Think about the typical church, the type that has murals. Really old and intricate, full of traditional scenes, right? Well, one Alabama church has gone for a more modern approach.
As reported by People, the Good Shepherd United Methodist Church in Madison, Alabama has gone viral. This comes after a video was shared online of the church's unusual murals.
The characters plastered on the walls include "Air Moses" flying through the air with a flaming basketball, as well as "Pickleball Paul" playing the very modern pastime with a racket emblazoned with a cross.
Andie Williams was helping coach her son's soccer team when she spotted the murals and decided to post them online. The post was captioned "Tell me you're practicing in a church gym".
She explained her decision to post it online. "I got home and thought, I'm just going to post this and see if my friends think it's funny. And the next morning, it already had 20,000 views on it."
Atlanta-based artist Chad Camp is behind the viral murals. The original one was "Air Moses", which was painted in 2006. The next one was "Pickleball Paul", which was painted about 2 years ago. The muralist is the pastor's ex-husband.
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The Pastor Explained Why the Murals Were Painted in the Church
Brittany Dawkins-Camp, the pastor of the church, explained why the murals were painted there in the first place. "We had just launched the Upwards Sports basketball program at our church, and we wanted something fun on the wall, something that people would get a kick out of, something kind of iconic, and so we went with the 'Air Moses'."
She added that "Pickleball Paul" was put there "because our church started a community pickleball league that plays three days a week in the gym, and we just wanted something to represent them."
Dawkins-Camp has also shared that she is very excited that her church has had a viral moment online. "We actually played [the clip] at worship last week... It's just been really fun for our congregation to see that the heartbeat of our church is to be right in our community. It's been fun to watch that go viral, and for people to love our murals as much as we do."
What a great thing!
