"Lausanne Pillar 4- Kingdom Impact in Every Sphere of Society”. 2019. 32x20”. Acrylic on birch panel.
As the fourth and final painting in the Lausanne Movement Pillar series, this piece seeks to sum up the other three works as well as paint a global vision of God’s Kingdom permeating the seven cultural spheres. Remixed again here are the fisherman from pillar 1: “The Gospel for every person”, the Bride from pillar 2: “An evangelical church for every community”, and the Good Shepherd from pillar 3: “Christ-like leaders for every church”. Christ is now crowned as the glorious and triumphant King, but as his upside-down Kingdom subtly infuses each sphere, it is not done as the leaders of this world who lord it over their subjects, but in selfless servanthood (rather than sit on the throne, He kneels to wash His Bride’s feet.
Each of the seven spheres is set on a different continent of the world and is shown crumbling in the futility of man’s institutions, while Christ-like servants carry the DNA of the Kingdom in the form of equilateral (trinity) triangles joining into a new infrastructure of honeycomb hexagons. This stems from the crystal structure of Nitrogen, the atomic element with 7 electrons, 7 protons, and 7 neutrons (777) figured here as the very fabric of God’s Kingdom from a universal scale to the very smallest subatomic particle of God’s creation. The seven spheres are set in the same format as Nitrogen.
Family [Michelangelo’s painting, “The Creation of Adam” with the African pyramids]
Religion [The remixed Bride set in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil]
Business [Dubai skyline, United Emirates]
Government [China’s Forbidden City & the Tower of Babel]
Education [Cambridge University, UK] - alma mater of John Stott featured just below.
Art [Sydney Opera House, Australia]
Media [Hollywood, CA, U.S.A.]
As I did my research, I learned that Nitrogen’s 7 electrons have two layers orbiting its center: 2 in the inner ring, and 5 in the outer ring. Even as I began to ask myself, “what two spheres of the seven would be closest to God’s heart” I already knew the answer: “The Church” (God’s Family), and “Family”, the echoing social fabric in which God designed our existence. The Bride’s halo becomes the first electron as I oriented the painted to have those two images and electrons closest to Christ.
One of the mentoring voices in my life has been that of Mako Fujimura. At one point when we were discussing my artwork and my calling, Mako said to me, “Bryn, the smaller you paint, the bigger you’ll see.” For years I’d literally painted small paintings in response to this word, often no larger than 1” squares of tiny images. Here I was, years later, painting an image inspired by the atomically minuscule Nitrogen, and I was suddenly seeing Kingdom revelations of the very nature and structure of divine realities. Thank you Mako!