Manifest to become an annual event
Brenton Stacey
Public relations officer
Avondale College of Higher Education
Cooranbong, New South Wales, Australia
The Seventh-day Adventist Church in the South Pacific has honoured its creative artists during an awards ceremony named in honour of a pioneering filmmaker.
Talented: Steele McMahon, 16, received a Young Achiever Prize in song composing at the Manifest Creative Arts Festival. He travelled from Brisbane to perform during the awards ceremony that closed the festival. Credit: Ben Turner.
The Gabe Reynaud Awards closed the inaugural Manifest Creative Arts Festival. The ceremony honours the Avondale College of Higher Education alumnus and former Adventist Media Centre senior producer, who became the church’s first professionally trained director. Gabe’s vision: for the church to recognise the power of art, “not to preach so much [but] . . . to testify to [God’s] wonder and awe and mystery, and for artists to use their talents in all genres to testify to a God who is the embodiment of creativity,” said brother Daniel during the reading of the life sketch.
Manifest, coordinated by the church through Adventist Media Network and Avondale, will now become an annual event celebrating and encouraging the production of creative arts for ministry. The focus this year: filmmaking; song composing; and writing.
Recognition
Artist Joanna Darby received the Gabe Reynaud Award during the ceremony. Gabe’s wife, Andi, presented the award to Joanna, an alumna of Avondale who graduated with a Bachelor of Arts/Bachelor of Teaching in 2006. “[Joanna] has created a unique blend of art and ministry,” said Andi as she read the citation. “Her visual work has artistic integrity and outstanding quality. Her verbal art is innovative, refreshing, powerful and moving. Both overflow with a passion for communicating the love of Christ, delivered with humility and compassion. [Joanna] has combined her visual and verbal creativity into a ministry that reaches into churches, schools and community groups around the country. She exemplifies the power of combining art and ministry.”
Joanna’s mission is to share the stories about faith but to “make them more engaging for contemporary audiences and for different types of learners.” It is “not just about listening anymore, it’s about experiencing—feeling and seeing,” she says.
Recognition (with renumeration)
Manifest offered $1000 for the winning entry in each category of its competition.
Glendon Harris from Alstonville Seventh-day Adventist Church received the Hope Award recognising excellence in filmmaking for “Her Story: Sarah.” The documentary explores the issue of self-esteem through Sarah Chambers, a young adult from the church who suffers adult onset acne.
Benjamin Milis and Jodie Barnes, members of Avondale vocal ensemble The Promise, received the Psalter Award recognising excellence in song composing for “God Is Here.” The song, in an inspirational style using three-part harmony, reminds the listener of God’s presence at the death of Jesus on the cross and of God’s presence today.
Former Signs Publishing Company editorial assistant Scott Wegener received the Signs Award recognising excellence in writing for “Know misunderstandings.” The article uses humorous misunderstandings to challenge the reader about the beliefs with which they identify.
Nick Lindsay (filmmaking, “Me syndrome”), Steele McMahon (song composing, “Raw”) and Stephanie Fox (writing, “Darwin and his critics”) each received the Avondale Young Achiever Prize. Steele even travelled from Queensland to perform during the ceremony. The Year 11 Brisbane Adventist College student and the two other winners each receive $200 and a $500 discount on fees at Avondale.
Affirmation
Adventist Media Network chief executive officer Neale Schofield affirmed creatives in his keynote by reminding them their gift can “revolutionise” the spreading of the gospel. “You may feel the church is not ready for you,” he said. “Well, the world is. Take this as a signal God wants you to do something much bigger in your life.”
Dr Grenville Kent, lecturer in Old Testament and arts in the School of Theology at Wesley Institute, presented the charge. He spoke of the Jewish influence in Hollywood, noting how the Jews had moved from the synagogue to the cinema. Adventists need to move into a similar creative space, he said.
Another of the festival’s speakers, Adventist writer Kay Rizzo, concurs. “Creativity will happen, whether we support it or not, so why should we lose it to the world?” Kay, the author of 58 books including I Will Die Free, On Wings of Praise and the “Serenity Inn Series,” shared from her writing experience but says she also learned from others. “I have been encouraged and inspired by being part of this festival,” she says. “It reminds me why I am doing what I do.” However, she adds encouragement should not be limited to festivals such as Manifest. “In local churches, we need to look for more ways to involve creative people and creativity in our worship services and in engaging with the community.”
Signs Publishing Company book editor Nathan Brown coordinated the workshops in the writing stand and the writing category of the competition. “Manifest builds on the writers’ seminars we have hosted in conjunction with Avondale in the past,” he says. “The creativity and energy that comes from interacting between the different fields of creativity add an extra dimension.
“Creativity matters—to the individuals who have dreams to create and to all the rest of us who can be challenged, inspired or engaged by their ways of seeing life,” he says. “So, anything we can do to encourage such creativity will make a difference in lives, churches and communities.”
Inspiration
Manifest, which Avondale hosted, March 23-26, also included an academic lecture, at which Avondale College Seventh-day Adventist Church senior minister Dr Bruce Manners presented findings from a study of Hope Channel viewers, and a showcase of Adventist Media Network’s new DVD-based evangelistic series Beyond the Search.
Inspiration came from SONscreen, an annual film festival organised by the church in North America. Co-founder Stacia D Wright attended, presenting two short film showcases. One featured the premiere in the South Pacific of Adopting Haiti. The documentary tells of the evacuation—with help from the United States State Department and from cable news network CNN—of children from the Maison de Enfants de Deu orphanage in Port-au-Prince. Director Timothy Wolfer, a film and television major at Pacific Union College, travelled from California’s Napa Valley to introduce it.—with Nathan Brown
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Slideshow
Artists, composers, filmmakers and writers responded strongly to a call for entries from a festival celebrating and encouraging the production of creative arts for ministry.
My generation is better than your generation
Wednesday, March 21, 2012Dr Andy Nash
Professor
School of Journalism and Communication
Southern Adventist University
Of the 25, none said they would want to grow up in the next generation. Even when I reminded them of the advances in medicine and technology, they held firm: they wouldn’t want to grow up in the 2010s and 2020s. No way, they said, shaking their heads in unison.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Everything’s so materialistic,” said one.
“It’s like all kids want to do is play video games,” said another.
“But that’s what everyone thinks about your generation!” I protested.
“At least we knew how to play outside,” said one.
“So, you’re saying the culture is going downhill,” I said.
“Yes,” they replied.
“OK,” I said, “we’ve gone about 25 years into the future and you’re saying it’s worse. Let’s go 25 years the other way.” I wrote two dates on the board: 1962 and 1937. “This is when your parents and grandparents were born. How many of you would rather have grown up when they did?” The students paused. “How many?” I repeated.
Three students raised their hands—two of them confidently.
“Three,” I said. “Three of you would rather have grown up in your parents’ or grandparents’ generation. That leaves 22 of you preferring to grow up when you did.
“You know what you’re saying, don’t you?” I said. “You grew up at the perfect time in history. Things were gradually improving until your time. Then everything fell apart.”
We laughed. I told them I would have answered the same way. I loved the era—the 1980s—in which I grew up. The music of my high school years is the greatest and the clothing styles are the coolest, too.
Most of us view “our era” as the perfect balance between yesterday and tomorrow. Life was “simple,” yet we had modern conveniences we couldn’t imagine living without. For me, it was a personal computer. For these students, it’s Facebook and mobile phones.
We talked about the attributes of each generation. “Let’s take your grandparents,” I said. “They’re patriotic; loyal to their country and to their churches. Right?” The students nodded. “They’re hardworking and frugal. They had come out of the Depression.”
I paused. “And they might be racist.”
The students’ expressions changed as they recognised the truth of this statement.
It’s natural to feel loyalty to our generation—to the good as well as the bad. While college students today tend to be less racist than those who went before them, their generation has its own problems, including a sense of entitlement and disrespect for authority.
“The challenge each of us faces,” I said, “is to keep the good and throw out the bad.” For some of us, that can be as hard as admitting those cool college clothes just aren’t cool anymore.
Andy Nash is a presenter at the Manifest Creative Arts Festival, March 28-31, 2012. www.artsmanifest.info
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