ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, April 9, 1997 TAG: 9704090006
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: CHAGRIN FALLS, OHIO
SOURCE: CHARLENE NEVADA KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
A minister's wife is taking on a heavy responsibility in creating the Jesus Doll.
A Cleveland-area minister's wife has walked in the shoes of the masters.
After all, creating the likeness of Jesus - whether it's using a brush on canvas during the Renaissance or a needle in the '90s to stitch a doll - is a heavy responsibility.
``The image of Jesus is a really powerful thing,'' Brenda Grauer said in explaining the humility, fear and commitment that went into making the Jesus Doll, a 25-inch soft sculpture that some might liken to a Cabbage Patch Jesus.
The doll wears a wine-colored robe, sandals, has a braided beard, shoulder-length hair and extra-big hands - all the better for the faithful to grasp.
It is being sold nationally by Cokesbury Christian bookstores.
For Grauer, the owner of In Stitches Liturgical Art in Chagrin Falls, the national marketing of the doll is the culmination of four years of worry and work.
It all began with a dream.
Grauer is a former theological student turned seamstress and business owner who awakened one night with a vision of a Jesus doll.
``It made perfect sense to me,'' she says. ``It was a wonderful idea for helping people to visualize faith.
``But, in the morning, when I woke up, I thought, `Oh dear, I don't think anybody has ever done a Jesus doll before. I don't think I can do that.'''
And for eight months, she agonized with the idea, wrestling over the awesome responsibility of creating the likeness of Christ.
Finally, she made a prototype doll and took it to a Christian education conference in Dallas, where she trusted the feedback. The response was so overwhelmingly favorable she returned home and spent the next 2 1/2years stitching away in her studio. But no matter how many of the dolls she made, she was always eight months behind in orders.
So, when Cokesbury bookstores - the retailing arm of the United Methodist Publishing House - said it wanted to put the dolls in its 70 stores, she went looking for a mass producer.
The first 4,000 dolls manufactured by Commonwealth Toys are about gone. The next order of 10,000 is in production. While the dolls are made in New York, they are shipped back to Chagrin Falls for the final touches - hair trimming, eye sculpting and dressing.
They sell for $65, and what has been overwhelming to Grauer is the uses she is hearing about.
A minister from the Philadelphia area wrote to say she had one of the dolls in her office when a distraught parishioner stopped by. His sister had just been diagnosed with advanced cancer. The man's eye caught the doll, so the minister picked it up and handed it to him. As he talked about his sister, he hugged the doll.
The dolls are also being widely accepted in nursing homes and hospices, Grauer said - places where people are typically cut off from their community of faith.
She said chaplains are taking the dolls to the bedside of people facing surgery and are being used to explain prayer to children (``You know, you simply talk to Jesus'').
Some churches, according to Grauer, have included a diary with the doll and it visits different families each week. Each time an entry is added to the diary, stories of faith accompany the doll.
Grauer, whose husband, Donald, is a Presbyterian minister in Chagrin Falls, considers the dolls her own ministry.
She remembers the anxiety in re-creating the face of a deity.
She considered every aspect of the doll, including the skin tone of the face. She didn't want a blue-eyed, blond-haired Jesus. But she didn't want a black one either. She settled on a Middle-Eastern tone.
Today, she calls creating what she believes is the one-and-only mass-produced Jesus doll the boldest step in her career, if not her life.
In addition to the Cokesbury stores and some independent Christian stores, the Jesus Doll can be ordered ($65, plus $4 handling) from Stitches, 17092 Sunset Drive, Chagrin Falls, Ohio 44023.
LENGTH: Medium: 82 linesby CNB