When I was ten years old I purchased my very own edition of the Good News Bible. As was tradition in my childhood, I had received Bible bookshop tokens for Sunday School attendance which allowed me to choose anything I wanted. Raised in a functionally King James Version Only context, the Good News Bible felt simultanaeously alive and subversive, a Bible in language that I could readily connect with but that I could not publicly celebrate. It is hard to convey how new the Scriptures seemed to me when I opened that blue-covered volume, how accessible and normal it felt to read, having come from a background where God and his work were associated with the archaic and opaque, with words and phrases that were historically removed from how everyone around me spoke and wrote. My fledgling love for English language and literature were quite possibly further awakened by the immediacy and clarity of English idiom that the translators chose to use.
Perhaps just as great as this linguistic newness, however, was the inclusion of the unique line-drawings that the Good News Bible liberally scattered throughout its pages. Far from the mock-Rennaissance and slightly Watchtower-esque imagery that my children’s Bibles had contained up to this point, these pieces of simple art enhanced the reading of the text and seemed to be firmly tuned to the tenor of Scripture and its individual authors. Their emotional range and narrative fidelity clearly communicated that the illustrator had spent time getting into the grain of what God had said, and that these straightforward pieces sprang from a place of devotion and reverance. I am not sure that I could have articulated all of this at 10 years of age but the power of the pieces came home to me forcibly and faithfully.
Only later in life did I learn about the artist, Anne Marie Vallotton, and the painstaking processes that lay behind her work. Vallotton’s own biography reads like the stuff of fiction. Coming from a heritage of theologians, pastors and artists, her early adulthood was spent as part of the World War II Resistance in Europe, ferrying mail across Switzerland on behalf of those withstanding the Nazis. Perhaps most striking was Vallotton’s deeply personal faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and her desire to make him known through the gifting that she had been given.
Given the influence of Vallotton’s work (her art appears in most of the 225 million copies of the Good News Bible sold worldwide) it is beneficial to think through some of the lessons that her example of devotion to Jesus and his truth provide for us. Below I suggest three of many that could be drawn from her life and work:
Art as ministry
I recently posted on my social media about the impact of the Good News Bible on my life, and particularly its accompanying art. The response from friends and strangers was fascinating: the simple inclusion of a sample of Vallotton’s art was deeply evocative for a whole generation of Christians who immediately found themselves transported to a time in their discipleship when her work affected them. Many cited the emotional depth and deep reverance of the imagery Vallotton produced as well as its effectiveness in reflecting the biblical text.
None of this was by accident on the artist’s part. As will be shown below, much of this intensity was realised through disciplined work on the drawings but it also sprang from a long term concern to use artistic gifting as a means of reaching the hearts of other people.
Prior to illustrating the Good News Bible, Vallotton had worked in a refugee centre in Toulouse and had produced wall murals to make the place more welcoming for people whose arrival was the result of trauma and displacement. For Anne Marie, art could serve the soul as well as the eyes and minister to the deepest areas of people’s lives even in extremity.
This approach is carried over into the Good News Bible. Vallotton saw her work as ministerial, as a service to the reader who wanted to get to the heart and spirit of the text. This meant that each line was purpose-designed to help others, to minister alongside the word of God and to serve as a pointer to the beauty and profundity of the Scriptural message.
This can be an encouragement to those whose gifts in the church lie within the creative field. Whether it is simple line drawings, high level modern art, music composition sacred and secular, or writing that encompasses Christian, non-Christian, poetry and prose, fiction and non-fiction, exercising one’s artistic gifts can be a great means of ministering to others – helping them to see in new ways and feel in a fresh sense what the world and God himself are all about. This should encourage Christian creatives but also keep them alive to the ministerial element that can (and should) accompany creativity.
Depth in simplicity
The simplicity of Vallotton’s drawings was also no accident, nor was it representative of an absence of technical skill. It was, instead, a studied simplicity, a refined style that self-consciously sought to portray the world and message of Scripture in an immediate and accessible style. Of her drawings Vallotton stated, “I wanted to simplify them the most I could. I wanted to get to the truth… the most important thing!” The artist saw simplicity as a means of reaching depth, of mining the treasure of Scripture truth, of allowing access to the rich seam of what Scripture communicates.
Undoubtedly, God can be served and glorified both through simplicity and complexity. The furthest reaches of literary virtuosity can, in the right hands, testify to God’s majesty and transcendent logic. The echoes of quantum mechanics in the universe when researched by humanity’s greatest minds can open up a world of wonder and even of worship. But Vallotton’s insistence on simplicity, her lack of self-consciousness that she was essentially producing enhanced stick-drawings allowed her to bring her art very close to the heart of how and what God had said. Hers was a submission of skill and emotional intelligence to the tone of Scripture and the needs of the reader – a philosophy of art whose effectiveness abides today in modern editions of the Good News Bible.
Undoubtedly authors and artists can learn much from this approach but so can preachers. In a world of enriched theological bibliographies and of assumed technical vocabularies, Vallotton can rescue us from obscurantism and opaque scholarship. The art of the Good News Bible shows that depth and simplicity can be successfully combined, that one can spend many hours in the warp and weft of the text of Scripture, discerning its logic, context and original application and emerge with work which allows others in on the wonderful realities of what God has said. There can be a temptation for preachers (perhaps especially in our information rich age) to believe that technical language is a mark of depth and learning. In the right context that can certainly be the case but for those of us charged with teaching God’s word to ordinary church members and attendees taking a little bit of Anne Marie Vallotton’s medicine might do us much good. The best preachers I have heard, those who have done my soul most good, are those individuals who have dwelt long enough and deep enough with God and his words that they can speak to me with a simplicity which takes me right to the Lord’s thoughts without the ecumbrance of show or pseudo-scholarly terms. Vallotton’s drawings show that depth and simplicity can make the very best of partnerships when conveying the truth of God’s word.
Growth through humility
A final lesson from Anne Marie Vallotton is implicit in the previous two points – that humility can be (and normally is) the best route to growth. The 500 drawings originally produced for the Good News Bible entailed some being redrawn up to 90 times each before Vallotton felt that they captured what she had conceived in her mind. This drafting and redrafting speaks to the skill involved in her work but also to her submission to a process which would render the best results for readers. Being willing to revisit and redraw her initial attempts at capturing truth mean that even today we can be disarmed by the accessiblility and faithfulness of what was produced. It requires humility to submit one’s artistic skills to the painful processes of reiteration and revision, but the end results carry something beyond the sum of their parts, a kind of distilled ministry.
This humility ought to characterise every creative and ministerial endeavour for the Lord. Setting the glory of his name and good of his people at the heart of how we fulfil the tasks and gifts assigned to us allows us to grow in the grace of what we have been given to do but also carries the resonances of that humility into the work itself. A growing Christian artist, sculptor, preacher or poet, musician or composer can crucify pride by submitting their work to hard pruning and self-critcism, with the desire that their growth in skill might lead to work which openly and powerfully allows others in to the story of God’s work and the gospel.
Conclusion
Arguably as much as any popular 20th century artist, Anne Marie Vallotton’s creative work has helped people to engage with God’s word in fresh, faithful and imaginative ways. Her legacy lives beyond her actual works and extends into the ethos of how we communicate about God from a Christian worldview, regardless of the discipline or medium we are engaged with. Submitting our gifts to the grace of God and the good of others, refining our skills for ministerial effectiveness and embracing simplicity as a route to depth are great principles for exercising good stewardship over the abilities and responsiblities given to us by God himself.
Thinking Pastorally 
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