Worship Media Arts

One of the things I enjoy most about my job is that I get to help churches see things from a different perspective. I’ve done a lot of consulting over the years, but recently that’s increased significantly.

As a consultant, I’m usually brought in inspire new models of worship design/implementation. This usually takes place in the form of a two-day seminar. Part two of the process involves me attending worship as a sort of “secret worshiper”, so that I can give the staff a very honest assessment of what is working/not working.

Finally I give suggestions and solutions to the things I’ve identified as needing work in a post-worship lunch session.  Sounds dangerous right?

So far, no one has thrown anything at me, and I’m glad to say that I’ve had nothing but positive feedback.

I recently was looking back at my notes from the consultations done in 2011, and I found that there are some common questions all churches should be asking about their worship. Here they are:

1.)  Where am I supposed to go?

When I arrive at a church I’m consulting with, the first thing I do is walk into the building and to try and figure out where the classrooms and worship areas are. What I’ve found is that most churches forget that the building is foreign territory for a visitor.

Most churches have signage in place, but more often than not, the signage is not very prominent, can be confusing and sometimes can be interpreted as wrong; especially in older churches with lots of additions. Next time you walk into your building, look for your signage. Is it easy to see? Is it clear? Is it right?
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Despite my best efforts as a teacher, it’s sometimes hard to get through to students. This fall I co-taught a graduate level course for Northwest Nazarene University entitled “Communicating Visually”.

One of the most challenging weeks centered around the use of references in design.

A few years ago, Midnight Oil Co-founder Len Wilson and I wrote a book called Design Matters: Creating Powerful Imagery for Worship. In it we spend a lot of time talking about what references are, their benefit to visual communicators, and how to effectively use them. The concept of references was taught to me in commercial art school, and while it’s as clear as can be in my mind, my students this year had a hard time grasping the concept. I wrote a followup post to give them a more complete description, which I’m told made everything much more clear.

I thought that post might be helpful for other budding designers out there, so I decided to repost it here on the blog. Here it is: Read the rest of this entry »

Like so many others, I was shocked at the news of Steve Job’s passing. He’s kind of a hero of ours here at Midnight Oil. All throughout our history, we’ve looked at how Apple has done things and we’ve attempted in our own feeble ways to be our own mini Apple. We even spoke in black mock turtlenecks for a few years.

While it might be an exaggeration to say that our ministry wouldn’t have existed without Steve Jobs, it certainly would have been much harder, and a lot less fun to do what we’ve done without Apple’s hardware and software. We’re forever grateful for Steve’s commitment to creativity, team and excellence. We’ve been and continue to be completely inspired by his accomplishments.

A while back, I collected some of Steve’s quotes about the process of team collaboration. I think the church can learn a ton from his philosophy. Here are two quotes that I really resonated with when thinking about the church:

“You know how many committee’s we have at Apple? Zero. We’re organized like a startup.” [Each person is in charge of their piece] “We all meet 3 hours a week and we talk about everything we’re doing; the whole business. And there’s tremendous teamwork at the top of the company which filters down to tremendous teamwork throughout the company”. -Steve Jobs

and…

“Teamwork is dependent on trusting the other folks to come through with their part without watching them all the time.” -Steve Jobs

Those quotes were going to be a jumping off point for me for another post, but now that Steve has passed away, I’m thinking more about his overall life philosophies and the impact they could have on our ministries if we care to enact them. Here’s something I read last night that I thought was powerful:

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something: your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and has made all the difference in my life.” -Steve Jobs

Steve wouldn’t have named that “something” the Holy Spirit, but I believe his quote is a very accurate description of what I’ve seen the Spirit has do in my life over 10 years at Midnight Oil. It goes back further than that to when I was began ministry as a part-time intern at Ginghamsburg United Methodist Church.

If you connect the dots that the Spirit has laid out in your life, can you see God’s preferred and blessed future out ahead of you? I hope so.

The last 12 months have been some of the most challenging times I’ve lived. I lost sight of the dots a few times. The last 6 months or more I’m seeing those dots pretty clearly and while I love Steve’s thoughts on the matter, I believe with the Spirit’s presence in your life, you can see a few of the dots out ahead of you. If you’re in tune with the Spirit, you don’t have to wait until the thing has passed to figure it all out.

Steve, your passing has so many of us reflecting, me included. Thank you for always living your dream. It allowed so many of us to live our own.

Eternally gratful,

Jason Moore

Midnight Oil

Does your worship begin with “popcorn time”?

What is “popcorn time” you ask? Good question.

Before 1955, there was a reoccurring problem at the beginning of feature films. Much like today, films began with credits introducing the cast and eventually the title of each film. The problem was that opening titles were basically devoid of creativity. In fact, audiences and projectionists resented them.

Film producers went so far as to imprint a note on film reels requesting that the projectionist “pull curtains before title”, as they’d often wait until the main title came up to open the curtains to reveal the screen.

As you can imagine, audiences would typically wait until the opening titles were over to pay attention to what was happening on the screen. It created an environment where moviegoers would spend the first several minutes of a film buying and munching away on popcorn, until a film’s title was revealed and the narrative began.

This all changed when “The Man With the Golden Arm” came out in 1955. It began in what was then an unconventional/paradigm-shifting way, where the titles were done not just with text, but with moving graphic elements. Graphic artist Saul Bass created for that film what is now know as “the title sequence”.  You can see it here:

Simple by today’s standards, this title sequence ushered in a whole new method of storytelling that has continued on into today’s summer blockbusters.

Saul believed that the opening titles could be used to set a mood that would invite viewers in to the underlying core of a film’s story.  He saw opening titles as a metaphorical extension of a film’s narrative.

Bass described title sequences like this: “I saw the title as a way of conditioning the audience, so that when the film actually began, viewers would already have an emotional resonance with it.”

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Introducing our newest thematic Easter media set: Stained

This inspiring media collection tells the story of Jesus’ journey to the cross and ultimate resurrection through images of stained glass.

For centuries, broken pieces of colorful glass have been used to portray the stories of Jesus.
Yet for all of its familiarity, stained glass has much to teach us.

The beauty of stained glass is not in the individual pieces. When seen by themselves, these segments do nothing. But when seen as a complete image, with light shining through, they transform into something beautiful.

Check out the full resource here.

Read on for additional creative elements used in the service.
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