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Shalom
You wouldn’t call the artwork that adorns the walls at Peace, Aiken, S.C., “traditional.” But the church building isn’t traditional either.
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When members at Peace were looking for a location, they decided they wanted to be in the downtown area, even though there wasn’t any space to build a new church. “We had to buy a pre-existing building,” says Jonathan Bourman, Peace’s pastor. “That meant we needed to sacralize a space that wasn’t a traditional church. The art needed to work in that area—to make it speak Christ and also communicate who we were in a way that was consistent with the architecture.”
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The congregation’s name, “Peace,” was the message members wanted to communicate to the community. “For quite some time, Peace has had the vision to communicate through art its mission to bring real peace to real people through Jesus Christ,” says Bourman. “We wanted to evoke what the Scriptures say about Shalom.”
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The intersection of art and faith
In 2018, Peace, Aiken, S.C., commissioned WELS artist Jason Jaspersen to create three pieces of art for its church. One is pictured above, titled "Calm in the storm." One is pictured below, titled "Upper room." The third is titled "Luke 2" and depicts the events surrounding Jesus' birth. To learn more about Jaspersen's process in creating these pieces, visit jjjaspersen.com/blog/the-shalom-series.
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Peace's pastor, Jonathan Bourman, wrote about "Upper room," and how art can intersect with our faith in the April FIC article, "The upper room."
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Some things you know. Some things you really know. You feel them in your gut. You can’t even logically consider any other possibility. Every experience backs up common-sense facts. Like death. Final. Irreversible. No going back. No reset button. No escape. . . .
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While a group of Jesus’ disciples stayed in Jerusalem, two were headed home, or at the very least, they were on their way away from what had happened there. A change of venue would be nice. But even as Jerusalem receded in the distance, the walk didn’t . . .
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