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| Ann Laird Jones |
“I feel like the shepherds maybe felt when they saw all those angels bouncing off the mountains with complete joy every time I think about the conversation we are exploring between arts and theology at Montreat,” says Jones in anticipation of her new role.
“This conversation has always been a part of who I am. I have worked in Montreat since 1966, when my father first began directing Board of National Ministries Conferences, and I made the coffee in the Auditorium. For the past eighteen years, I have followed in my mother’s footsteps as Director of the Arts Ministry Program at Montreat at the Currie Craft Center and Sally Jones Pottery. Today, I am thrilled to continue a love affair with Montreat Conference Center as I answer what I believe to be a clear call to deepen the conversation between arts and theology as a part of the Center for Faith and Life. Through exploration of the arts, we envision new means of conferencing and worship in the Montreat community, theological institutions, presbyteries, congregations, and the wider church.”
Jones, an ordained Presbyterian minister serving as supply minister in a number of churches, also teaches high school art in Greenville, Mississippi. She has directed the summer art ministry at the Currie Craft Center and Sally Jones Pottery at Montreat every summer since 1994.
Her background as a campus chaplain and interim youth director in a variety of churches and her success as an accomplished potter, musician, and teacher, seasoned with her incredible energy and charisma, have made her a popular Montreat leader. Both children and adults are drawn to her ability to make creativity contagious and to use art as a spiritual tool in understanding the world and their place in it.
Merri S. Alexander, Vice President for the Center for Faith and Life at Montreat Conference Center looks forward to working with and through Jones:
“We are pleased to have Ann Jones as our Director of Arts Ministry. Through her careful guidance we expect to incorporate more visual arts in our summer Sunday worship as well as the major adult conferences. She brings a wealth of experience in arts and theology to Montreat and models ways the visual arts can be easily incorporated in worship. Ann’s commitment to Montreat’s arts ministry is surely in her DNA. We expect to expand our Artists’ Series conference offerings in the spring and fall each year. We are also developing new programs for 2013 that will focus on Worship and the Arts to help pastors, worship leaders, and musicians prepare for the seasons of Advent and Lent.”
Dr. Jones says she is very excited about all the possibilities: “No place on earth feels closer than Montreat to being a ‘homeplace’ that I know inside and out. And, yet, as well as I know Montreat, this position opens a whole new side of Montreat for me, filled with new ideas, new people, brimming with excitement and creative possibilities as we explore the arts and worship together.”
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