Emma Lancaster found the news in July that someone had defaced her church with satanic graffiti mind-boggling. “My first thought was, Who could do such a thing?” the 15-year-old recalls.
But the teen overcame her shock when Samuel Wilson, youth pastor of New Vision Church in Beaverton, Ore., invited her and other youth group members to transform the graffiti—an upside down cross and 666—into an uplifting, God-centered mural.
Initially the church planned to paint over the graffiti in plain white, but police required that it remain up until a report could be filed. That gave the church leadership the idea not to rush to cover up the hateful messages, but to have the youth confront the graffiti in a Christ-like manner.
“We thought it would be a really neat example for our students to see that when people come at you with hate, when people are against you, you can respond in a positive way,” Wilson says.
New Vision never discovered the culprits responsible for the vandalism, but because a high school is nearby, the staff suspects local teens. Accordingly, Wilson says that having teens at the church respond to the graffiti was the perfect way to reach out to the perpetrators. The church walls now feature a painting of a heart and a crown of thorns with the message “Your love never fails.” Other references to scripture also cover the wall.
“We took what they did and turned it into something beautiful,” Lancaster says. “We hope they would be impacted by that.”
Watercolor artist and New Vision member Tamara Hess helped the youth create the mural. Applying a technique tattoo artists use to mask unwanted body art, Hess painted an outline around the graffiti that the youth filled in with images.
“They felt really proud that they were allowed to do something kind of permanent,” Hess says. “It’s not often you’re allowed to paint the side of a building.”
