An expansive mural on Sycamore Creek UMC’s Eastwood building has become a bold symbol of the church’s evolution as an arts hub on Lansing’s north side.
JAMES DEATON
Content Editor
On Friday, August 22, 2025, the Stage One Performing Arts Center in Lansing unveiled a brand-new external mural for its building. Stage One is the name of the community arts center ministry created by Sycamore Creek UMC for its Eastwood campus.
Watch this video to see the mural from above.
In two short years, Stage One has become a beacon of creativity, drawing in multiple partners from a wide range of artistic media. This new abstract mural by local artist Dustin Hunt proudly marks the arts center as an expression of the relationships that have been built between the United Methodist congregation and its creative partners.
“This is more than a fresh coat of paint — it’s a public declaration of who we are and the kind of world we’re building together,” said Rev. Tom Arthur at the August 22 ribbon-cutting event. “We hope Stage One at Sycamore Creek Eastwood becomes a new landmark for the northeast side of Lansing and a visual invitation for everyone to be part of our community.”
The Stage One facility is the former Asbury UMC church building. Sycamore Creek adopted Asbury UMC in 2022 and established their third campus at this location. The new congregation emerged and grew as they settled into the neighborhood and began to understand the community’s needs better.
Church leadership cast a vision for the Eastwood campus that included the renovation of the church building for the purpose of inviting community partners in to create an arts center, something that was sorely needed in Lansing.
Dreaming up Stage One was a holy opportunity for this new church to think outside the box and do ministry differently, and the blessings have returned sevenfold.
Stage One has a 150-seat flexible venue for theater productions, dance groups, musical concerts, comedy troupes, and other community events. There are several anchor partners, including Peppermint Creek Theatre Company, Ixion Ensemble Theatre, The Good Neighbor Concert Series, Quality Scary, and Happendance.
The building’s spaces are open for others to rent as well. The church’s basement serves as an incubator kitchen for local startups, including businesses that can provide catering for events. Read this earlier news article to learn more about the genesis of Stage One.
The bright colors that now wrap the mid-century brick and stone are arresting for the casual passerby driving down Lake Lansing Road. In many ways, that’s the point, but the reasons why Sycamore Creek UMC initiated this dramatic physical transformation run much deeper.
On one level, the mural is helping to make the invisible visible. As Sycamore Creek and their artistic partners at Stage One continued to make the inside spaces desirable and accommodating for various groups, one of the challenges noted early on was the need to improve visibility.
Chad Swan-Badgero, Artistic Director of Peppermint Creek Theatre Company, one of the anchor partners of Stage One, noted that patrons utilizing the venue often commented they had a hard time finding it. Sycamore Creek made improvements by cutting down some trees and working on better signage, but the building still seemed hard to notice.
“The building sits on a busy road across the street from a highly visible outdoor mall, and people were driving right by it,” said Swan-Badgero. “So, I brought the idea of putting a mural on the building to Tom. It started as a discussion about public art and how we can use public art to make this building more visible.”
Chad has worked for the Michigan Arts and Culture Council and has seen how murals really draw people’s attention. Murals can also become a popular destination, with people coming from great distances to see them.
Pastor Tom was captivated by the idea and took it back to Sycamore Creek and discussed it with church leadership. The church board was supportive, and Tom and the Eastwood campus began to have conversations with Stage One partners on what kind of mural would be suitable.
Dustin Hunt of Muralmatics is a well-respected mural artist in the Lansing area. Chad approached him to gauge his interest in taking on a project of this nature and size. This was quite an undertaking, as it became the largest mural he’d ever created.
Pastor Tom and Chad brought Dustin in to give him a tour of the Stage One facility. Dustin saw how the building has evolved, and in his words, said it’s much more like a community center. As they walked Dustin around the outside of the building, Pastor Tom and Chad explained Stage One’s vision and the creative challenge before them.
It’s part visibility, part identity branding. “We have the conundrum of a church owning a church building and yet being hospitable and welcoming to everyone — all arts, all groups, all arts groups, but also the community beyond just a church,” explained Swan-Badgero.
The mural they needed would be eye-catching, but it would also give them a conversation starter, an entrée into the story of Stage One. Dustin caught the vision and understood what was needed to depict this beautiful partnership and what it has become.
There’s a creative synergy that has infused the relationships between Sycamore Creek Eastwood and their partners, enabling them to accomplish something bigger and better than what they could do alone.
Pastor Tom said, “This is a story of building relationships, of serving people, of serving groups, of learning so much about the community that you find a niche that there wasn’t a 150-seat performing arts center for artists that we had established relationships with. By letting those people make decisions about the building that better serve their needs, you build trust.”
Sycamore Creek Eastwood’s inclusive spirit of welcome has drawn artists, theater people, members of the LGBTQ+ community, among others. “We’re serving the arts community the way they are,” noted Pastor Tom. “It’s all about cultivating relationships and then having an open-handed posture and culture with the stuff that you own or have to share it with those people.”
For this congregation, creating Stage One and christening it with this new mural is doing the work of Jesus, but that path of discipleship isn’t easy. Pastor Tom notes the distrust that some people and groups within the arts community have of the church. They wonder: Is this a safe space for me? Building trust is where a congregation must start, but then it goes further. It’s adapting to culture shifts, being flexible, letting go, and embracing challenges and inconveniences as part of our calling as Christians.
“Worshiping in a theater every week takes extra time to set up and tear down,” explains Pastor Tom, “but you absorb that because that’s the mission of the church. Making disciples of Jesus is inviting people into the space and sharing it with them. I think many churches, and people in general, get territorial and don’t want people coming in. I get that, but the building isn’t the church; it’s the people wherever they gather. Our congregation had a lot of experience doing that because we’ve done church in a diner, church in a pub, church in a zoo. So, we’ve turned a church into a performing arts center where the church gathers on Sunday morning.”
Chad Swan-Badgero of Peppermint Creek expresses deep appreciation for Sycamore Creek and the way they’ve included Stage One partners in the decision-making process for the mural and other matters. It’s a generosity of spirit that he’s longed for in the Lansing community.
“Until Stage One, we have been solely renters in any venue we’ve been in and always felt very much on our own,” said Swan-Badgero. “So, this is the first time in 30 years when we could call something our home, that we could say we were working in partnership with another organization that was looking out for us as much as we were looking out for ourselves, and particularly that was a champion for the work we were doing.”
He continued, “No other building, no other landlord, no other organization, and certainly no other church has ever exhibited this before. Sycamore Creek is unique and a pure unicorn in that regard. We’ve never been treated with such care and compassion before.”
Dustin Hunt’s mural has become an identity marker for Stage One and the congregation of Sycamore Creek Eastwood. It’s symbolic of what goes on inside the building. The design is meant to be abstract, open for interpretation in the eye of the beholder. Some see a creek or river, some see fish swimming together, some see the branding colors of partners merging.
In a note to the congregation of Sycamore Creek Eastwood announcing the new mural, Pastor Tom said, “The mural will spark curiosity. It will raise questions. It might even create tension. And that’s okay. You might have hoped for something more literal, a mural of dancers or musicians or scenes from the community. And if what you see catches you off guard or unsettles you a bit, I want to invite you into a holy act: just describe what you see.”
Last Updated on September 16, 2025