i don't want to hear that at christmas!

As part of my job at Salem Alliance Church, I design graphics and publications for various ministries and for Sunday morning services.

Recently my lead pastor passed along a sermon title that he needed a title slide for. The name of the sermon..."A War in a Manger". His text was Revelation 12 where John writes down a vision of what's happening in heaven surrounding the birth of Jesus. Fascinating stuff.

Here's a snippet...

"A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads. His tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment it was born. She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter. And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne. The woman fled into the desert to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days...

Pretty cool stuff!

So I worked on a title slide and submitted it to my online Flickr group where I get immediate feedback on graphic projects. Here's my slide...



And here's the first person's feedback..

"my biggest problem is the title. "war in a manger" freaks me out, and it's not what i want to hear at Christmas (and i'm not even a fan of Christmas)... ...yeah, you may need to hit the drawing board for a new concept. see if you can get a new title from leadership as well. i promise, this one won't go over at all. "

REALLY? SERIOUSLY?

You don't want to hear that Jesus fought for you? You don't want to hear that there was an all-out war on your behalf? You'd rather stay in Hallmark card land where everything smells of french vanilla and overcompensation?

If we're picking sides, I'm on the team that NEEDS to hear this message. I need my idea of the Christmas story stretched from time to time. I need the comfortable plastic manger scene to be replaced by a scene that more closely resembles "Star Wars". I need that.

Don't you?

P.S. If you want to hear the sermon, click this link to download it
http://www.mediafire.com/?miztiwnzwjk