Art as Prayer

The annual CRCNA Chaplains Training took place virtually this year from September 24 to 26, 2020. The theme of the training was “Come to Me: Sufficient Grace, Perfect Power, and Humanity.” 

The video below is a recording of the session led by Reverend Mandy Smith. Learn more about Mandy and the topic of her session below.

Session Information: Too often we bring the world’s “It’s all up to me” habits into our faith and ministry. But the Kingdom invites us to be like children, setting aside our own agenda to step into a reality shaped by an imagination bigger than our own. Reverend Mandy Smith will lead us in this creative art experiment to practice that posture of rest, receptivity and response to the Spirit. (*No art experience or skill required.)

Speaker Information: Originally from Australia, Mandy Smith is lead pastor of University Christian Church, a campus and neighborhood congregation with its own fair-trade café in Cincinnati, Ohio. She is a regular contributor to Christianity Today and Missio Alliance and the author of The Vulnerable Pastor: How Human Limitations Empower Our Ministry (IVP). Her next book, Unfettered: Imagining a Childlike Faith Beyond the Baggage of Western Culture (Brazos), will be released in 2021. Mandy and her husband, a New Testament professor, live with their family in a little house where the teapot is always warm.

Keywords: Spiritual Discipline, Prayer, Art, Self-care, Resiliency, Pastoral Leadership, Spiritual Care, Chaplaincy