This post is written for Cru staff for February 2024. Many of the links are internal for Cru.

For all other readers, scroll to the bottom of this post to learn about cards available for evangelism and discipleship through the Cru store. (Those links will work for everyone.)

February Art Challenge Starts Today

The Photographers Network on Workplace is hosting a daily prompt for a 30-day daily challenge for February 2024. We’re very excited to collaborate with Global Church Movements to update an evangelistic tool called Life in the City. It is a card deck image/word-based questionnaire-style tool similar to Soularium. We invite our entire Cru community to create original artwork for this tool. Photography and other artistic mediums are welcome.

Life in the City has been used successfully by Global Church Movements. This tool has worked in city wellness contexts for almost 10 years. The images on the cards need an update by Cru creatives to help Life in the City to be published by Cru Resources.

Two questions in the tool help spark conversations:

1. Select the three words that best describe the type of city you’d like to live, work, play, raise a family, and grow old in.
2. Select the three issues that, in your opinion, most hinder our city and its people from thriving.

Just imagine your creative piece could be part of an evangelistic tool that will lead to spiritual conversations and changed lives. Your artwork could be reaching people for the next thirty years. Don’t worry about following along exactly if that is overwhelming. If you only have margin for a couple entries, just share those.

We hope you’ll participate in this year’s 30-day challenge as much as possible.

Monday Livestream Conversations

Every Monday during February, we will also have a 30-minute livestream to brainstorm ideas. We’ll discuss the prompts and more challenging concepts; we hope we will inspire you to create new images.

Watch this livestream on Workplace to learn more about the project and to get a taste for the upcoming Monday conversations.

The 30-Day Challenge

Here’s the list of prompts to get your creative juices flowing. Some are more difficult than others. The designer of Life in the City hopes for less literal and more conceptual images

Feel free to experiment with color, texture, light, or new materials. Each image must either have the word as the central focus or be an image with the word included as an overlay.

Look through your past work to match the daily prompts or create new images and art to illustrate the concept.

Think outside the box. What things in the world illustrate a prompt without saying it? Or maybe you can find the word in the places you find yourself. Explore and be creative.

For photos, try to capture the prompt in a way that doesn’t show faces. And it doesn’t necessarily need to have people in it.

An image might be used as a background or a frame.

We have hashtags for the challenge and also for each daily prompt. Please use these to help us work through all the entries.

Go to the Photographers Network on Workplace to submit entries. Use the hashtag for the photo of the day. The daily pinned post explains the challenge.

Follow along with the submissions and prompts. Feel free to submit for earlier prompts if you are joining us mid-month or later.

February 1st: Today’s Challenge

Start today with the prompt, Active. Find an example and instructions on Workplace.

Cru’s Evangelistic and Discipleship Cards Tools

From Sus: I will include a link here to the “Life in the City” cards when they are available. Meanwhile, you might want to try out our other card tools:

• The Connect Cards
• Conversation Art Cards
• Perspective
• Snapshot
• Soularium
  • Find more Soularium resources, including strategy help and apps.
  • Hawai’i Soularium

Guest Post by Mick Haupt

Mick has been on staff with Cru for 30 years. He served with the Campus Ministry for four years, The Jesus Film Project for 11 years and with the Global Leadership Office for the past 15 years. Mick just started a new role on Digital Products & Service’s Content Strategy team.

He is passionate about photography and about the stories his photos tell. His ministry focuses on getting Cru Stock going and building the community of photographers within Cru. He’d love to be a food critic but doesn’t have the time. He lives in Orlando with his wife, Clarice, and two rambunctious boys.

Follow Mick’s insightful photo blog, Wandering 40 Days.

Find him also on Instagram, Twitter and Workplace.

NOTES:

• The Soularium Cards photo and other ministry images are available for staff on the Cru Stock site on the Staff Web.
• Mick took his bio photo when visiting Caernarfon, Wales.
• See more of Mick’s photography at:
  • Wandering 40 Days: Wisdom from behind the Camera Lens
  • Cru Stock
  • The Photographers Network on Workplace
  • and on Unsplash as @rocinante102085