Arts

December 12, 2025
Advent Arts theology and the arts

Images of Hope: Advent in Art

Art has the tremendous power to restore us in a time when our world seems to make no sense and we need a moment of respite and encouragement from our daily struggles. A single photograph of a flower or a laughing child can buoy our spirit to carry on. In the Christian tradition, the season of Advent urges us to look for Hope, Peace, Joy and Love, and we’d like to open a space for you to share photos that speak to you in those ways. Add Your Image of Hope Throughout Advent, we published submissions received from United students, alums, faculty, and staff.  Pieces are published in the order in which they are received. Last updated: December 12, 2025. "Feed for the winter." by Ryan Currens (student, Institutional Major Gifts Officer) This picture from our family farm in Iowa of fall fields reminds me of the hope for plenty during the winter months to come. "Enduring Hope" by Rev. Dr. Cindi Beth Johnson (Vice President for Advancement) My nephew Erik took this photo in the late days of fall. The remaining beautiful red blossom, still holding court, is for me a sign of hope and determination. "Children's Creation" by April Knight (student) When I was growing up in church—a church I loved—children's art would have never been allowed front and center displayed as Peace Church in Duluth celebrates children! This is the "Hope" of my Advent season this year. "puddle no filter" by Mike Coyne (student) Neither the limits nor the beauty of a physical form can negate its essence, or capture its true nature. "Waterfall Cross" by Tami Glasbrenner (Accountant) Photo taken while hiking Hocking Hills Ohio State Park. "Tiny Tracks" by Sheryl Schwyhart (’20) "Chapel in the Trees" by Babs Allen (student) Sign as you enter into the Chapel in the Trees in Funk’s Grove, IL. "Annunciation (by Julia Barkley)" by Rev. Dr. Cindi Beth Johnson (Vice President for Advancement) During chapel, we were in a circle, and I realized I was facing The Annunciation. A reminder of hope in the Christian tradition. "The United Chapel during Advent" by Ryan Currens (student, Institutional Major Gifts Officer) I took this picture during the second week of Advent after the final chapel for this semester. "Sunrise Over Grand Meadow, Minnesota " by Dale Dobias (’89) 3x3 inches, found papers on canvas board   "Sixth of Sunwait, Welcome Solstice" by Brian Weis (’24) Photo collage: Altar with Sunwait candelabra. Candles for the first six runes are lit. Additional candles, goddess statues, festive greens, etc. are also present.

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November 21, 2025
Arts Methodist Studies ministry

Yolanda Williams (’20) Merges Music, Scholarship, and Ministry

From an early age, Rev. Dr. Yolanda Williams’ (’20) life revolved around making music. “I've been taking piano lessons since second grade,” she shares, “and I started to play violin in seventh grade.” She also has a well-developed talent for singing (soprano and mezzo soprano). At Hamline University, one of her majors was music, and at the University of Minnesota, Yolanda earned a master's in Vocal Performance. So, how did Yolanda earn an MDiv and become the pastor at Fridley United Methodist Church? That seed was also planted early on. Finding Religion  Yolanda explains that she doesn’t come from a religious family; in fact, her father was opposed to organized religion. Still, her parents sent the children to Sunday school at the neighborhood church, John’s Lutheran Church (Missouri Synod). By age 16, Yolanda explains, there was a big change when she became a professed Christian after three pastors broke away from the Lutheran church and started a house church that became Agape Christian Ministries, which is still in operation. In this charismatic environment, Yolanda found the space to develop a personal relationship with God because, unlike her experience at John’s Lutheran Church, a relationship with God was prioritized. That was when Yolanda committed to God that she would become a preacher in gratitude for her changed life. At Hamline University, Yolanda pursued a double major—music and religion. After earning her master’s degree, she went on to tackle a PhD (also at the University of Minnesota) in Education with a graduate minor in African Diasporic Studies. At the conclusion of her dissertation, Yolanda asserts, “The Lord reminded me that I had made a commitment to be a preacher.” Deciding on United The day after her PhD dissertation was accepted, Yolanda was looking for a local seminary because of God’s reminder. Because she owned a house in Minneapolis, she couldn’t imagine pulling up roots to attend seminary elsewhere. As a worship accompanist and leader, Yolanda had been involved with several Lutheran churches and had even played at Luther Seminary services. She had also heard about United. She approached Luther Seminary first and was told to visit the website. The contact at United invited Yolanda to visit the New Brighton campus and meet with staff and faculty. “It was beautiful,” she remembers, “like an oasis from the congestion and chaos of the city.” She also appreciated the eco-friendly aspects of the space, including the rain gardens and native plantings. This led her to choose United over other Twin Cities seminaries. While working full-time, Yolanda embarked on earning her MDiv in Methodist Studies at United. Because she was so busy with work and school, and more focused on theological scholarship, she did not find much time to socialize with other students. Since graduating, though, Yolanda says she’s maintained contact with other United alums. Reflecting on the Journey “From David on,” Yolanda asserts, “music has had a way of speaking to people beyond words.” It can evoke emotion, negative or positive, and has a unique power. It’s also an intrinsic facet of worship and church services.  She credits preachers from her teens for modeling how to be a caring pastor and apt preacher. Dr. Demian Wheeler, though, she exclaims, “had a huge impact on my life!” He is not just a scholar; he is “really an excellent teacher.” Yolanda explains that he organized classes so that he could both impart knowledge and collaborate with students in real time. He also challenged students to think critically about theological precepts. Yolanda is also grateful that United is such a religiously diverse community. “Having people from so many different backgrounds and spiritualities,” she observes, “gave me a broader idea of who might come through the door at my church.”  After years of deep scholarship, teaching, and musical performance, Yolanda is happy to be serving as the pastor at Fridley United Methodist Church. Though she gains much joy and satisfaction from the experiences of theatrical vocal performances at home and abroad, she can now admit, “There’s nothing like standing in a pulpit and seeing the hunger that’s before you and seeing the little light bulbs go off as God feeds the people through you.”

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April 14, 2025
Arts Distance Education Innovation theology and the arts VOICES

Student Rev. Alicia Reese Creatively Mixes Ministry with Improv

Rev. Alicia Reese has followed the pull of two great loves: theatre and ministry. “I spent most of my life in theatre; I think I started when I was seven,” she recalls. As she grew older, Alicia also felt “a strong call toward ministry,” but there were no women pastors in her church setting. “I never saw,” she reflects, “how that call to ministry could be lived out.”  Through high school and college, Alicia threw herself into theatre. At a small Christian school in Florida, she met a theatre director who believed the arts and church could go together. He let her take over the theatre ministry troupe—“a sketch comedy-ish group that used Christian themes and scripture,” Alicia explains.  In her 20s, after moving to Chicago and working in theatre full-time, Alicia experienced another strong nudge toward ministry. This time, she earned an MA in Theological Studies, but had the sinking feeling that she might have to give up theatre. A minister at her church, who recognized her unique gifts, encouraged her to pursue an MDiv. One of Alicia’s professors at North Park Theological Seminary introduced her to a prison education program at a correctional facility in Joliet. She embraced this new challenge and wanted to help those who were incarcerated share their stories. “So I pulled out my theatre bag of tricks,” Alicia shares, and considered using improv. Finding United The success Alicia found using improv to get incarcerated students to re-vision their stories inspired her to go back to school for a DMin through which she could explore the “connection between spiritual formation and improv.” Why United? “From the moment I started interacting with United,” Alicia remarks, “I felt that deep connection between the arts and theology and ministry.”  After meeting with Dr. Jennifer Awes Freeman, she was hooked. Jennifer helped Alicia create an independent study that involved taking classes at The Second City in Chicago, “a life-changing” experience. Alicia credits United’s “openness to exploration,” the ability to have both “a classroom and a laboratory,” and the needs-based scholarship she received as keys to her success. In addition, “every professor has made a stamp on my work along the way,” and interactions with other students have been “just as fruitful and formative.” Real Life Applications For Dean Roberts’ class, Alicia “designed a whole Lenten series of spiritual practices that use improv” for her congregation. For example, one week she asked congregants to practice failure using the “failure bow”—an exuberant, joyous admission of failure that tricks the brain into getting more comfortable with and learning from failure.  More recently, she created a similar series for Advent. When the children’s minister asked her to devise something for the children’s pageant, he and Alicia designed an intergenerational service based on joy and improv. Toward the end of the service, Alicia used an improv game called “Slide Show” to help the children tell the story of Jesus’ birth. For the first slide, Alicia shared a piece of the birth narrative, and the kids acted out the scene on stage. On alternate slides, the children acted out another piece of the story, and Alicia had to explain what they were doing. Along the way, the kids added new characters and became very engaged in the storytelling.  The pageant, Alicia exclaims, was “probably one of the most joyful, wonderful experiences I’ve had in a faith community, ever.” It was also a reminder of how the DMin work is spilling over into her ministry.  This is “a full-circle moment,” Alicia declares. The gift of “bringing art back into my life through my ministry work has felt like I’m living into the fullness of who God really called me to be now.”

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July 4, 2023
Alums Arts theology and the arts VOICES

2023 Graduate Stephani Pescitelli and the Power of YES, AND…

Stephani Pescitelli, who graduated April 30, 2023 with an MDiv in Theology and the Arts, admits that United wasn’t even on her radar when she first felt called to seminary. She intended to enroll in a Unitarian Universalist (UU) seminary. Still, after a phone call with a kind soul in United’s admissions office, followed by a whirlwind visit with faculty, alums, and students during a February blizzard (naturally), the uniquely heartfelt and open sense of welcome, and United’s arts and theology program won her over. As she recalls, “I walked out into the bitter cold after that day carrying a warm, welcoming, enthusiastic YES! Lessons Learned at United Though she could have safely stayed in her UU community, Stephani is thankful she was exposed to so many differing faith traditions and histories at United. One “gift of learning…in classrooms and conversations with voices from other traditions,” she shares, “is appreciating how all of our traditions have evolved in relation, often in syncretic ways, even when in opposition.” “Sometimes,” she adds, “confronting these differences and histories is uncomfortable and has meant learning to speak and listen to different… perspectives, letting go of the coziness of knowing, and stepping into the practice of saying YES, AND to others.” This practice of affirmation and openness is important for spiritual leaders who must face myriad challenges in today’s world. Personal relationships are also key. “The relationships I’ve cultivated at United,” Stephani emphasizes, “are the most important gift I’ve received.…I can’t imagine any other graduate program or learning community where I could have truly practiced the messy, beautiful new ways of creating, relating, and leading together.” “United to me is what I wanted and needed church to be,” Marjorie asserts. “It is a non-judgemental place where I am able to think theologically, I'm able to experience the spirit, but also to have intellectual discourse around what I believe to be true and what it is like to be with other Christ-centered people who believe differently than I do, but we have this core place of connection.” Looking to the Future Thanks to connections made while in seminary, Stephani’s future is rapidly taking shape. Through a research project for Dr. Awes Freeman’s Images and Ideologies course about the changing landscape of monuments, last summer she was able to intern with a national nonprofit, Monument Lab. Now, since presenting research about a community arts approach to saving memories and sharing stories at the Midwest American Academy of Religion Meeting, she’s Monument Lab’s part-time partnership research associate. “I am grateful,” Stephani says, “to be able to bring this unique perspective and the holistic formational and practical leadership training I received as an MDiv student to this important art and social justice work at Monument Lab.” At the same time, Stephani is exploring a call to support people one-on-one, and hopes to focus on “offering discernment and relational spiritual care to makers, seekers, and activists through creative embodied practice.” Learn more on her website: stephanipescitelli.com. Stephani credits her experiences and education at United for making these and other vocational options possible. As she explains, “Engaging in rigorous academic and rich formational learning within a community full of diverse, dynamic beliefs and spiritual backgrounds has helped me to contextualize and deepen my own theologies. It has also increased my desire and capacity for building coalitions across differences in my leadership work and in relationships beyond seminary.” No matter where she goes after commencement, Stephani now knows “that the most important repair and liberation is done…within our five-foot radius.” She adds, “I am lucky that my immediate circle has included some of the finest faculty, co-conspirators, dance—and wrestling—partners, and humans, and even luckier to be able to carry these relationships with me in whatever lies ahead.”

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July 12, 2022
Arts

Queer Theofuturism: A Community Coloring Book, vol. 2

In October 2021 (which was LGBTQ history month), the Theology and the Arts Program solicited art from the community to create the second volume of The Queer Theofuturism Coloring Book. We're sharing the PDF for free download in honor of Pride month now. The history of the surviving and thriving of LGBTQ people in the US has been shaped by folks who imagined new ways of seeing, loving, being, and connecting with the holy. In the United tradition of play and creativity, we invited all students, staff, faculty, and alums to submit line drawings that reimagine myths, sacred stories, or any spiritual or religious images in ways that challenge and play with assumptions about gender, bodies, love, and spirituality. We encouraged folks to reimagine old stories and see what might be possible for a future that is more just, more colorful, and includes all of us.  (Due to the openness in submissions and our value for freedom of expression, some of the artwork in the coloring book may not be safe for work or appropriate for all ages, as some of the images include nudity or sexual themes.)

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August 4, 2021
Arts Arts Lunch students

Bisa Butler and the Legacy of AfriCOBRA with Suzanne Roberts

Bisa Butler in the studio. Photography by John Butler. On March 9, 2021, Suzanne Roberts, local art historian and lecturer of African American artists, shared with the Arts Lunch about Bisa Butler and the history and resurgence of the AfriCOBRA movement in recent times, using CoolAde color and other techniques to consciously subscribe a non-western approach to art. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErclRHGNMJY[/embed]

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July 27, 2021
Arts Arts Lunch Drag lgbtq Queer theology and the arts theopoetics

Drag Theopoetics with Max Brumberg-Kraus

On Tuesday March 2, 2021, United alum Max Brumberg-Kraus ('20) presented to the Arts Lunch on their current work with Drag Theopoetics. A “drag theopoetic” is the theopoetic of the professional or amateur crossdresser who performs in front or with an audience. It is experiencing the divine while being in drag. It is the sacred phenomenon of attending a drag show. Drag Theopoetics is camping the gods. It is the production of another gender or a heightened version of one’s own gender as a means to understand God, the cosmos, and one another. Drag Theopoetics is the sacred rite of gesturing, performing, then becoming a self.  (more…)

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