This is not necessarily a reflection of the new ELW hymnal, but I’m increasingly troubled by the available artwork for bulletin covers through the SundaysandSeasons.com web portal. This year the stick figure drawings look even more like cartoons.
Please understand: I am all for artwork that gets us to think in new ways about God and the Christian faith. Yet this new series makes the regular service bulletin cover look like a children’s bulletin. I can’t help but imagine that this has an effect on piety in the long run.
In our congregation, we don’t really use the current S&S artwork in worship. We have, actually, been using it during Sunday School opening as a daily image to accompany the Scripture lesson. We print it out very large and then post it on a banner. This, of course, supports your statement that they look like cartoons. I have noticed that this year’s artwork looks less “conceptual” and abstract than other years’ have.