February 2, 2000

KERRY JACKSON poses with a completed set of drawings from one of his presentations. (Photos by Gibbs Frazeur/NAMB)

Baptist artist designs to draw people to Jesus
___FORT WORTH--Calling Kerry Jackson's artistic stage presentations "chalk talks" would be like calling Billy Graham merely a preacher.
___Both statements are true, but they fail to give the full story.
___Jackson, a 1993 graduate of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, has taken chalk talks to a new level--a 75-minute presentation that includes huge canvases, special-effects lighting and Christian rock music.
___The irony is, Jackson at one time thought he was abandoning his career as an artist to

JACKSON draws the face of Jesus under special lighting.

become a minister. While in seminary, though, he found a way to combine the two in a way that met his primary objective--to tell people about Jesus Christ.
___The result is "Drawing to the Rock," a presentation Jackson now makes in churches and other locations across the country.
___A native of Jackson, Miss., he got a vision for this innovative ministry while working on the master of arts in communications degree at Southwestern Seminary. He had done chalk talks before, but his vision was for something bigger.
___When Jackson first left Mississippi for seminary, he thought he was leaving behind the skills he had learned as a freelance artist and art graduate of Mississippi State University. "I gave up my art career, sold all my supplies, tools and client list to become a counselor," he explained.
___But one day, while sitting in his car waiting to pick up his daughter, the bigger vision came to him.
___After several years of refining the idea, he now has created a visual presentation of five vignettes: the fruit in the Garden of Eden; the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem; the triumphal entry of Jesus in Jerusalem; Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane; and the Crucifixion.
___Each scene is drawn on a 32-by-40-inch canvas.
___As he moves from vignette to vignette, he is accompanied by recorded music from groups like Holy Soldier. In the Crucifixion scene, as the The Violet Burning's song "The Killing" plays, Jackson draws "a normal happy Jesus," then violently slashes a crown of thorns on Jesus' head.
___In the background, the audience hears a hammer hitting nails. When the song ends, Jackson peels away a plastic covering to reveal a precut scene of the empty tomb as the song "Believe" by Grammatrain plays.
___Through creative use of lighting, Jackson makes it appear Jesus has risen from the tomb and is beckoning people to him.
___In the second half of the presentation, Jackson emerges portraying Jesus. "I ask (people in the audience) if they love me, if they believe in me," he said.
___At the end of his presentations, Jackson always invites people to raise their hands if they want to profess faith in Christ. He recalled an 8-year-old girl who told him she looked up at the face of Jesus and felt God telling her it was time to become a Christian.
___By day, Jackson works at the North American Mission Board in Alpharetta, Ga., as a promotion design specialist. Part of his job is designing NAMB booths that are used at conventions.
___He knows he didn't have to go to seminary to do the job he is doing now, but Southwestern exposed him to missions, to non-Christians and to the Bible, he said.
___"If I hadn't come, I would not have felt his call to missions or I would have ignored it," he said. "It was (at Southwestern) that I knew God had more special plans for my talent than I could ever have imagined."
___To schedule Jackson for a presentation or to obtain a brochure or promotional video, write to Drawing to the Rock, 1140 Sycamore Summit, Sugar Hill, Ga. 30518 or e-mail kjackson@namb.net.
___Reported by Matt Sanders of Southwestern Seminary
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