Friday, July 18, 2014

Sidewalk Chalk Evangelism

On a discussion on Facebook the other day, a woman wrote: 

"I am using Brian McLaren's book: We Make the Road by Walking, for small groups starting September. We are using the walking/pathway/journey of faith image for next year, beginning in the fall. Looking for creative ways to be church with this focus. Weekly meeting in small groups will happen in homes, a Panera Bread and the church. Looking for new ideas for weekly book study gatherings and to make real the journey of faith image.

 My church is a smaller congregation in an affluent neighborhood. It is a higher educated group and many live very focused, purpose filled lives. Feeling desperate for new ideas.

 Need some inspiration from the creative clergy women community!"

I thought of labyrinths and of walking through the neighborhood in prayer.  But I also thought of this picture from Lutheridge, taken by Mary Canniff-Kuhn:




Thus, inspired by the above picture, I wrote this idea, which I want to capture here as well:

"I am impressed with things that my poet/teacher friends do with poems and big hunks of sidewalk chalk. You can make trails this way too. My friends would put poems on sidewalks. I bet you could do something similar with faith images, verses, inspirational words and phrases, prayers that are chalked onto the pavement. Or if not sidewalks, perhaps the church parking lot, driveways, and whatever Panera allows."

I love the idea of leaving wonderful, affirming messages on sidewalks and pavements across the nation.  What a powerful evangelism that would be.

I use the word evangelism guardedly.  I don't have a vision of the kind of evangelism designed to get people to come to our churches.  But I do have a vision of spreading the gospel good news this way:  angel messages for a different age.

4 comments:

John Joseph Flanagan said...

You are proposing graffiti on sidewalks everywhere, and how about painting signs on bridges and buildings? Think about this? Christianity is not about leaving chalk messages which someone else has to clean up. It is about spreading the Gospel one person at a time, and living your faith as well.

Kristin Berkey-Abbott said...

I like chalk because it washes away with the rain--no one has to do any clean up at all.

John Joseph Flanagan said...

It doesn't rain for months here in southern Arizona, and if it were done on the clean sidewalks in my community, someone will get a summons.

Unknown said...

Great idea for my own driveway and sidewalk!