an audience, (3) both are peacemakers in diverse groups, and (4) both engage with power structures with the intent of transformation. In addition, I will give examples of how design and the church are already working together in the Christendom mode and how they could be more effective working together in a missional context partnership.

Download full PDF of article here.