My name is Darren Crow. I’m the pastor of Heart of Junction Church in Grand Junction. For years, we’ve done a kind of a traditional Good Friday service with 14 stages and candles and making the room dark, and it was always well-received but poorly attended.
One of the young men who left our church years ago, Nick Milazzo, is doing a contemplative service in Pennsylvania at the church he pastors now. And he’s using art, and I thought that’d be awesome.
And I know we have a couple artists at the church. One man in particular was a career artist, and so I’m like, “We can get started with George and see if we can add some things.” And we did it two years ago, and it was very well received. And so we kind of upgraded it this year with a little help from the state missions offering.
When I decided to do it, I was just like, “This could really make Easter week special.” I was excited about it, but I didn’t know how people in the church would respond to it. And that first year, we got enough art to fill up the room. Everybody that goes to this church told me that this was the best thing the church has done since we’ve been in this location for 15 years. The service essentially is an open-ended service.
We tell people to plan to be there for about an hour, and so there’s time to kind of tour the building and see each of the exhibits. The exhibits are each tied to scripture, which deal with Good Friday. So you can read the notes and look at the art. And meanwhile, twice during the two and a half hours, our praise team comes out and does about a five-song set of contemplative music. Some of its even original music. Our worship team is participating in the project as well.
The first year was just phenomenal, and I’m like… And I was looking through a catalog for patterns. I saw that, and I’m going, “This would be…” If Darren would let it be here, I was going to do it. So I got my sister and my niece, and so it took us six weeks to put it together. It’s a wall hanging. It’s called “Three Days,” and it’s the three crosses. We do quilting, and then we give it away. And so for somebody to be able to see actually what we were doing, I thought it was going to be great.
When we used to do these kinds of services, we would have maybe 20 to 40 people come. A year ago, there were 120, and this year there were about 240. I think we can have a larger impact than even that going forward in the future.
My name is Mae Pena, and I am a local Grand Junction artist. I graduated from Colorado Mesa University in 2022, and I met Darren through the Christian Challenge. I hadn’t really done a piece beforehand about my faith. Not that I had ever been put off by that, it just wasn’t an opportunity that came up.
My piece was for John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father but through me.” I came up with a pathway leading up to a cross that was glowing with little sheep that were going up to it. And in the sky, in the clouds, is a lion because Jesus is the lion and the lamb, and the tomb is empty. And around the tomb, I had a crown of thorns as well as a wreath of olives.
Just all of them say something to you when you go around the room, and it’s so quiet in here, and it’s so reverent. And so you read it, and you see the scripture, and it really hits you of what this is celebrating.
The Colorado Missions Offering is very helpful to us in just upgrading what we’re doing on that night. I think God brought it about, and I think it was just a perfect match for the people in the church and the vision.
