Meet the Leaders

• 

  Ian Collinge

  Ian loves to worship God using music from around the world. When Ian and his family lived in the Himalayas, he learned instruments, composed in local styles and helped indigenous churches express Christian worship in their own way—it became natural to sing indigenous songs when chatting with people!
  

  In the UK, Ian has helped develop multicultural worship in his former local church and others, starting a multicultural band in 2011. As an ethnodoxologist, Ian teaches on world worship music at All Nations College and London School of Theology. Ian and Helen lead Arts Release, aiming to raise up artists for cross-cultural ministry.

• 

  Helen Collinge

  Helen came to know Jesus through the West End musical Godspell and is a committed champion of the arts. With Ian, she joined WEC in 1987 and for several years lived and brought up the family in Asia. They have three married, adult children and two grandsons. IN 2008, Helen and Ian started the Arts Release ministry, with Helen overseeing administration, hospitality, logistics, prayer and pastoral care. She loves multicultural worship and enjoys and encourages all other art disciplines. Helen is a natural networker and likes to be involved with refugees and asylum seekers.

• 

  Birte Papenhausen

  In many ways, Arts Release Drama is Birte’s dream job since it combines three of her passions: drama, theology and culture. From a young age Birte loved drama, and had many different experiences, including in professional playhouses. She studied drama therapy in the Netherlands. Eleven years of missionary work in Mongolia led to a firm conviction that drama is a powerful tool to evangelise, teach and disciple. From 2010 Birte has been performing and teaching all over the world with a vision to enable locals and missionaries to use drama forms appropriate to their culture to help audiences grow in their personal relationship with God.

• 

  Tim Fung

  Tim and Fiona are part of a church in Normandy, France. Before that they were missionaries in Chad, Africa, for 8 years. Tim is a worship leader. Being of mixed cultural backgrounds himself, he loves fusions of music styles. He joined the first WEC multicultural worship band and caught the bug for releasing heart worship through expressions that most profoundly represent the diversity of God’s people. In 2012, God called him to start Arts Release in France and among French-speaking peoples. He loves facilitating times when God brings into being new songs. He uses multicultural music for outreach and deepening true fellowship within the church community.

• 

  Fiona Fung

  Most of Fiona’s childhood was spent in Congo (Zaire) and Zambia as a child of missionaries. Being called to mission, She and Tim worked in Chad, Africa, for 8 years, where she learnt many essential life lessons in her walk with God in the desert. Now, in France, she has been able to develop her artistic gifts, painting and using art to provoke opportunities to share her faith. She is exploring the role of art in the church, as worship and for healing. Together with Arts Release colleagues, she recently helped organize and contributed works to an international arts exhibition in the European City of Culture 2016, San Sebastián/Donostia.

• 

  Juan and Ainara Arvelo

  Juan and Ainara live in the Basque Country, Spain along with their children Alain and Araia, advocating the use of arts in ministry. They desire to see local Christian artists empowered to use their talents to worship God and reach out to others. Both have been involved with the arts since 2012 when they organized the first ever song writing workshop in the Basque community. They have also been involved with “Welcome Donostia,” an art competition celebrated the same year that their city was the European cultural capital. Juan is currently enrolled in an MA with a major in world arts at Dallas International University and look forward to putting into practice everything he is learning.