Lausanne 50th Anniversary Painting "The Harvest" at the L4 Congress in Seoul

On stage the final day for after the big reveal with all four pillars regathered from around the world and the "fifth" pillar (we affectionally call it) of the Harvest beside it.

Alexis and I sharing the moment of the unveiling...

At long last, Alexis Newsom and I joined the Lausanne president Dr Michael Oh on stage at the very end of the L4 Congress to reveal the 50th anniversary painting “The Harvest” as a capstone moment to prophetically usher us in to the next season of the gospel going into all the world. Our presentation followed Rick Warren’s admonition and he kindly encouraged us back stage, and the unveiling was followed by the Getty family leading worship and a communion service lead by church leaders from the historic enemy countries of Japan and Korea.

Rick Warren gave an amazing exhortation just before Dr. Michael Oh gave the closing message and lead into the unveiling of the painting.

The Getty family leading worship

VR live artist and dear brother in Christ Phil Bezalel lead a visualization of God's presence redeeming the whole earth.

Upper lefthand corner detail of "Pillar 4" from the Lausanne Movement.  I had finished painting this and unveiled it back in 2019 at the last large gathering of Lausanne in Manila during the Global Workplace Forum.  What an amazing "God Wink" to have the LAST element I paint in the previous painting be the prophetic exclamation point showcasing God's anointing at the unveiling of the 50th!

It was beautiful! Michael ended his address with a poem about beauty and honeybees as the visual metaphor, and I had chills up my spine as he introduced the two of us, we dramatically unveiled the painting, and immediately went off script as I began to laugh, exclaiming that in the Lausanne pillar painting four, the very last one we finished five years ago, the final element I added to the work was a honeybee pollinating The essence of the Kingdom of God into every sphere of society.

John Stott and Billy Graham signing the Lausanne Covenant in 1974 and the Songdo Convention Center in S. Korea over their shoulder where we were actually meeting during the unveiling 50 years later to the day in 2024.

This painting is about time, from creation to the wedding feast… and we were literally IN the moment of the painting as the final imagery embedded in the harvest wheat was of Billy Graham, John Stott, and the Songdo convention center where we were physically standing in time for the unveiling- within the entire sweep of the eternal biblical Metanarrative.

5400+ participants from 200+ countries gathered in one room as the Global Bride made visible!

The live, collaborative artwork that Alexis and I had completed over the course of the week was spread out all across the front of the stage, the four pillars of the Lausanne movement paintings were gathered back from the four corners of the earth, and put on display together, now joined with this “fifth pillar“ of the harvest. May the Lord catalyze this movement of Kingdom hearted believers, and in great collaboration and coordination send us into our divided and digitalized world to bring the gospel of Jesus Christ to everyone: the whole church bringing the whole gospel to the whole world!

The view from back (under) the stage just before we walked up for the unveiling...

Since I first heard of this 50th anniversary event of the Lausanne Movement, I’ve deeply desired to produce an image to capture the scope of time and the scale of “the whole church bringing the whole gospel to the whole world” (and perhaps I’d add… “To the whole timeline of history: past, present, and future”). I remember being on a drive with Leighton Ford to an art opening (I was his chauffeur that night) and as I shared about the meeting in Seoul, Korea, my heart was on fire with a vision to go and to somehow prophetically visualize the moment in time amidst the sweep of all that has unfolded in the global church.

The evening that the families of Lexie and I first met over dinner, we prayerfully imagined working TOGETHER on a 50th anniversary work, and I sent her home that night with the canvas I’d built for the work so she could lay the base layers in her expressive, prophetic, and abstract style. The work is symbolically the same size as the other Four Pillar Paintings of the Lausanne Movement, yet now is turned on its side to show the sweep of time, or the table for the wedding feast… or some other unforeseen metaphor of “same but different”.

A famous Russian Icon of Abraham Sacrificing Isaac to hold the 2000 B.C.E. placeholder in the Biblical Metanarrative.

How do you paint time? Is it possible for an artist to capture a vision of this moment in the full time and space continuum of humanity’s meta-narrative? My desire in this anniversary painting has been to honor the 10 years I’ve served the Lausanne Movement as an artist, the 50 years since it was founded, the 500 years since the Reformation, the 2000 years since the cross, the 4000 years since our father Abraham… and the infinite before and after: the entire Harvest that will be gathered at the end of time! Sound a little overwhelming? It was.

The Harvester is the main figure, where the Fisherman (Pillar 1), the Bride of Christ (Pillar 2 & 4 and now here again), the Good Shepherd (Pillar 3), and the King (Pillar 4) comprise the main imagery of the four pillars of Lausanne.  

Winslow Homer's "The Veteran in a New Field".  One of my artistic heroes and major inspirations... and I am now tributing and appropriating his visually legacy to tell the story of time as an artist who has inherited his visual vocabulary.

Until the last 500 years, most believers came to understand their faith through BOTH the written/spoken word as well as artwork. It was the layman’s Bible. In this tribute painting of time, I chose to tell the story through Art Historical reference, intentionally recreating the biblical narrative through artwork from as many diverse regions and artistic traditions throughout the world as possible, as it is one of humankind’s deepest and most universal impulses to express their divine connection visually. Artwork has ever been the meeting place of history, spirituality, emotions, politics, imagination, and power, and what better way for me, an artistic heir of every work that has come before me, to tell the story of God’s time through the language of art history.

The "harvest" is full of visual art historical reference from the sweep of Biblical history to the world cultures of many heritages and traditions (representing ALL of the global artistic languages).  In addition to Winslow Homers "The Veteran in a New Field" done following the Civil War in 1865, from left to right: Michelangelo's Adam and Eve (1508-12) symbolizing earliest know human history , The Cave of Lascaux 16,000-14,000 BCE, Running Horned Woman- Algeria 6000-4000 BCE, Russian Icon of Abraham Sacrificing Isaac - historically near 2000 BCE, stone tablets of Moses representing circa 1500 BCE, Olmec Stone head of Middle America circa 1000 BCE, Bernini's "David" representing circa 1000 BCE, Terra Cotta Warriors- China 210 BCE, Egyptian Coptic Cross representing the life, death, and resurrection of Christ circa 27CE (best known adjusted time from modern research), Buddha from India carved early centuries CE, Emperor and Empress Justinian and Theodora of the Byzantine Empire 500CE, Bayeux Tapestry circa 1066 CE Normandy/ England , Easter Island Moai circa 1200 CE, Martin Luther representing 1512 CE, Billy Graham and John Stott in 1974 with the Lausanne Covenant, Songdo Convention Center, Incheon Korea 2024, and the wedding feast of our Lord in the future Kingdom Come!

A photo from my trip this June to see Bernini's "David" in the Borghese Gallery in Italy.  A representation of this images is just to the left of the harvester as the 1000 B.C.E. placeholder of the Biblical Narrative of time.

The Bride of Christ is radiant in her glory, looking with joy upon a laughing Jesus wreathed in the glory of galleries.  Her dress is made of the white of the harvest floating up among her... or is it the outnumbered stars in the sky of Father Abraham's promised future offspring?  This is the fulfillment and culmination of all things that followers of Christ are looking ahead and setting our course to follow.  It is our guiding Morning Star. 

Matthew 9: 37 ‘Then he [Jesus] said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; 38 therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”’ ESV

L4 Lausanne Leadership Planning Gathering NYC 2022

In June of 2022, the leadership of the Lausanne Movement met in New York City to prayerfully prepare for the 2024 fourth global congress in Seoul, Korea.

In addition to bringing a new alternate and opposing iteration of the Pillar 2 painting in the form of “The Bride To Be”, I also had the wonderful opportunity to join the leadership again on stage painting live and visually capturing the prayerful digestion of the book of Nehemiah.

Amidst seeing familiar friends of Byron Spradling (second from left) and Billie Coppege (far right), I was introduce to Ron Anderson (far left) in the unexpected dilemma of a cancelled flight, a shared rented car, an overnight in PA with my parents, and a long drive back to VA and NC together the following day. In the midst of that adventure, Ron shared his desire to bless his father’s testimony book with a commissioned cover.

Lausanne Movement's Global Workplace Forum Manila, Philippines June 2019

David Miller spoke during the opening session of the Global Workplace Forum, and the fourth and final pillar was dramatically “unveiled” on stage during that evening. The four originals were then gathered in the atrium where the participants could interact closely with them.

All four sibling paintings met for the first time June 25, 2019 in Manila, Philippines during the unveiling of Pillar 4 at the Lausanne Movement’s “Global Workplace Forum”. There were SO many miraculous moments standing in front of the work… meeting sibling I had painted for years but had never met. It literally felt as though I had stepped INTO my paintings, meeting the people from all over the world that I had spiritually and artistically journeyed beside for the past four years. Equally amazing was the portal that these four paintings opened for those who saw them… an open heaven that allowed them to look through the surface details of what they individually are called to do in Kingdom service to see the grand metanarrative, the universal sweep of calling and scope of God empowering “the whole church to bring the whole gospel to the whole world”. We had many tearful and prayerful moments in front of the paintings, and I rarely made into into the main sessions on time or at all as I would be swept up in meeting my siblings from around the world.

Here I am with my artistic ministry partner and dear friend Melanie Spinks who shared the adventure of our travel to Manila via Tokyo, Japan. In addition to the four pillars paintings that were gathered for the first time during the conference, throughout the gathering, I was painting live on stage during portions of the sessions as a “visual scribe” where I was capturing the spirit and revelation of the plenary sessions in real time (the paintings displayed behind me in the above photo). These images were gifted to our host church in Manila.

One of my very favorite stories from the Global Workplace Forum was meeting Billy Coppedge, a missionary with his wonderful family to Uganda who had JUST finished his doctorate at St. Andrews in Scotland and was returning to Africa with his wife and five kids. Amidst our hour + conversation, I felt compelled to offer to paint a blessing over his ministry, and then realized he was living less than an hour from my uncle in GA whom I was planning to visit just weeks after returning from Manila. Two weeks later I was in Billy’s living room, meeting his family, and standing at the altar at the family camp where 20 years TO THE DAY he had surrendered his life fully to the Lord. I began a painting on that very pew, the same place he had proposed to his wife, the same place he had knelt in thanks when he received confirmation of his completed doctorate, to begin the painting.

The image is also based around the Nitrogen atom of Pillar 4 of the Lausanne series. With Christ at the center, Billy and Jo make up the inner ring of electrons and the five children make up the outer ring. With the “third culture” experience of their American / Scottish/ Ugandan children, I set up the central cross to be split between a favorite view of St. Andrews Scotland if the image is turned 90 degrees to the right and an image of the Ugandan landscape if turned 90 degrees to the left.

Lausanne Movement Pillar 4- Kingdom Impact in Every Sphere of Society

"Lausanne Pillar 4- Kingdom Impact in Every Sphere of Society”. 2019. 32x20”. Acrylic on birch panel.

As the fourth and final painting in the Lausanne Movement Pillar series, this piece seeks to sum up the other three works as well as paint a global vision of God’s Kingdom permeating the seven cultural spheres.  Remixed again here are the fisherman from pillar 1: “The Gospel for every person”, the Bride from pillar 2: “An evangelical church for every community”, and the Good Shepherd from pillar 3: “Christ-like leaders for every church”.  Christ is now crowned as the glorious and triumphant King, but as his upside-down Kingdom subtly infuses each sphere, it is not done as the leaders of this world who lord it over their subjects, but in selfless servanthood (rather than sit on the throne, He kneels to wash His Bride’s feet.

Each of the seven spheres is set on a different continent of the world and is shown crumbling in the futility of man’s institutions, while Christ-like servants carry the DNA of the Kingdom in the form of equilateral (trinity) triangles joining into a new infrastructure of honeycomb hexagons.  This stems from the crystal structure of Nitrogen, the atomic element with 7 electrons, 7 protons, and 7 neutrons (777) figured here as the very fabric of God’s Kingdom from a universal scale to the very smallest subatomic particle of God’s creation. The seven spheres are set in the same format as Nitrogen.

1. Family [Michelangelo’s painting, “The Creation of Adam” with the African pyramids] 

2. Religion [The remixed Bride set in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil]

3. Business [Dubai skyline, United Emirates]

4. Government [China’s Forbidden City & the Tower of Babel]

5. Education [Cambridge University, UK] - alma mater of John Stott featured just below.

6. Art [Sydney Opera House, Australia]

7. Media [Hollywood, CA, U.S.A.]

As I did my research, I learned that Nitrogen’s 7 electrons have two layers orbiting its center: 2 in the inner ring, and 5 in the outer ring. Even as I began to ask myself, “what two spheres of the seven would be closest to God’s heart” I already knew the answer: “The Church” (God’s Family), and “Family”, the echoing social fabric in which God designed our existence. The Bride’s halo becomes the first electron as I oriented the painted to have those two images and electrons closest to Christ.

One of the mentoring voices in my life has been that of Mako Fujimura. At one point when we were discussing my artwork and my calling, Mako said to me, “Bryn, the smaller you paint, the bigger you’ll see.” For years I’d literally painted small paintings in response to this word, often no larger than 1” squares of tiny images. Here I was, years later, painting an image inspired by the atomically minuscule Nitrogen, and I was suddenly seeing Kingdom revelations of the very nature and structure of divine realities. Thank you Mako!

Lausanne Movement Pillar 3: Christ-Like Leaders for Every Church and Sector

The third pillar of the Lausanne Movement is embodied in the "Good Shepherd" sitting among his sheep.  Vignettes surround the central figure suggesting the varied roles these shepherds play throughout the globe, from an iconic image of founder Billy Graham preaching, to young biblical David with his sheep, to a female chaplain in the army and asian pastor serving communion.  While wolves hover in the background and allusions to darkness and danger surround the flock, the Good Shepherd sits at the center of his charges with calm strength as a spiritual refuge and friend. May our church leaders throughout the world derive their compassion, wisdom, leadership, and the sacrificial love to lay down their lives for their sheep and wash the feet of their disciples from the true source of these qualities, Jesus Christ.  

Charlotte Christian Student Andrew Knotts and I collaborating on the opening layers of the painting in my classroom studio together.

I wanted to embed the very DNA of what it means to shepherd, impart, and empower into the painting itself, so I invited one of my students, Andrew Knotts, to join me in the early stages of this painting.  He and I worked together to pray over the design and sketch the imagery, we built the canvas together, and painted the abstract foundational layers side by side. Andrew painted several of the wolves that can still be seen in the image, and am so grateful for Andrew's generous collaboration.  

Leighton Ford got the very first print of the 24 print limited first edition of this series. Billy Graham had just past away, and is featured in the upper left hand corner, and I was so honored to be able to share with his family my own small piece of tribute to the Graham legacy.

Lausanne Movement Pillar 2: An evangelical church for every community

The New Testament envisions the fully realized global Church as a spotless Bride prepared for her returning Bridegroom, Christ.  Standing on the New Jerusalem, this Bride is subtly depicted with her planetary scale feet standing on the literal holy land, holding the flame of the gospel in her hand, while this orange fiery light is carried by diverse believers into every corner of the world.  As God’s Word does not return void, the Bride’s gown subsumes untold sparkling blue and white figures of every tribe, tongue, and nation streaming in to comprise her fully realized expression. May our passion to see the “whole Church” fully healed, unified, purified, and restored to her identity as the spotless Bride of Christ compel us to carry the whole gospel to the whole world with humility tempered zeal.

Here is Pillar 2 being handed off at the 2019 to go from the Philippines to its new host in Africa.

More than any other of the four pillars of Lausanne, the central image of the Bride of Christ has haunted dozens of my paintings for the last decade. It began just before I was introduced to the movement when I was finishing my Haiti “Beyond The Ruins” Series of 12 images as a prophetic prayer over the nation of Haiti. One of the culminating images from that set was the embodied Bride, both as the nation of Haiti personified, but also as a glimpse of the global Church unified. She was the fulfillment summation of the entire series with fractals of equilateral triangles containing repeated glimpses of the other 11 paintings in the series.

It was actually in painting that work that my multi-year assignment to paint for an entire nation (who would have the audacity to do something that large?!?), that had always felt outlandishly massive in scope in my heart… suddenly felt too small. I didn’t want to just paint for Haiti any longer, I wanted to paint for the world. I didn’t want to paint just for the living saints… but for those who had already lived and died, and for the countless generations still to be born. The Bride of Christ is ALL of us, together across time and space, unified and presented to our groom Jesus. “I want to paint THAT image!” was the compulsion as I finished my Haiti series, and low and behold, within a year or so, the Lausanne Movement (that I didn’t even know existed) reached out and asked me to paint these images. Sometimes God gives us the oak tree in the form of an acorn.

“Lausanne Pillar 2 Prequel: The Bride To Be”. 32x20” acrylic and gold on birch panel. Burned. June 2022.

In the summer of 2022, the leaders of the Lausanne Movement from each region on earth and representing each interest group assembled in NYC to begin planning for the Lausanne 4 global conference in Seoul, Korea 2024. I attended and painted live throughout the sessions of that gathering, and arrived having just painted a broken version of the Bride, and then physically and metaphorically “burned” the surface around the edges as well as entirely through the birch surface in several places. Standing in the watery ruins of her filth and unfaithfulness, the German 23 karat flakes of her golden beauty were surrounded by her charred reality.

In 2020 I was commissioned to repaint the Lausanne Pillar 2 for a ministry that was an outreach to the female muslim community. What began as a “simple repainting”, soon morphed into a much more involved project, and was now more than twice as large as the original 32x20” at 48x30”. This same “Bride” now took on the visual language of the near east and the visual tradition of tessellations: the mathematical, infinitely repeated patterns that are intended to convey divine beauty and eternal order. Click here to read the full article about “Beloved”.

Lausanne Movement Pillar 1: The Gospel for Every Person

Lausanne Pillar 1: The Gospel for Every Person. 32x20”. Acrylic on birch panel. 2016

To highlight some ingredients that were placed in the painting: a central fisherman is casting his net over the entire world (each continent outline in gold), seen from an unexpected, sideways vantage, while a central cross comprised by the equator and international dateline anchor the work.  The net sparkles with the burst of blue and white light scattered across the globe as seen from satellite photography of current population densities and prophetically declares our prayer that God’s love would enfold every people group on earth and flood the remaining darkness with the light of the gospel.

Here you can see more clearly the underlying global map with the continents oriented in a more familiar layout. The decision to turn the world on its side was a prophetic symbol of the way the gospel turns this world on its head, and the qualities of our “upside-down Kingdom” (service, humility, sacrificial love, generosity, forgiveness) are so often running at odds with the priorities of our world.

Here is the Lausanne Movement’s president Dr. Michael Oh presenting the Pillar 1 painting for the first time at the Younger Leaders Gathering in Jakarta, Indonesia August 2016.

Near each continent on the globe is a depiction of the indigenous people in their cultural attire.

At first I’d painstakingly painted the entire globe noting every curve and edge along the shorelines, and intentionally avoiding the manmade borders and distinctions history has imposed on the land. After hours and hours of prayerfully considering the vastness of this world and just how little I really knew of all these places, I felt the Lord lead me to paint it all AGAIN, but this time as seen from satellite photos at night, the blue/white lights illuminating our planet showing clearly where the greatest gatherings of population and our globally urbanizing and shifting world. I found myself again praying over cities, lights, the hubs of humanity across our planet, and only after completing these two passes over the entire painting did I begin adding my originally intended figurative elements. I didn’t realize it at the time, but God was stretching ME, not the work, so that I could more deeply appreciate and stand in awe of the scope of what it meant that the gospel is for EVERY PERSON on our planet. This vessel had to be broken and remade in order to hold the weight of the assignment to paint pillar 1!

Lausanne Movement 40th Anniversary 2014 "Sunflowers"

The Lausanne Movement’s 40th Anniversary

“Lausanne Movement 40th Anniversary - Sunflowers”. 2014. Oil and gold leaf on wooden panel. Approximately 30x40”

I was given the amazing opportunity to paint an image for the 40th anniversary of the Lausanne Movement, founded by Billy Graham and John Stott in 1974 in Lausanne, Switzerland. With all of the living former presidents assembled, current president Dr. Michael Oh shared a powerful homily from Psalm 123 about keeping sensitive to the Lord’s leading. Like heliotropic sunflowers that turn their heads throughout the day to track the sun’s progression through the sky, so should we keep looking at the “Son” for our life and direction. I had the honor to present the work and share my heart in making it, and was led to share that I had found that only young sunflowers turn their heads with the sun while the older flowers get “stiff necked” and face east instead to maximize the light. I admonished the Movement to retain a posture of childlike faith, ready to embrace the meta-modern era of global history, and to stay docile and sensitive to the Lord’s realtime leading. Little did I know that my meeting that night with Leighton Ford would have a significant impact in my life. I knew him only as the man who told me to say hello to my pastor Rev. Dr. Clive Calver whose word to Leighton years previously from Isaiah about the Lord doing a new thing had changed him. I didn’t know at the time that this was the lifetime honorary chair of the Lausanne Movement, that this was Billy Graham’s brother-in-law, and that two years later I would move onto the same street in Charlotte, NC where Leighton was taking painting lessons (for 10+ years), or that his mentorship and support would significantly shape the coming season of my life.

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Psalm 123 - A song for pilgrims ascending to Jerusalem. NLT

1 I lift my eyes to you,
    O God, enthroned in heaven.
2 We keep looking to the Lord our God for his mercy,
    just as servants keep their eyes on their master,
    as a slave girl watches her mistress for the slightest signal.
3 Have mercy on us, Lord, have mercy,
    for we have had our fill of contempt.
4 We have had more than our fill of the scoffing of the proud
    and the contempt of the arrogant.

Here are four of the presidents of Lausanne at Eastern college during the unveiling of “Sunflowers” (watching from the left) retelling the story of the Movement. This was my first time sitting at a table with the Global bride from every region of the world represented. It was a homecoming; these are my people!

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Christmas Studio Sale

Hello friends and faithful patrons, I am announcing my annual studio sale of original works to make gifts available for the holidays and to make space for my next year’s projects. I have a series of paintings that have either recently come down from display (most were painted live at Threshold Church) or are coming out of storage.

Please reach out to me directly if you are interested in a work via my text at 203-240-8392 (and send your name in case you are not in my contacts so I know it’s not spam).

All of the works display their base prices. NC sales will have an added 7.25% sales tax. My preference is to arrange pick up at my studio for the works, but if you require shipping, we can arrange the process and cost when we connect.

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“Anointed for Burial”. 32x20”. Acrylic and 23kt. gold on artist-built custom birch panel. Painted live Nov. 26, 2023 at Threshold Church with Pastor Gabe Swing. $500

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“Walking Passed” 20x32. Acrylic on artist-built custom birch panel. Painted live at Threshold Nov. 11, 2023. $500.

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Custom artist-built framed series of the Lausanne Movements Four Pillars. The prints are each 20x13” signed, limited edition giclee images, with the mat and frame exterior totaling approximately 30x23”. Sold only together as a series of all four: $1000. If you are interested in an individual work- I will custom frame another at your request for $300.

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Easter Series: “Palm Sunday” / “Golgotha” / “Resurrection”. Each are 20x16” Acrylic on Canvas. Painted live at Threshold during Holy Week 2023. Each are $300 or the entire set for $800.

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TRISTAN & ADDISON SHEA'S LIVE WEDDING PAINTING

On Saturday Nov. 11, 2023, I captured the wedding of Tristan & Addison Shea in a live painting. In this video, I offer my blessing to them, explaining how I saw God’s presence in the way the cross that stood over and between them was illuminated by the light in the fall foliage.

Mark & Jill Boyce Commission

This work is based on the “Oaks of Righteousness” in Isaiah 61, and the two Trees of Life in Revelation 22. The trees of life, with leaves for the healing of the nations are on BOTH sides of the River of Life- proceeded from God’s throne. This commission by Mark and Jill Boyce was a visualized prayer over their family, representing the location of their mountain house at Lake James, NC, the eternal night sky as seen in the photography of the new James Webb Telescope, and the expansive root system of oak trees sharing life and support as a prophetic metaphor for their journey. The night sky view from their property is incredible and helped inspire the infinite perspective of the image. The actual Linville Gorge is featured in the background which can be seen from Lake James and my family hiked together while researching the project. The roots of an Oak tree (as I learned from Mark) don’t grow down deeply, but expand up to twice the distance of the trees’ canopy, and transfer nutrients and support to one another. The two trees, lit from within by the cool and warm acorn shaped lanterns (a reference to Tolkien’s Silmarillion) are tethered together under the river by their roots… weathering the storms of life together. May we all find ourselves planted like mighty oaks of righteousness, rebuilding the ancient ruins, under the infinite and expansive Kingdom story sweeping over us!

St. Isidore

Museum Quality Giclee Prints of this image in various sizes are available on the store page.

On March 24, 2022 Julie Silander of the Charlotte Institute of Faith & Work invited me to paint live during the “Work and Worship” gathering at New City Church. Julie invited Matt Kaemingk of Fuller Seminary who spoke of his book by the same title. My 2012 painting the “Plower” was displayed as an initial seed of visual inspiration, and while Matt and I sat to talk and pray before the event began, he asked me, “Have you heard of St. Isidore?” I hadn’t, and this led to a short conversation/ revelation of the classic saint fabled to plow his field 3x faster than anyone else due to angelic help. Matt and I laughed together as we looked up images of the saint that depicted him praying quietly beside his field while the angel did the work. Instead, we both imagined a reality where St. Isidore himself would be plowing while the angel amplified his offering of labor.

By the end of the first worship set, St. Isidore and the angel were already in my painting, with the angel at his back like wind in his sail. By the end of the evening’s live event, the table holding humanity’s various “offerings” of work as worship was included, along with the gears at the bottom of the painting where I intended to paint yellow flowers symbolizing the blending of the human and the divine.

I then took the work back to the studio to add the five specific various expressions of worship Matt Kaemingk described as central to our work as worship. I added each as a roundel over the altar and used details from classic paintings to express the theme:

1) Trumpets of Praise- with Johannes Vermeer’s The Art of Painting

2) The confessions of our failures- with Masaccio’s The Expulsion from the Garden of Eden

3) Tears of pain and lament- with Pablo Picasso’s The Old Guitarist

4) The first fruits of harvest from our labor - with Caravaggio’s Bacchus

5) The Petitions for our coworkers and community with Giovanni Salvi da Sassoferrato’s The Virgin Mary in Prayer

My original 2012 “Plower” painting in oil on canvas. It is now my daughter Kea’s, as it commemorates her Easter Morning Day of salvation.

As a remarkable “Holy Spirit Wink”: the night of the live event as I was pulling up to New City Church, my friend Corey Unger called to tell me he had felt prompted to call me and was seeing “gears and yellow Dahlia flowers”… and asked if that had any meaning to me. It did! My original Plower painting that was on display that night showed the Plower turning over the ground with yellow flowers growing illogically right in the wake of the plow… a symbol from my former church Walnut Hill Community Church in Bethel, CT where it was painted, and where yellow flowers symbolized a life surrendered to the Lord. The day I painted the original painting, my daughter Kea, not yet age 3, gave her life to Christ. Corey didn’t even know that painting was on display or that I was schedule to paint just minutes after his call… it was a true answer to a Spirit prompt. It was his statement of “Gears and Flowers” that led to me working in that fusion as a metaphor.

Back in my studio I was visited by a friend KC Clark who came to share about his difficult year vocationally. As I described the five roundels I was painting while he visited, I found the work ministering directly to KC and his story. As he left, he gave me a handkerchief from his wife’s recent album, and it featured a Dahlia flower, only the second time I can remember someone mentioning that flower by name… Corey Unger had said he specifically saw yellow Dahlia flowers. I took a picture of KC and his gift next to the painting in its last hours in my studio, just before I added the yellow Dahlias… it was such a clear “push” to finish strong and add the element of the flowers I had been inspired/ directed to include. I just love when God does something with such confirmation to show that He is with us pushing our work forward from behind with a supernatural power beyond anything “we could ask or imagine” [Eph. 3]. I felt like St. Isidore in the midst of my painting!

Let the Children Come To Me

In June of 2023 I collaborated with long time friend and faithful artistic champion / client Dr. Sarah Marsh. My wife and I have known and loved Sarah since our college years, and have watched in awe as she has worked tirelessly to earn her MD, marry and expand her delightful family, and get her certification as a pediatric doctor. I was humbled when she came to me to ask to create a work of art to hang in her pediatric practice as a blessing to her patients, families, and fellow staff. “Let the Children Come to Me” was born out of our discussions about her vision for the painting based on the passages in Matthew, Mark, and Luke where Jesus tells his distracted and self important disciples to allow the (seemingly insignificant) children to come to him. I intentionally included specific figures in reference of Sarah’s three daughters and diverse clientele, celebrating the diversity and beauty of God’s expansive love to humanity. In a day of heightened division and open hostility between warring nations, political ideologies, religions, and races, Jesus’ message of love is more relevant than ever.

As I worked on this painting, I realized that despite its much larger scale, it is the same physical proportion as my earlier Lausanne Movement Four Pillar Paintings and carries the same global DNA vision of God’s Kingdom as the other works, this time focusing specifically on children. As the Lausanne Movement prepares for the L4 global gathering in Seoul, Korea in Oct. 2024, I feel this work is a harbinger of the vision yet to come. Evangelical leaders from every region will be gathering to plan to accomplish the “Whole Church, bringing the Whole Gospel, to the Whole World” by 2050 (scripture translated into every language, a christian presence in every community on earth = the four pillars of Lausanne). In 2050, those who are only children now, or are not yet even born, will be our young and emerging leaders. As we plan to gather at L4 to hear God’s heart for the Great Commission in our day, may we not forget to “Let the Children Come” with us so that we can stay with them in the arms of Jesus.

Here are the four pillars of Lausanne with “Let The Children Come to Me” added beside them:

1) The gospel for every person on earth

2) A Christ centered church for every community

3) A Christ-like leader for every church

4) The Kingdom in every sphere of society

*) Every generation at work in the Great Commission.

"Morning Watch" YMCA Camp Harrison, Session 7, July 2023

Artist Bryn Gillette attended each of the "Morning Watch" devotionals during session 7 led by Liz.  After listening to the message, Bryn would take some time that day to draw an image in pen representing the central Bible lesson from the morning.  It was Liz's desire that campers would discover more about who Jesus is and what he is like through these lessons.

• Monday: Liz and Dom are represented pulling the plow with the yoke that they had imaginatively acted out in reference to Jesus' promise to come into every aspect of our lives and support us.  When Liz tried to pull it alone, she couldn't, but when Dom (playing Jesus) stepped in, he could shoulder the weight on the shared yoke and easily pull the load. "Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls."  Matt. 11:29

• Tuesday Liz shared about resting on the bottom of the ocean in California with her scuba gear when she was in her teens and was struggling with her faith, and that the Bible verses she had memorized as a child came back to her: [Psalm 139:7-8 NIV] "7 Where can I go from your Spirit?  Where can I flee from your presence? 8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there."

• Wednesday several staff members joined Liz to reenact Jesus sleeping in a boat in a storm and that Jesus woke up to calm the wind and waves with his voice "They recognized it was the same voice that had spoken them into existence in the very beginning of time" (Paraphrase of the Jesus Storybook Bible).  Bryn drew the five staff members from their performance into the boat in a storm.  

• Thursday was a picture of a house built high on a rock safely above the waves, compared to the house on the sand flattened as its foundations gave out in the storm.  This is from Jesus' parable in Matt. 7 reminding us that Jesus' words are trustworthy and strong and we need to put them into practice in our lives, and Liz had shared how an earthquake in New Zealand had revealed the houses built upon sandy foundations that were destroyed.

• Friday Liz shared about playing football with the band "Five Iron Frenzy" before attending their concert, and how she had tried to find her identity and worth in activities like scuba diving, rock climbing, and snowboarding rather than trust in the "Shield" of God's protection and covering.  Ps. 91:4 He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart."  The pictures shows a teenage Liz curled up in confusion between these competing sources of her identity.

• Saturday morning Liz, Dom, and Bryn all gathered to retell the messages from the first five days through these images, and then Liz compared Bryn's paintbrush in the hands of a master to how God takes an ordinary person like us and makes a masterpiece through our lives.  Bryn added the brush into the bottom left of the work during breakfast just before campers were picked up.  Ephesians 2:10 NLT "10 For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago."

May these images help remind us what the Lord taught us in week 7 through the faithful teaching of sister Liz, and may the Holy Spirit bring the songs and the Word of God back to our hearts and minds whenever we need direction and truth!  Amen.                                               - Brother Bryn

"Beloved"- Capstone Image of "The Truth Collective"

“أنَا لِحَبِيبِي، وَحَبِيبِي لِي.” Arabic = “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine” Song of Songs 6:3 NIV

“Beloved”. Oil paint, pen, and sand on wood panel. 48x29.5”. June 2020.

Prints are available on the “store” page.

“Then the angel showed me a river with the water of life, clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb. It flowed down the center of the main street. On each side of the river grew a tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, with a fresh crop each month. The leaves were used for medicine to heal the nations.” Revelation 22:1-2 NLT

Last night, Oct. 9, 2020, was the official “unveiling” of the painting “Beloved” during the launch of the Truth Collective’s “Ungallery”.

TheTruthCollective.org

I have been working with founder Jami Staples and her team for the past several months to create a capstone piece to summarize the vision of our true beloved identity in the eyes of our Creator. The Truth Collective’s mission is to minister to women in the areas where untruth has robbed them of their joy, their freedom, and the confidence in their true identity. This painting is a vision of the Bride of Christ in a restored Eden, the new heaven and earth described in the book of Revelation.

This work is Lausanne Movement’s Pillar 2: “A Christ centered church for every community” (aka “The Bride”). What was originally going to be the capstone of the ungallery show was a large print of this work, which quickly was replaced with the idea of a full repainting, and then it became apparent that to capture this new vision a whole new work was needed. While Lausanne’s Pillar 2 shows the Bride of Christ made up from every tongue and tribe and nation, the Bride in “Beloved” is walking out from the desserts of the Middle East, bringing streams to the dessert places. The sand is actual embedded material from Dubai, Morocco, and Egypt, so she is metaphorically, literally, and prophetically bringing Eden into dessert places.

Isaiah 51 NLT

3 The Lord will comfort Israel again
    and have pity on her ruins.
Her desert will blossom like Eden,
    her barren wilderness like the garden of the Lord.
Joy and gladness will be found there.
    Songs of thanksgiving will fill the air.

4 “Listen to me, my people.
    Hear me, Israel,
for my law will be proclaimed,
    and my justice will become a light to the nations.
5 My mercy and justice are coming soon.
    My salvation is on the way.
    My strong arm will bring justice to the nations.
All distant lands will look to me
    and wait in hope for my powerful arm.

In strict Islamic traditions, artists are forbidden to represent figures, animals, or any divine representation in their work. Instead, artists have limited their expression to masterworks of calligraphy and tessellations, which are mathematical designs produced with a compass and ruler of infinite variety and complexity. As a teacher of Islamic Art in my global AP Art History class, I have come to love this work, though this is the first time I have ever adopted the vernacular and visual vocabulary of the muslim tradition to express the Kingdom truths of scripture to that subculture. I had the sense that I was taking on the culture, the language, and the posture of their tradition in order to make the gospel relevant and beautiful to their sensibilities. I absolutely loved the methodical, meditational, and time consuming process of recreating several iconic tessellations from the palace walls of Alhambra in Spain as the superstructure of the work. I do however clearly depart from the strict muslim tradition as the work is so figurative, the woman’s face is uncovered, and even her leg is exposed to the knee as she wades through the streams emerging from the dessert. Each of these themes is central to the dialog of female identity and restoration in the Truth Collective’s ministry.

Multiple squares are set up in the classic fibonacci sequence… each square a distinct Alhambra square Tessellation. This divine ration is witnessed naturally all through creation, and speaks to universal truths and harmonies that every culture can recognize and appreciate. It is seen in everything from the proportions of the human body (like the ratio of the various divisions of our fingers), to the height and width ratio of an egg, to the length of musical notes in a sequence, the twist of a conch shell… to the dimensions chosen for the Mona Lisa. It is one more nod to the heavenly reality I was striving to portray in the imagery itself.

Rather than impose the imagery onto the work, I “discovered” it from within the scaffolding of the tessellations. I took so much joy playfully finding how shoulders and arms emerge from the lines, how the star of David seems to sit upon the Bride’s forehead, how the upper corners become the two trees of life (rather than one tree of life and one tree of the knowledge of good and evil as in the garden of Eden). The entire effect is like a stained glass window, perhaps not entirely accidental in so many references to classical imagery of the divine.

Prints are available on the “store” page.

“أنَا لِحَبِيبِي، وَحَبِيبِي لِي.” Arabic = “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine” Song of Songs 6:3 NIV

Pentecost In CLT- "It Ends Now".

I had the privilege to paint during the “It Ends Now” movement in uptown Charlotte at the request of my dear friend and long-time spiritual collaborator Casey Crimmins. While the nation is turning over with violent uprising in response to the death of George Floyd, I had mixed feelings about taking to the streets, not wanting to be aligned with riots. As I half heartedly packed my car Sunday morning, I reached for one of the only pre-built canvases in my studio, a picture I had previously painted at a worship service with a duel image of Jesus changing Simon’s name to Peter as well as Peter standing up at Pentecost and preaching under the newly poured out power of the Holy Spirit. As I went upstairs to kiss my wife goodbye for the day, I overheard the online church service she was watching and realized it IS Pentecost Sunday today! I had a chill all the way up my spine, and a sudden assurance that God was saying “Yes, take this canvas that already has the DNA of Pentecost underneath it, and go uptown knowing you have an assignment there.”

First Ward Park, Uptown Charlotte, NC May 30, 2020.

In the midst of a national crisis of racial division and hatred rivaling any in my lifetime, it was amazing to experience a peaceful and unified gathering of the corporate “Church” beyond any one denomination or creed. More than a thousand people came to express their solidarity and belief that love, justice, and repentance are the answer, and the march around the uptown was more than a mile long of peaceful demonstrators. The original birth of the Church, Pentecost nearly 2000 years ago, was preceded by an outpouring of God’s Spirit that unified a city full of diverse languages, tribes, and cultural backgrounds. Tongues of fire rested on believers, old and young, men and female, slave and free, and a new people identifying themselves by love in relation to Christ, the Church, was born. I tried to capture that fiery power, and those unified colors of community coming together in the painting. Each figure is further highlighted with a tongue of fire resting above their head.

It was amazing to be among 50+ church communities, neighbors, strangers, and friends gathering to acknowledge the brokenness of our nation, repenting for 400 years of broken, white privilege systems of injustice, and declaring of our complacent silence: “It Ends Now!” Several speakers of various communities and backgrounds spoke, but none moved me more powerfully than a white pastor who declared the need of my own demographic to repent and acknowledge our guilt, actively being about the work of healing and putting complacency aside. I thought back with shame to the morning’s hesitation; weighing inconvenience, danger, optics, and (to be fair) levels of indifference as I decided whether or not I would come. I AM part of the problem. Just as I AM part of the solution! This same pastor reminded the gathering that “justice” would have to include equitable redistribute of power, land, and money… the tangible assets so long withheld or bound by systemic racism. With the headquarter building of “Bank of America” overshadowing where we stood in First Ward Park, I painted it into the background along with the Hirsch Tower and Wells Fargo building. The classical facade of my original painting morphed into the symbol of so many oppressive financial/judicial systems, and I prayerfully added unified figures busily disassembling and redistributing green bricks.

I could not be more proud of the leadership and vision of these two men: Sanchez Fair and Casey Crimmins!

Here is the original image as it was in March 2020 when it was first painted as the changing of Simon’s name to Peter (The Rock) along with Peter at Pentecost. It was created for a sermon series on Peter from Threshold Church.

Open Heart

Third wave of painting: Nov. 24, 2019 with the figure embellishments in the lower right from our communion service.

Last week, Nov. 10, 2019, I enjoyed painting live beside my wife leading worship and in collaboration with pastor Jeff Gardner at Threshold Church. We studied several stories from Luke 14, all revealing the effects of a “sick heart”. Jeff chose the theme of congestive heart failure, or “weak heart”, as the lens with which to view each story in Luke 14 because the spiritual state of the participants in each case was akin to the slowly weakening, failing role of heart failure, and was fed by their selfishness, numbness to others, and general apathy to to the things of God:

The man Jesus heals of “Dropsy” to the offense of the dinner guests was likely suffering from heart failure…even though Jesus’ accusers truly had the sick hearts.

The guests scrambling for the best seats had hearts congealed with self interest.

The host inviting only those who could return the favor had a heart bend on advancement and prestige.

The parable of the guests unwilling to come to the banquet had hearts numb and distracted with the cares of this world.

The CURE: generosity, self sacrifice, and service to others. Exercise the heart!

First wave of painting: This was the first layer- a live painting from earlier in May 2019 at MorningStar church where I have enjoyed the company of kindred hearted Kingdom artists working live as a welcomed form of worship.

Second wave of painting: Open Heart. Acrylic on panel. 20x48”. Nov 10, 2019 live at Threshold Church.

The central crucifix figure of Christ became the center of “The Heart” with tendrils of blood vessels branching out across the surface of the painting.

In the last moments of the service I found myself frantically (inspired) and painting in Jesus as he pulls back a chair to welcome us to the feast. The formerly painted figures at the top on their heavenly thrones became other guests at the Luke 14 banquet… and Jesus is now welcoming us the Wedding Feast in heaven.

Pastor Jeff ended the gathering with a poetic benediction crafted for the morning:

Jesus says, “Come as you are, And only as you’re able,

You are welcome, without exception, At my dinner table.”

So shun the lie that says you first Must clean up your behavior,

And take a seat, pull up a chair, And hang out with your Savior.

We each come to the table with a Past that causes heartache;

But through Christ’s love our hearts are healed Because he died for our sakes.

Remember that you're his beloved, More than you’ll ever know.

Let the truth of his constant affection Set your heart aglow.

Then carry that heart flame to your world, And share it without cost

By what you say and how you live, Touch those who still are lost.

Tell them how they are so adored by the Lover of their Souls.

And Invite them to the table where their Hearts may be made whole.

On the third and final week of the series “Come To The Table” at Threshold Church Nov. 24, 2019, we gathered around a beautifully spread central table to receive the Lord’s supper. Pastor Jeff explained that the original context of coming to the table in a “worthy manner” was truly an issue of being One with your brothers and sisters around you as a loving family. It was a special time of fellowship and solidarity, while the worship team sang “Come To The Table” by Zac Williams over us. That evening I sat down with the photos I had taken of my “family” during communion and layered them in as the final embellishment to the work. May this stand as a monument to our love, centered in Jesus, gathered around the family table, where everyone has a seat of welcome.

The Woman At The Well - John 4

“Woman At The Well”. Acrylic and pen on Wooden Panel. 30x60”. Oct. 2019. For Dowd YMCA Prayer Chapel.

I had the honor to paint an image to hang in the prayer chapel at Charlotte, NC’s uptown Dowd YMCA. In honor of the donor who paid for the renovations, my commissioner asked that I craft an image based on the donor’s favorite passage of scripture: “The Samaritan Woman” or perhaps better known as “The Woman At The Well” from the gospel of John chapter 4. Even while we held our initial conversation in the newly designed space, I envisioned a tall vertical piece to mirror the stained glass on the opposing wall, juxtaposing fire and water. This painting is actually a slow meditation on each portion of John 4: wells of living water, the harvest, bread of obeying the Lord, the town’s conversion, 5 husbands and a lover, worshipping God in Spirit and truth, and a future hope.

Tacit Knowledge. My friend and mentor Leighton Ford published many books recently, and I have been fed deeply from “The Attentive Life”, a book much akin to the classic “Practicing the Presence of God” by Brother Lawrence many hundreds of years ago. In Leighton’s written meditations on being in tune with our Creator, I discovered his reference to late Hungarian physicist/philosopher Michael Polanyi. The following quote from The Attentive Life arrested me, and revealed another dimension of the Woman At The Well painting I had not considered - how Jesus transmits knowledge and reveals the Kingdom of God by imparting, not explicit knowledge, but “tacit” knowledge. In other words, while explicit knowledge deals with facts and concrete concepts one can clearly explain, tacit knowledge refers to complex, gut level “knowing’ of something that can only come through experience- drawing on every sense, memory, and understanding to “indwell” the thing known and so journey beyond what can be communicated simply by words.

“‘Polanyi envisioned science as an “indwelling” of what the scientist tacitly knows and discovers, as opposed to a purely rational objectivity.  “We always know more than we can tell” was one key idea at the heart of his philosophy. The other was “indwelling.” We know because we “indwell” the thing we know, and in a sense it indwells us.

Indwelling, observed Polanyi, takes place in the way we know other people- getting inside their skin by an act of empathy.  It happens in the way we take in a work of art. As we look at its surface, we somehow enter into the mind of its creator. Indwelling happens when we internalize moral values, not merely assenting unquestioningly to the teachings of our parents or society.’

Explicit Knowledge:

Left brain.  Linear. Verbal.  Rational.

Based on rational facts.

Can easily by codified and verbalized.

Can be transmitted and transferred.

Can be learned individually.

Example: George Washington was the first president of the United States.

Tacit Knowlege

Right brain.  Intuitive, emotive, holistic.

“We always know more than we can tell.” Polanyi

Intuitive and summative of many sources simultaneously.

Cannot be taught, but must be “caught”, experienced- often in and through community.

Learned by doing, not verbally or rationally.

Example: Riding a bike, playing piano.

In Polanyi’s writing, he compares how we learn through “explicit” knowledge with how we learn in “Tacit” knowledge. As an artist and art teacher, I have invested over ten years studying how to train students and convey information through experiential learning, letting them actually do art projects, make mistakes, learn the touch and feel of materials, and in essence, tacitly learn. In addition, as an ambassador of Christ, I have always cared deeply about how to communicate truths about the Kingdom of God which cannot be seen or felt or purely rationally understood, but once experienced is undeniably the very cornerstone of reality. This newly discovered definition of “Tacit” knowledge gave me one more resource to clearly articulate my mission raising up a generation of Kingdom-hearted artists.

When Jesus asks the samaritan woman for a drink from the well, she responds with explicit knowledge: “you’re not suppose to be talking to me”, and “this well is deep and you don’t have a bucket”. Yet Jesus is not trying to speak literally, he is using this metaphor poetically to reveal truth about the Kingdom: I am the source of life and refreshment- ask me and I will give you living water. By the time she tastes of His divine presence and wisdom, she is on the run to her village (as the first evangelist in scripture) to tell everyone the Messiah is here!

John 4 NLT

10 Jesus replied, “If you only knew the gift God has for you and who you are speaking to, you would ask me, and I would give you living water.”

11 “But sir, you don’t have a rope or a bucket,” she said, “and this well is very deep. Where would you get this living water? 12 And besides, do you think you’re greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us this well? How can you offer better water than he and his sons and his animals enjoyed?”

13 Jesus replied, “Anyone who drinks this water will soon become thirsty again. 14 But those who drink the water I give will never be thirsty again. It becomes a fresh, bubbling spring within them, giving them eternal life.”

Over the woman’s shoulder is a shadowy reference to the 5 husbands she has had before and the man she’s currently with that is not her husband (with a blue halo). Again, when the Lord asks that she go and bring her husband, her first response is that he is asking for explicit information (do I have a husband or not- or will I reveal my dark past secrets?), but in truth, Jesus is once again using this as an opportunity to reveal His role in the Kingdom, the one who knows all, who has not come to judge, but to restore, to heal, to fulfill. Her exclamation that he must be a prophet is her coming to understand, tacitly, that this man is more than ordinary. The hairs on the back of her neck must be standing up as she begins to reach into her spiritual questions.

John 4 NLT

16 “Go and get your husband,” Jesus told her.

17 “I don’t have a husband,” the woman replied.

Jesus said, “You’re right! You don’t have a husband— 18 for you have had five husbands, and you aren’t even married to the man you’re living with now. You certainly spoke the truth!”

19 “Sir,” the woman said, “you must be a prophet.

Mt. Gerizim would have physically overshadowed the interaction between Jesus and the samaritan woman, one of the two mountains that Moses read the blessings and the curses over the people of Israel during the desert wanderings. Samaritans had long before built a temple on Gerizim, the mountain of blessing, as a place of worship. The woman turns to explicit knowledge: facts and actual locations, as indicators of spiritual orthodoxy, and again, as Jesus transmits the higher ways of the Kingdom, He reveals that spirituality is not bound to explicit location but more tacitly to Spirit and Truth.

John 4 NLT

20 So tell me, why is it that you Jews insist that Jerusalem is the only place of worship, while we Samaritans claim it is here at Mount Gerizim,] where our ancestors worshiped?”

21 Jesus replied, “Believe me, dear woman, the time is coming when it will no longer matter whether you worship the Father on this mountain or in Jerusalem. 22 You Samaritans know very little about the one you worship, while we Jews know all about him, for salvation comes through the Jews. 23 But the time is coming—indeed it’s here now—when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. The Father is looking for those who will worship him that way. 24 For God is Spirit, so those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.”

The disciples are offended that Jesus has been talking with a woman, tripping over cultural norms and unable to embrace the Kingdom mission of bringing a gospel of forgiveness and restoration to a hated subculture. They offer food, and when Jesus responds he’s not hungry, they turn to explicit knowledge and think he’s eaten something else, while Jesus flips it on them again to impart a Kingdom principle of being nourished by obedience, not only physical sustenance.

John 4 NLT

27 Just then his disciples came back. They were shocked to find him talking to a woman, but none of them had the nerve to ask, “What do you want with her?” or “Why are you talking to her?” …

31 Meanwhile, the disciples were urging Jesus, “Rabbi, eat something.”

32 But Jesus replied, “I have a kind of food you know nothing about.”

33 “Did someone bring him food while we were gone?” the disciples asked each other.

34 Then Jesus explained: “My nourishment comes from doing the will of God, who sent me, and from finishing his work. 

The villagers over her shoulder are streaming down, becoming part of the “white fields” of the harvest. The disciples were so put off by talking to a woman (likely of disrepute that she was out at midday) and in an unclean samaritan town that they missed the entire purpose of Jesus’ ministry: to bring in the harvest of people to God’s Kingdom. Jesus welcomes them, stays several more days, and this woman becomes the first Christian evangelist recorded in scripture. The response of the townsfolk is brilliant too, they are basically the exclamation point at the end of my study of tacit knowledge: “we heard you tell us about Jesus (explicitly), but now that we have seen [heard, felt, received from Jesus] and we (tacitly) know that He is indeed the Messiah!”

John 4 NLT

28 “The woman left her water jar beside the well and ran back to the village, telling everyone, 29 “Come and see a man who told me everything I ever did! Could he possibly be the Messiah?” 30 So the people came streaming from the village to see him…39 Many Samaritans from the village believed in Jesus because the woman had said, “He told me everything I ever did!” 40 When they came out to see him, they begged him to stay in their village. So he stayed for two days, 41 long enough for many more to hear his message and believe. 42 Then they said to the woman, “Now we believe, not just because of what you told us, but because we have heard him ourselves. Now we know that he is indeed the Savior of the world.”

John 4 NLT

35 “You know the saying, ‘Four months between planting and harvest.’ But I say, wake up and look around. The fields are already ripe for harvest. 36 The harvesters are paid good wages, and the fruit they harvest is people brought to eternal life. What joy awaits both the planter and the harvester alike! 37 You know the saying, ‘One plants and another harvests.’ And it’s true. 38 I sent you to harvest where you didn’t plant; others had already done the work, and now you will get to gather the harvest.”

Another profound influence in my life and journey has been the gentle yet profound voice of Mako Fujimura. Mako consulted on the recent Martin Scorsese movie “Silence”, based on the seminal Japanese novel about Christian persecution and recanted faith by Shusaku Endo. From Mako’s shared Japanese and American heritage, he wrote an accompanying and magnificently layered work Silence and Beauty. In this collection of thoughts, Mako quotes Scorsese speaking about the nature of great artwork, and how a great artist invites their viewer into tacit knowledge of the subject beheld beyond what could be actually said, or shown, or known.

“Cinema is the telling of stories with images and sounds - or, in the case of avant-garde cinema, the embodiment and conveyance of emotion with images and sounds. But that’s just a job description. I think that every truly great work of art orients you towards what isn’t there, what can’t be seen or described or named [only tacitly known/discovered]. It happens differently in different forms of art. In music, in poetry, in painting, universes of emotion and mystery are circled over and felt, like feeling the contours of a passageway in the darkness. In the novel [Silence], what is said and described opens the way to what isn’t, that which can only be intimated, sensed… In the greatest movies, what we see points the way to what we don’t see, what we can’t see.”

Like Scorsese intimates, I was drawn to imagine what is NOT seen as I began to “indwell” this passage through the act of painting (thank you Polanyi and Leighton Ford)! I envisioned this woman at the well after Jesus and His disciples leave, and imagined the man she was with (blue halo) now joyfully married and committed to her- having himself encountered Jesus and been restored to right relationship with God and his community. They are surrounded by their children, moving forward in songs of praise to evangelize neighboring towns about the good news of the Messiah’s arrival.

Gathering Of Artisans 2019- Raising Up An Army of Global Kingdom Artisans

“Raising Up An Army Of Global Kingdom Artisans”. Bryn Gillette. Acrylic and 23ct gold on wood panel. 32x24”. Painted live during the Sat. Oct. 26 evening session at Gathering Of Artisans 2019.

I had the incredible privilege of being invited to teach a workshop this year, “Painting In The Spirit”, at the Gathering Of Artisans 2019. After a Saturday spent teaching 15 incredible “sibling” Kingdom Artists how to posture our lives to be in sensitive obedience and attentiveness to Holy Spirit’s leading, I set up to practice the craft in the form of live painting during the evening session. Taking up the role of the “visual scribe”, I was set and ready to document and visually celebrate whatever the Lord would reveal during our gathering… and oh, what a night! Before our worship even began, a spontaneous outpouring of prophetic words were released over global partners from Romania, Australia, and Holland, acknowledging them as “door openers” in their country of the movement of God in raising up an army of Kingdom-hearted artists around the world. The leadership team supporting Matt and Tanya Tommey came forward to support them as Holy Spirit showed up with incredible power and specific instructions, and then the words turned to Matt regarding an expansion of assignment and favor given to the movement to reach to new global levels.

Some of the components of the revelation captured in image form:

Digging New Wells: the central image is a pillar of blue and pure white exploded up from the bottom left. Several times throughout the evening there was a reference to re-digging wells and/or “new wells”. After worship, as Matt Tommey was brought up to stage to sit and share (because the weight of revelation was so strong he could no longer stand). The vision of wells progressed to “wells of fire” or lava, a sparks of flame around the globe were lit where Kingdom artists were raised up. I transcribed this as tongue of fire resting over the heads of each figure in the work in reference to Pentecost and the gift of Holy Spirit’s presence and power in our lives.

Door Openers: Matt referred to our global partners from Romania, Australia, Holland (and so many other countries) spoken by name tonight as open doors for the impact of God’s Kingdom and restoration in culture. These doors are depicted rising an swirling around the outpouring of the well as well as rising from a center of precious gold (23ct. gold leaf) flickering up towards heaven. Each door is held open by waiting figures/families.

Raising Up An Army: Along the bottom there is an army of people rising up from the watery surface, tongues of fire upon each of them. Matt spoke or had prophesied over him repeatedly tonight about the calling to train up and call forth an army of artisans to take up position and influence in culture for the glory of Jesus Christ. This came from Joel 3:09, a word given to Matt at 3:09am at the very onset of his ministry, the testimony of which he shared last night. This morning I had also been woken up at 3:09am, unaware of this parallel, and got a word to organize my class this morning as a military “squad” of 16, set up in “fireteams” with each person partnered. Jesus sent everyone in two’s to protect one another, and my friend Jessica has sent a text encouraging me and speaking about my students working in tandem with each other and Holy Spirit. It is amazing to see now this same military component overlapping my own spiritual assignment to “Raise up a generation of Kingdom-hearted artists”. My class opened with a prayerful meditation on Ephesians 6 armor of God, removing our own broken identity and putting on the armor/identity in Christ. What a joy to have my own steam of prophetic calling merge with Matt Tommey even as I painted the increase of his own!

The Plower: Since 1998 during a meeting with my mentor Bruce Herman at Gordon College, I have had a word on my life of the Plower, and a calling to not just haphazardly cast the seeds of my artistic talent, but to do the tedious and long work of plowing up the soil of my artistry thoroughly and systematically, planting ALL my seed, cultivating the soils of my life… and only then witnessing the full potential of God’s full harvest in my life. I had shared this metaphor in my workshop that day, and Matt spoke last night of spiritual “Mothers and Fathers” of a generation of artists - the same word I received during The Breath And The Clay to be a “father of artists”, and said that every new generation stands on the backs of those who have plowed, prayed, and pioneered in the previous generation. I added the plower in the lower left corner, under the well, with the rising army walking upon his back.

The Sled: Matt describe sitting with the Lord in what looked like a Santa sled and traveling all around the world, seeing the lava hot fires of revival in the arts all around the world, nation after nation. I added these two figures in a sled rising in the whirlwind of gold between the doors.

May this painting be a window for Matt and Tanya to look back upon this night and never forget, to never waiver from the promises and assignments released tonight. Thank you Matt for the privilege of being a brother, a co-father to artists, a fellow officer in this rising army of Kingdom-hearted artists! Lord Jesus - Commander and General of Heaven’s Armies- we are dressed in the (Eph 6) armor of our true identity in You, and our eyes are fixed upon You, ready to instantly obey Your commands. What would you have us do?

Lausanne Movement Video

I’m so honored to finally be able to share the video from the Lausanne Movement’s “Global Workplace Forum” during the summer of 2019 in Manila, Philippines. This was the first time that all four of my paintings of the Lausanne pillars had been brought together.