**Originally in 2010 I completed an epic quest to write an A-Z of Children’s ministry, Now because of the epic fail detailed on an earlier blog post I am reposting an updated 2018 version!
V… Vision, vexed, virtuous, vectitation…
V is for Visual – It would be hard to imagine a technology that had more impact on 20th century life than photography. Imagine a world without school photos, travel pictures, without pictures of sports, wars, and disasters; and you have no way to document the birth of your children.
Images convey emotion brilliantly. I could write pages here on the facts of the recent Haiti earthquake; how many homes were ruined, how many people are homeless, what effect it will have on the country.
Or I could simply show images like this:
In an image saturated culture, pictures really do say a thousand words.
There is SO much that could be said about the power of image, so many questions to explore… Are Christians meant to be people of the word? Should we use images in this way to provoke emotion? What about pictures of Jesus? Where does it become idolatry? Are images a good thing or a negative thing?
The point of this post is to highlight the power that images have. If we are aware of the power, and we bring it into the light then it stops having power over us. Pornography (one of the most powerful type of image) has no power when it is ‘accountable’, when it is out of darkness… but when it is hidden, it has the power to destroy a life.
And one way to have power over a thing is to engage it, use it.
If an image helps you convey a truth, then use it!
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