The Evangelical United Church of Christ is located in an insular ethnic German community in the geographic center of the contiguous United States. Members view religion as a subset of a community mutual aid society. Members have expressed a feeling of incompetence regarding their ability to read and/or understand the Bible and have communicated disinterest in learning about God although they espouse Christian values. Therefore the challenge is to find a way of Biblical preaching that will excite this congregation and create a desire to be in relationship with God. This author’s multi-disciplinary background provides tools to expand preaching beyond oral delivery. Therefore, the project included preaching the Lectionary Biblical text enhanced by artistic renderings of that text in custom-designed bulletin covers to provide visual reinforcement to the sermon as delivered orally with the goal of eliciting greater interest and meaning relative to knowledge of the living God for the period September 1, 2013 - December 29, 2013. Results indicate that the EUCC moved substantially from disinterest to an expectancy interest in hearing about God and learning to live the Christian life through the inclusion of the visual arts.
