Creating Cool Titles for Your Worship Services
Earth Movers, for a focus on the power of service in the name of Christ
Family Matters, for a focus on the issues related to the importance of family
Grains of Truth, for a focus on Mark 2:23ff, when the disciples eat grain on the Sabbath
True Colors, for a focus on Jesus as light of the world, using the spectrum as a metaphor
Firewall, for a focus on erecting barriers to sin in our lives
Do you title your service? Similar to a sermon title, a service title appears on all major communiques throughout the Sunday morning experience such as screen imagery, bulletin covers, signage, and digital and print banners. It is often less informational and more connectional than a sermon title. A good title focuses the congregation’s attention on the topic of the day in an engaging and memorable way.
Take “Firewall” for example. “Firewall” is a great title. It has wonderful double entendres that connote both ancient and new meanings. It refers to the power of a wall in ancient time, acting as a safeguard to dark forces. “Fire” clearly has biblical connotations to sin and destruction. Yet the title is also highly contemporary and relevant, referring to the barrier our web server computers erect to malicious viruses and attacks.
Good titles are really important in visual communication. We can learn a lot from advertising in this regard. Â A recent issue of Wired (October 2009) did a small contest on this. If you are not familiar with the magazine, on every issue’s cover, they place a small tagline that captures the concept of the main feature. It’s a fun and pithy zinger that plays off the content. This issue’s cover feature was on craiglist, the online classified ad marketplace, and how the site has resisted improvements in web design. They called theirs “It’s Classified” and ran a contest asking for people to submit better options. The winner was “Ad Hoc”, which is just awesome – it captures the lack of overt company direction in their web design strategy and also captures the nature of craiglist’s business: to offer ads for people to sell, or “hoc”, their products.
Believe it or not, even though we’re discussing text, thinking this way about titles is another form of communicating visually. Instead of using language in an analytical, descontructive, academic fashion, we are using language to intrigue, and to create a sense of mystery and surprise. A creative “a-ha” moment that engages the reader / viewer and invites them into a deeper discussion of the topic at hand.
What are some cool titles you have used in worship design and preparation?
osborn4 said,
Wrote on January 21, 2010 @ 7:40 am
One of my favorites was “Great or Grating?”, a sermon on how to be great in God’s kingdom. We even included a game show for congregation participation. Let me tell you, if you’re used to doing subtle, restrained graphics, to get to do a game show motif is a blast!
More recently, our pastor did a sermon on the premise that an open door does not necessarily indicate God’s will or God’s path for you. So we named the sermon “When is a door not a door?”
Mike said,
Wrote on January 21, 2010 @ 8:31 am
This past month we’ve been talking about how God has big plans for your life and that you can achieve more than you think you can when you put your life in His hands. So we’ve used the idea of Transformers for the metaphor and used the new movies for movie clip illustrations. We used the same basic font and look of the Transformers movie title and named the series “TRANSFORMATION” and subtitled it “You’re More Than Meets the Eye”. Individual sermon titles for this series were “Prime for Change”, “Shape Shifters”, “More Than Meets the Eye”, and “The Optimal Life”.
Richard Williams said,
Wrote on January 21, 2010 @ 9:35 am
Best one I remember has to be: “Shaken, not Stirred” which was a Good Friday message on the Roman guards at the crucifixion, and how we, like them, can become unmoved by the cross. The allusion to 007 was a tad controversial, but the reference to the earthquake did connect.
osborn4 said,
Wrote on January 28, 2010 @ 2:27 pm
Pastor preached on how we need to expand our church to fit more people, if we really want to reach out. We title the sermon “Razing the Roof”.
Mistake. Many people didn’t get it. They thought I misspelled Raising.