God as one of us - Sculpted figures

This idea is developed from the community art project "Field" by Antony Gormley. 

Preparation:
Before you want to use this idea, you will need to divide the play-dough into lots of equally sized lumps, this is important so that everyone gets a similar amount of play-dough.  Next make a figure, this will represent Jesus, so maybe make this figure with it's arms open (but don't make this one any bigger or more special-looking).  Place this figure in the centre of the area you want all of the participants to place their figures.

The Idea:
Everyone collects a piece of play-dough, and uses it to make a simple figure of themselves.  It could be a literal likeness, or something that represents how they are feeling.  They take this figure and place it alongside the Jesus figure, gathering a community of the figures around Jesus.

This idea allows several things to be explored: 

1. the incarnation of Jesus (that God limited himself, became made of the same material as us, and stood amongst us); 
2. the church community gathered around Jesus (all different shapes and sizes but united around Christ);
3. the opportunity for people to explore where they are at, or would like to be in relationship with Jesus.

If you want to extend the idea to pray for other people, simply get more play dough and have people make models which represent the people they want to pray for. As the crowd of figures grow, you can pray for your church or local community.  The installation could be left for future weeks, or people could take home someone else's model and pray for them.

Some pics from when we did this in a service about the Incarnation, with about 30 people.  It would only look cooler the more people you involved!

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