I created the Gospel Journey Planner to present the familiar and much studied gospels in a new way, to provide a new visual perspective. The four gospels contain over 60,000 words across 89 chapters and can sometimes be daunting. Like many Christians, I knew there were similarities and connections, but didn’t have a complete sense of these from start to end.
The Journey Planner, like a map, helps you to take a step back. To see broader brush strokes, to see patterns, connections and differences. The connections I partially knew about are immediately and powerfully drawn out in this design.
Synoptic Gospels and the Gospel of John
Through developing it, I discovered the three synoptic gospels had many connections, while John is more stand alone. That there are many miracles and verses on Jesus’s identity found only in John, but that it contains no traditional parables. These all become obvious when seen visually, with scriptures represented not just by text, but also through colour, shape and position.
One of the surprising and most challenging features of creating the Planner has been the sheer quantity of stories that Karola and I found and felt that we must include. As this is graphical, they all had to line up to make sense, to follow at least some kind of order. One of our reviewers helped us with this by suggesting using Matthew’s chapter order as the ‘datum’ and then to get as close to chapter order on the other books, while maintaining the integrity of connection lines.
A Resource for Bible Study
Our hope and belief is that as well as being a unique and beautiful Christian image in any space, the Planner would make a great teaching or study aid for Bible teachers and students.
Rather than looking at similarities and differences in a linear text-based or even table-based way, the Gospel Journey Planner visualisation allows the viewer to see similarities and differences mapped out all at once. While the colour-coding is an aesthetic, it also categorises miracles, parables, events, teaching and verses about Jesus’s identity, and this shows the weighting of each category in each Gospel, showing what each one prioritises.
A Resource for Evangelism
Our ultimate hope is that this art work is also an evangelical tool and conversation starter in any location - Bible college, church, home or office.
The visualisation is able to support the following:
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Welcome Visitors: Serve as an intriguing entry point for friends, visitors, or family, to discuss the Bible and Christ.
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Bible Studies: Provide a visual reference point for group discussions on Gospel harmony. It could be used as a basis for one or more teaching sessions, asking students to reflect on any new insights it provides.
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Reflection: Provide a data-rich focal point that encourages students to discover scripture in a new way.
We want the Gospel Journey Planner to draw people to the Bible. What greater thing could an artwork do? We hope it will be a work that catches people’s breath and makes them wonder, what are these Gospels and who is Jesus?