"Real People in Real Time"

“Real people in Real time.” As I examine and contemplate the Kingdom of God course readings, I am reminded that the essentials of ministry are inclusive of “real people in real time,” a word-to-the-wise given to me by a fellow Canadian drawing master. It remains the subject of my early Monday morning off-island ventures to Tim Horton’s in Nanaimo (or wherever I travel) to sketch (almost incognito) coffee shop people. I just finished Volume 17. Volume 1 began in 1997, and to date I have over 10,000 faces and people. These are of the same kind of souls who I am privileged to disciple on a weekly basis, and most recently in our island fellowship, to introduce them to a preaching series I’ve titled: “2012: How shall we then live?”

A page of Coffee Shop People, 6 x 8 1/2, Volume 10, by Gerrit Verstraete.

Disclaimer

I add to the autoethnographic construct of my Doctoral studies the experience of having taught this Kingdom of God for nearly three decades, resulting in a narrative where the lines between scholarly writings of others and my own are often blurred. Perhaps a weakness in critical analysis of content, but the original intent of teaching the Kingdom of God was my response to a call to ministry, with no intentions at the time of pursuing Doctoral studies. However, I do claim that despite the potential inability to properly source all my teachings of three decades, I rest assured that through a continuum of personal experiences, my words have been tried “as silver in a furnace of the earth, refined seven times,” (Ps.12:6).

"Deux aux croix," by Gerrit Verstraete, 2010. Cat.No.1166, 14 X 17, acrylic on vellum ( 35.7 X 43.4 cm )

Keynotes

Keynote 1: The synthesis of experience, grounding, study, necessity, practice, application, calling and theology, is the artist as artist-historian, keeper of history, and gatekeeper to the apocalypse of the Kingdom of God, as essential to ministry through the intersection of art, critical thought, and the Kingdom of God.

Keynote 2: The structure of this synthesis will focus on the proposed Hybrid Tetrad: a dialectical model of art, critical thought, and the Kingdom of God, as a ministry tool for discipleship. This hybrid tetrad was first created as part of my Master’s graduate studies in communication and technology, and adapted to the current DMin. Dialectical Model.

"Rachel in Sanguine," Cat.No.878, 18 x 24, 2007, Classical drawing by Gerrit Verstraete. Sanguine oil pencil on Gesso with acrylic colour on tracing paper mounted on Stonehenge Black.