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You are here: Home / Archives for News

News

Illustrated Ministry Joins Periscope

Adam Walker Cleaveland Leave a Comment

Periscope

In the spirit of trying new things – Illustrated Ministry has recently joined Periscope. Some of you may be familiar with Periscope, and others may not be. Essentially, it’s a way for us to live-stream video that you can interact with while you watch. You can ask questions that we can see while we’re broadcasting and so we can respond in real-time. We’ve tried a few broadcasts but since we haven’t advertised it, we haven’t had a chance to really try it out when some of you were watching and hanging out with us.

How might we use this? Well, we’re still figuring things out – but sometimes we might just start up a random broadcast while we’re driving around town running errands. Other times we might give you a bit of a behind-the-scenes look at how we create the illustrations that you’re using. Or we might schedule specific events (sometimes around specific themes or discussion topics) so you can all check in and ask questions.

If you’re a Periscope user, we hope you’ll follow us on Periscope. If you haven’t used it before, download it for your phone (App Store / Google Play), follow us and stay tuned for our next broadcast.

As an introduction to using Periscope, we’re going to go ahead and schedule a Periscope gathering for this Wednesday (3/16) at 1:30pm Central Time. We’ll start up the broadcast at 1:30pm and we hope to see and hear from many of you.

Illustrated Ministry Turns 6 Months Old!

Adam Walker Cleaveland 2 Comments

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!

Thanks Everyone!

Adam Walker Cleaveland Leave a Comment

Aside from starting to do web design back in 2006 with Cleave Design…this is the first time I’ve launched a business and it’s actually been a lot of fun! A little overwhelming – but fun – to see the start of Illustrated Ministry. I finally got smart and turned off the notifications from Mailchimp and my website – because I was getting one or two notifications each time someone signed up for the newsletter – and there are now over 345 signups. Less notifications is sometimes a good thing.

But it’s been an exciting opportunity to share with all of you this week the beginning of Illustrated Ministry.

Rock-RememberWhen I sat down and quickly drew a sketch of a rock and the word remember last fall, I couldn’t have known where this was going to go. But that’s how these things begin sometimes, right?

There is still a lot to do with this new venture of Illustrated Ministry – legal and business things to think about. To figure out exactly what drawings I’ll be doing this year, what I want to include in the Advent/Christmas and Lent/Holy Week packages, and more.

But I’m so grateful that all of you are on this journey with me, and I hope you will enjoy the content that is shared here on the blog, through the newsletter, and of course, through the illustrations that are available.

If you enjoy these illustrations and find it to be a useful resource – please share this website with friends and colleagues, or share on Facebook and Twitter.

And finally – I know that when I was planning children’s sermons, it was often after I’d finished my sermon – and I often finished my sermons on Saturday. So it’s not too late to get our illustrations for tomorrow’s scripture passages. Just go to our store page and purchase them there. Thanks!

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