Illustrated Ministry

Progressive Faith Resources for the Church & Home

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Illustrated Ministry Turns 6 Months Old!

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Illustrated Ministry

I realize that I don’t know many of you personally, and thought I’d just reach out and share a brief update about Illustrated Ministry. My name is Adam Walker Cleaveland and I’m an ordained Presbyterian Church (USA) pastor who lives in the Chicago area. My wife is an ordained Presbyterian Church (USA) pastor as well and serves a church in Chicago’s North Shore. We have an amazing 4 year old (Caleb) and a sweet lab-pit (Sadie) that doesn’t get walked enough by me.

After doing youth ministry for over 15 years, I decided it was time that I try something new. I launched the website and mailing list for Illustrated Children’s Moments on September 9, 2015.

Six months later, we’ve changed our name to Illustrated Ministry, picked up a few people to join our team and currently have a very active website and online store, and over 3300 people have signed up for our weekly newsletter. This has truly been a joy for me to see how this business has reached so many people and provided fun and creative illustrated resources for children, youth and adults throughout the world.

Last month I spoke to a class at Columbia Theological Seminary over Skype about being an entrepreneur and someone asked me, “So, do you see Illustrated Ministry as a business or a ministry?” Good question. At times, it certainly feels like a business when I’m meeting with accountants and bankers, trying to figure out the best way to ship 37″ long poster tubes, dealing with UPS and the USPS and doing all of those “business-y” types of tasks.

But then I hear stories about how the giant coloring sheets have brought people together in churches over fellowship hours, intergenerational events and Lenten suppers. I see the photos of children doing devotions with their parents in their homes. I start doing the numbers and thinking about the 400 churches that bought the Lenten coloring posters, and imagine how many people are engaging in the spiritual practice of coloring in designs I drew on a piece of paper here at my desk in Skokie, Illinois.

It’s at times like this that it becomes clear to me that yes, Illustrated Ministry is a business – but it is so much more. It’s the way I’m living out my calling now. And it’s been such a joy to receive confirmation from so many people that these resources are helpful, engaging, fun and something that is meeting a felt need in faith communities and homes.

As I’ve been telling people recently – I’m overwhelmed (in a good way) and amazed that Illustrated Ministry has taken off like it has. I’m having a lot of fun sharing these resources with you all and I look forward to being able to continue to do so. Thank you!

Coloring to Connect on a Mission Trip to Mexico

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Since we’ve began creating coloring posters, it’s been exciting to see the fun and creative ways people have used them. We’ve seen children coloring in classes and during a Christmas pageant, youth and adults coloring during fellowship hours, people on sessions and church boards coloring during meetings, creative uses on mission trips and more! There are many ways that coloring posters can create space for relationships to grow, conversations to be had and your community to experience fellowship.

We love sharing some of the ways people are using our resources, and we wanted to let you know about a church who used our coloring posters to develop relationships while on a mission trip. One of our customers, Hope Lutheran Church from Fresno (CA) bought our large 4′ x 3′ coloring posters in Spanish, and took them on a mission trip they went on. You can see from the photos below that the coloring posters were a quick and easy way to begin to develop relationships with the children they were working with.

Adam Knudson, Associate Pastor of Youth and Family Ministries, sent me the below note while they were on their trip:

We are having a great time here in Mexicali with our brothers and sisters. Sometimes there is a language barrier but with coloring these pictures the differences are minimized. Kids, adults, everyone knew exactly what to do and could come and go as they pleased. This was a great resource for our team.

We currently have two sets of our coloring posters with Spanish words, and they are both available as digital downloads. You can use those to print these posters out at whatever size you want

  • Advent Coloring Posters: While these were sold as our Advent Coloring Posters, they can certainly be used for any occasion. These are our largest posters, ready to be printed as 4′ x 3′ posters. The words in the middle of these posters are Amor, Paz, Gozo, Esperanza and Emmanuel.
  • Lenten Coloring Posters: Our newest set of coloring posters includes nine 2′ x 3′ posters. The words/phrases on these posters are Reciba a otros, Dé, Sirva, Escuche, Ame, Vigile, Arriesgue, Tome y Coma, Abandanado, Vaya y Diga.

I know there are lots of churches that go on mission trips over spring break and in the summer, and I just wanted to encourage you to think about how something as simple as a large piece of paper and some crayons and markers could help provide a simple but meaningful activity to do with kids you are serving. Of course, these would work anywhere – and not just for mission trips to Mexico – so if there is a different language you need the posters in, please contact us and we’ll setup a custom order for you.

How have other people been using their coloring posters in creative ways?

An Illustrated Lent for Families

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Our new 2018 edition of An Illustrated Lent for Families is now available. You can download a sample and purchase it here.

Desk-compressor

AnIllustratedLent

Many customers have been asking for details about An Illustrated Lent and I apologize for not getting that online for you sooner. It’s been a little crazy the past week as we’ve gotten off to a great start with our Lenten Coloring Poster pre-orders. Over the past week, we’ve received more than 236 orders! I can’t wait to see how all of you get creative with these posters and integrate them into your churches and families this Lenten season.

An Illustrated Lent is going to launch next Wednesday, January 27. Like we did for Advent, we are releasing two editions of An Illustrated Lent: a Church Edition and a Family Edition. Below I want to share with you what you can expect to find included in both of those editions.

A complete listing of our products for Lent is below – we hope they will help your community and family live into the season of Lent.

An Illustrated Lent: Church Edition

Illustrated Children’s Moments: The core of the Church Edition is what Illustrated Ministry focused on back in the day (you know, because we’ve been around for so long): Illustrated Children’s Moments. For Lent, we’ll be including illustrations and leader guides for the five Sundays of Lent, for Palm Sunday and then for Easter as well. The Illustrated Children’s Moments will be based on the Gospel texts from the Revised Common Lectionary for Lent.

These illustrations will come in a variety of different formats so that they are ready-to-print and use when you open them up. They also make really good bulletin covers as well as coloring sheets to print out for kids for during worship or Sunday School. An sample of the Illustrated Children’s Moment for the first Sunday of Lent can be seen below:

JesusInTheWilderness

Worship Activity Sheets: For Advent, we released our first Worship Activity Sheets. These are additional tools and resources you can use during Lent and Holy Week. They will include a variety of activities on them, including Complete-the-drawings, Word Searches and more coloring opportunities. Also – if you used An Illustrated Advent last month, if you could take 1 minute to fill out this survey about the Worship Activity Sheets? It really is just 3 very short questions.

Lenten Poster: We know many of you have bulletin boards, classrooms and nurseries that need decorating – and we’re also aware that most people don’t have a lot of time for things like that. Well, maybe we can help you out a little bit. This Lenten Poster will include themes, characters and drawings from throughout the resource, and you can share it on your bulletin boards or classrooms to help remind people about An Illustrated Lent, especially if you’re going to be encouraging families to get involved, and perhaps sending the Family Edition out to them electronically.

What are we missing? It’s probably a little late for any large additions to this resource – but if there is something that you would find super helpful, please let us know and we’ll see what’s doable for our team before the launch date of January 27.

An Illustrated Lent: Family Edition

Doing some Advent Family Devotions.
Doing some Advent Family Devotions.

Family Devotions: We heard some great feedback about our Family Devotions from An Illustrated Advent and so are glad to be able to include them in An Illustrated Lent. For An Illustrated Lent, the devotions are written by Rev. Erika Marksbury, senior pastor at the First Baptist Church of McMinnville, Oregon. There are devotions for 7 weeks, starting with the 1st Sunday of Lent.

We know how busy families are and so we wanted to provide you with a way to connect with the Lenten season, but do so in a way that could fit into your daily routines. Our devotions are meant to be done over a family dinner, or before bedtime. Each devotion is 1 page and includes a scripture, some questions (a few very accessible ones and some Going Deeper questions as well), a suggested activity/practice to focus on during the week, and a short prayer.

Each of the devotions has a theme word for the week – and these are based off the Narrative Lectionary readings for Lent, and connect with the Lenten Coloring Posters.

Weekly Refrigerator Sign: Also included are weekly signs that correspond to that week’s devotions. On the sign will be a space for the family to write in what they decide to try and work on during the week, based on the activity/practice from the week’s devotion. Then the sign can be placed somewhere visible in the home, so everyone remembers what they are working on.

An Illustrated Lent Lenten Coloring Poster
This poster design goes with the story of the woman anointing Jesus from Mark 14:3-9.

Lenten Coloring Sheets: Because the devotions connect with our Lenten Coloring Posters, we thought it would make sense to provide you with a smaller version of those coloring sheets, which you can use together with the devotions. These are meant to be printed out at 8.5×11 size and your kids will have fun coloring a different sheet each week.

You can also hang them up and watch the design come together over the course of Lent.. If you want something larger, or just want more flexibility, you can also always purchase the vector files here.

What are we missing? We still have some time, so if there is something else you think would be helpful for your family, please let us know and we’ll see what’s doable for our team before the launch date of January 27.

One More Thing

While the Lenten Coloring Posters are included in the Family Edition (in the 8.5×11 size) – we are going to be selling those a la carte as well starting January 27. We know not everyone may want or need to buy the Family Edition, so we wanted those smaller versions to be available to everyone.