This week we’re featuring Laura Allen. Laura is a writer and director, who shoots and edits event videography and habitually works on film projects which raise awareness for schools, charities, and nonprofits, all endeavors she is passionate about. She lives and works in New Jersey, and is a charming, creative and talented individual. Check out her freelancer profile and portfolio!

Laura stirred things up a few weeks ago for what might seem to be a side project; her beautiful bulletin design for the People of Hope community. “Beautiful” is not usually the first word that comes to most people’s minds when they think about most Church bulletins, but the work that Laura has done here truly breaks that stereotype. Her use of balanced fonts, discrete, gentle color combinations, and a pleasant and engaging layout all combine into what has to be one of the prettiest bulletin designs I’ve ever seen.

To me this hits the heart of what the New Evangelization is all about: presenting the eternal truths of the faith in a new and engaging way. While I wouldn’t call Church bulletin design an eternal truth, the current system does feel pretty eternal, and this new approach is a breath of fresh air that any Church or organization could benefit from imitation. Here’s a snippet from her profile:

“I am a little pencil in the hand of God. Whatever he writes is beautiful”

-St Teresa of Calcutta

It’s funny. I am a writer and filmmaker who has had a long, hard, struggle to accept that I am a writer and filmmaker. That I’m a creator and a creative. Growing up, these seemed like very silly, even self-centered pursuits.

I’ve always loved the Lord and wanted to serve him, but for some reason, for the longest time, I thought that had to look a certain way. That it had to be heroic. That I had to be a missionary, or be serving the poor in a foreign land, or a campus minister, or a nun and that any other form of service was somehow a waste. But Christ, in his patience and tenderness has slowly been teaching me that to serve him is to simply be a little pencil in his hand. And, for me, I’m learning, that means creating. Creating is my way of loving others.

It’s a walk of trust to believe that making meaningful things can change hearts. That Christ can move and grow, if we’re humble enough to be simple sowers of seeds. And that’s how I see what I do: to make little films is a simple sowing of seeds. How beautiful it is that we artists have the opportunity to evangelize simply, in smallness, and then to watch in faith as God does the rest.”

Laura’s example is a great reminder to all of us, living out our faith in the creative field, to not hinder or hide the God-given gifts and talents that we have been blessed with, to seek and find Him in the beauty that is all around us, and where there doesn’t seem to be much beauty, like perhaps in some Church bulletins, to put it there, and watch how He is able to work through it.