From Catechism to Comic strip

The congregation of Makati, which has an average Sunday attendance of about 120 people, has a unique demographic problem: while there is much talk of aging congregations in Europe, the situation in the Philippines is exactly the opposite. The vast majority of the members here are very young. For Urs Hebeisen, the District Apostle of the region of South East Asia, it is clear: “Young people need some freedom to be creative! We let them work, and observe the results.”

The congregation is located in the heart of the capital region of “Metro Manila” , but in the city quarter of Bangkal. And this area does not exactly represent the economic and financial hub for which the metropolis of Makati, with its 500,000 inhabitants, is actually known. “Barely anyone here reads Catechism books,” says the District Apostle. “And nevertheless, all of them are very interested in learning. And the best way to do that is through pictures.”

Coming to grips with the Catechism

It was against this backdrop that the young people set about the task of dissecting the central textbook of the New Apostolic Church in their own unique way: following a divine service, they occupied themselves with Chapter 4 of the Catechism, under the direction of the freshly ordained Priest Florante Alandria.

The focus here was on the question of how human beings can best make use of their conscience, reason, and faith in order to protect themselves from sin and decide against evil. “It was a lively discussion,” it says on the youth website of the Philippines. This was because the participants not only posed a lot of questions, but also because they supplied a great many answers.

Application in the reality of daily life

In the second part of their event, the young people took that which they had learned and illustrated it in situations that reflected daily life. The idea of doing this in the form of a comic strip came from Deacon Samuel Hebeisen. He earns his living by providing graphic and computer services, and had put together some corresponding possibilities ahead of time.

The creative worked followed a clear roadmap: the first thing to do was to create a kind of theatre piece from the spiritual content. This story was then divided up into individual scenes with the objective of expressing a succinct message in each one. Then the scenes were sketched out on paper. This is how the “storyboard”—which was subsequently acted out in real life and photographed frame by frame—came into being.

Implementation with some technical help

In order to put the content into a comic strip, the young people made use of various technical tools: some photo editing software—which included corresponding scripts and distortion filters—was put to use to create the graphic illustration. The typical comic strip layout, which included speech balloons, was produced with the help of another special kind of computer program. And the internet freely supplied appropriate fonts and wallpapers.

The young people even applied the “green screen” method familiar from film and television. Photos were taken in front of a green screen where necessary, in order to make it easier to set various subjects in front of background pictures. But in the process, Deacon Hebeisen made the experience that, with the high resolution typical of today’s digital cameras, the subjects appearing in the photos could just as easily be cut out and combined with the background photos without using this trick.

An open-ended experiment

The young people completed several chapters in two languages, some of them in different versions. They were more than satisfied with the results. The work brought them a lot of joy, which they ultimately also intend to share with others. The comic strips, along with photos chronicling their development, went online the same day they were created.

And what does the District Apostle have to say about this? “The question of whether I personally enjoy these comic strips is not relevant,” says Urs Hebeisen with a smile. “At the moment, this is just the start. And I do not know exactly where it will lead. It is an experiment. However, I see in it a great potential for a kind of ‘bottom-to-top training’. After all, the New Apostolic Church in the Philippines is a ‘Church of youth'”. And in view of the unbridled population growth in the country, it will probably remain so for quite a while to come.