Painted prayers

God has taken Rev. Sue Trowbridge’s artistic gifts and transformed them into a life-changing ministry in Battle Creek where people find recovery and hope.

GLENN M. WAGNER
Michigan Conference Communications

From her first memories, Sue Trowbridge has known that she is passionate about painting. Her parents recognized her special artistic gift from her earliest days in the crib and her first efforts at finger painting on the wall of her bedroom. Born in Lansing and raised in nearby Grand Ledge, Sue pursued further training after high school at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, where she graduated with a degree in fine arts in 1977.

Her education helped her understand that art, at its best, engages the right hemisphere of the brain. Painting allows Sue to connect to her emotions and positively express those feelings. She has learned from experience that art can be therapeutic and a great way to grow relationships with others. Sue knows that painting helps her to deal with life’s many stresses. She also learned that continuing to find time to paint is essential for her spiritual health and her ministry.

Sue worked in a jewelry store for eight years after graduation before responding to a call to ministry and enrolling at the Boston University School of Theology. She earned her Master of Divinity degree in 1988 and became an ordained elder in the Detroit Conference of The United Methodist Church in 1990.

Her service as a pastor took her to appointments first in the Detroit Conference as an associate pastor at Flushing UMC and later in the West Michigan Conference, where she served congregations at Peace, Quimby, Stockbridge, Munith, and Battle Creek: First. Sue intentionally chose to serve in less than full-time appointments to couple her ministry with time to paint as a necessary part of her life. She began developing her art of “prayer painting.”

Sue explains, “I learned that when I just pray for someone, I typically focus on their needs for a few minutes before my prayer moves in a different direction. But I have found that some of the people I am in ministry with are profoundly broken by things like grief, homelessness, time spent in prison, or mental and physical abuse from others. They are often tortured by their addictions to alcohol and other drugs like meth and heroin. Five-minute prayers are inadequate. When I paint, I focus on their needs and how I imagine God working to bring healing to their lives. Their circumstances, their needs, and my fervent hopes for God’s work in their lives are my inspiration. My painting on the canvas captures my prayer, typically taking twenty hours or more to complete. My prayers while painting help me grow my understanding and relationship with the person I pray for.”

Sue continues, “My calling to ministry with people in need and the prayer painting has grown in part from the real pain and loss I still feel since the death of my sister as a result of her addictions.”

During her ministry at Battle Creek: First UMC, Sue served as a member of the Board of Directors for The Haven of Rest Ministries, a nearby ministry. She explained that this vital organization, funded by multiple financial sources, including grants, corporate sponsors, local churches, and individual donors, provides service and transitional housing to the homeless. It also offers men’s and women’s year-long structured recovery programs for persons addicted to alcohol and other drugs. Participants in the Life Recovery Program have often served prison sentences and grown up living in desperate situations.

Following her retirement from Battle Creek: First, Sue and her husband, Roger, have continued to drive 54 miles round-trip from their home in Vermontville to Battle Creek, where Sue teaches art classes year-round every Thursday evening to those in the Life Recovery Program. Roger Trowbridge is equally valued as a beloved surrogate father figure for many participants who desperately need healthy, mature support and encouragement.

The art program at The Haven introduces participants to a wide variety of artistic media and creative activities, including paint, clay, soap carving, jewelry making, artistic collage making, painting birdhouses, and drawing cartoons. Sue and Roger Trowbridge volunteer their time as leaders. Sue is grateful for the grant she receives from the Battle Creek Community Foundation that covers the cost of art supplies.

Sue shares how the program can help others by relating the story of one of the participants in the Life Recovery Program. Ron left his family behind in Tennessee to drive north to Chicago to find work to support his family. His family decided to travel to help Ron celebrate his birthday, only to all be killed in a tragic rollover accident en route north. Ron began drinking heavily to drown his sorrows and attempted to kill himself by jumping into frigid Lake Michigan at Christmas. He somehow survived for 25 minutes in the icy waters before being rescued.

The Life Recovery Program and the weekly painting classes have helped Ron. He experienced blessing from the prayer painting Sue completed on his behalf. He has found faith in Jesus as a new source of hope and was baptized in the same Lake Michigan waters where he had attempted to end his life.

At the January 6, 2024, opening of their art exhibit at the Art Center of Battle Creek, Life Recovery participants who attended to see their art on display expressed unanimous gratitude for the new experience of receiving public affirmation for their work. Several of the men received an important boost to their self-esteem by seeing their names mentioned and their works featured in a newspaper for something other than criminal behavior. Another artist with a difficult personal history was moved when a guest at the exhibition touched him on the shoulder and told him that he was praying for him.

Many who participate in the Life Recovery art program, after learning how making art together with others grows friendship, alleviates stress, and is lots of fun, have shared with Sue, “This would be a great thing for me to do with my children!” Sue is also hopeful that she is helping people become better parents.

Roger and Sue Trowbridge are members of Lansing: Central UMC, where Sue also teaches art classes.

“The Art of Recovery,” an art exhibit featuring fifty paintings by Sue Trowbridge and twenty paintings by Life Recovery Program participants, will run through January 27, 2024, at the Art Center of Battle Creek (265 E. Emmett St.). The gallery is open to the public on Tuesdays through Thursdays and Saturdays from 11 am to 3 pm. The paintings are for sale, with all proceeds benefiting The Haven of Rest Ministries.