faith
telling the essential stories
Building bricks are a great genre for storytelling and are already widely used to tell stories in social media, movies, TV, video games, books, comics, and actual building kits/sets.
Don't you think we should be telling God's story with that genre too?
Acts 17: 22-31 NRSV (with a Brick Books paraphrase)
Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.
People, I see how much you love building bricks. They're under 25% of all American Christmas trees each year. Let me tell you why you love them so much.
The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things.
You think you're a good builder? Yeah, you can make all kinds of things with those bricks, but God is the ultimate builder. What God makes comes to life!
From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us.
God made all of you as makers. Everyone in every nation has been given the gift to be creative and to make like their maker. We explore and investigate, design and tinker--and it all leads us closer to God, or shows how God was never far.
For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we too are his offspring.’ Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals.
You are God's children. All that stuff you love, God isn't that stuff--no matter how fancy the stuff you make is--God is in you. Love God. Love the gifts God gave you.
While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”
Jesus is your guide.
what happens when you reimagine the Sistine chapel ceiling in brick?
What do you see? What do you feel? What do you learn?
But this is just one artist adapting another artist's interpretation of a story.
what happens when you reimagine Bible stories in brick?
What do you see? What do you feel? What do you learn?
But this is just one artist's interpretation of a story.
what happens when you Build Bible stories in brick?
What do you see? What do you feel? What do you learn?
What are you inspired to build?
About Brick books' creator
Dan (he/him) is a Deacon of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Dan has served in children, youth, and campus ministries. Dan first heard the call to ministry through Black Liberation Theology as an undergrad at Wittenberg University and discovered his gifts for sharing that theology creatively while in seminary at Yale Divinity School. His greatest passions are serving kids and advocating for justice in fulfilling God's promised kingdom. These days, you're likely to find Dan knee deep in excited kids, building bricks, or pages of new poetry and children's lit. You might also find him outside tending to his small duck farm.