June 22, 2010
By Jackie Macadam

For many delegates at the Uniting General Council in Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA, one of the most striking displays in the foyer is the long banners that trace the hundred years of mission, starting with the Edinburgh 1910 Missionary Conference until the present day.

Artist Judith Rempel Smucker is the designer behind the images you can see. A Mennonite, from Akron, Pennsylvania, she leapt at the chance to take part in the ecumenical project, brainchild of Jet den Hollander, Executive Secretary WARC Mission Project, 2006-2010.

"The way we imagined the exhibition is as a pilgrimage through time. You start one hundred years ago, with the 1910 conference, and move through the years represented by the banners until the present day. I worked with the stories and quotes Jet had selected to make sure that each banner didn't just tell an interesting story but also showed the work of a different denomination from around the world. There's a map on each banner with an indication where the events you are reading about happened.

"I struggled a little initially to find a concept that would pull it all together. I played around with a lot of imagery – flames, windows, and so on, but nothing seemed right. Then one day I went to a quilting convention in Pennsylvania. I'm not a quilter, but they use lots of different fabrics, and as I incorporate many different fabrics in my collage work, I decided to attend. After browsing through all the regular stands with conventional quilting materials on offer, I rounded a corner and found a stand where a woman from Ghana was selling lots of batik scraps for using in quilts. The colors were spectacular. I bought many, many of them!

"As I scanned them in to my computer that night, I realized I had found my way of linking the stories with each other. There were colors there and scraps of cloth from Indonesia, Africa – everywhere, and they tied the banner stories together beautifully. I didn't realize that many of the designs and colors on the batik work can actually identify where a person has come from, or what their tribe is. It was fascinating.

"The batik scraps gave a ‘color language' that allows the banners – and the booklet that accompanies them – to be accessible to everyone. Each banner has a different batik scrap that guides the eye down into the story below. As a designer, you have to consider the different types of people who will look at the banners – there are those who'll only look at the pictures, so you need good, dynamic visuals that will grab the attention with perhaps an interesting caption; there are those who will engage more, so you need good quotes and context, and then you have those who will participate completely, and will read every word. Your job as designer is to accommodate them all.

"My hope is that as people move along the banners, they will read the tremendously varied and moving stories on each one, and then read the reflections on the pages of the handbook that relate to a particular banner and consider the questions at each ‘station' to see how it applies to their own faith. That way they'll get the most out of the story being told."

The banners took Judith two months to design and left her wanting to find out more about some of the people that appear in them.

"I was particularly interested in the stories of Jorgelina Lozada from Argentina, Anna Wuhrmann and Lydia Mengwelune from Switzerland and the Cameroons respectively and the modern story from the 1990s of Muhammad Nurayn Ashafa and James Movel Wuye from Northern Nigeria, men who were in opposing armed militias, and suffered terribly due to the fighting, one losing a hand and the other, members of his family, but who came together to become co-directors of a Muslim-Christian Interfaith Mediation Centre to instigate peace. They now lead task forces to resolve conflict in Nigeria and other countries." The Uniting General Council 2010 in Grand Rapids, United States (June 18-28) marks the merger of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and the Reformed Ecumenical Council to form the World Communion of Reformed Churches.

Uniting General Council 2010