Worship Media Arts

Via Wired magazine, this nugget from science fiction writer Cory Doctorow: “thinking like a dandelion.”

Doctorow writes: “The disposition of each?Äîor even most?Äîof the seeds isn’t the important thing, from a dandelion’s point of view. The important thing is that every spring, every crack in every pavement is filled with dandelions. The dandelion doesn’t want to nurse a single precious copy of itself in the hopes that it will leave the nest and carefully navigate its way to the optimum growing environment, there to perpetuate the line. The dandelion just wants to be sure that every single opportunity for reproduction is exploited!”

What does this have to do with worship, design, and art?

Creative people produce.

Not just a little, either. Creative people both tend to and need to produce a lot. This is one of the secrets to sustained creativity.

Most creative types tend to produce a lot anyway. But some anguish over their productions, constantly tweaking and never finishing. George Lucas is famous for having said he never finishes a project, he just stops working on it.

Creative types need abundance, because they need to see what grows. It’s important to keep cranking out ideas. Some will grow and take on a life of their own, and some will die. In fact, most will die. But from the abundance of ideas will emerge a few brilliant ideas.

An old art teacher of Jason’s was famous for constantly repeating his personal montra, “Quality, Not Quantity”. While his art teacher was right that quality is important, being committed to creating a good quantity of work is important for growth. The more you produce, the more you grow, and the better you get. There is a certain freedom in knowing not every work has to be a masterpiece, but that each piece contributes in some way to future masterpieces.

Let those creative seeds fly and see what grows!

The world of media, art and communication in worship has changed dramatically since we began Midnight Oil over seven years ago.

Part of our reason for starting this ministry was to help churches of all sizes and styles to understand how to communicate the gospel visually. Back in the day, if a “regular” church had a screen at all, it was a pretty big deal. Of course, all of that changed about 5 years ago, when the mainstream greeted the early adopters and the¬?church media industry seemingly sprang up overnight. But as we say in our Creative Worship seminar, churches everywhere got their projectors in place and then looked at their blue screens and said, “Uh oh… now what?”

With little theological, communications and design expertise brought to bear on visual presentation, worshippers everywhere have been subjected to an endless parade of bad ’90s corporate boardroom presentations, nature footage, Holy Blobs of Color, random ancient icons, disconnected mini-movies, and most recently, Holy Flower Gardens.

We think there’s greater power for the screen than what we as the Church have been doing. We think it’s time for the end of worship media as we know it, and time for a deeper theological and philosophical understanding of how we communicate. Let’s ditch the background approach and the illustrated-text approach. In other words, as we said in The Wired Church, let’s ditch the AV Mentality. Let’s begin to see the potential of screens as dynamic visual equivalents to the words we speak and write about Jesus in worship. Let’s identify our big ideas in worship and create images that communicate those ideas in powerful, artistic ways. Let’s learn that visual consistency is as important as theological, liturgical and thematic consistency. Let’s develop a theology of media that will be the foundation informing our forward movement.

We think it’s about time we put a stake in “worship media” as we know it, and get serious about the power of story, art, metaphor and visual communication as a normative way to communicate the gospel of Jesus Christ in our culture.

Have you seen this ad?

WANTED: Worship and Creative Arts Leader
First Church is looking for a dynamic person to take their worship to the next level. This person must have a deep, spiritual mature walk with Christ that adheres to our doctrines, must provide charismatic up front leadership for guiding others in worship, and they must be really great with a guitar. Further, this person must have organizational and administrative gifts to lead, develop and coordinate volunteers in the worship ministry, and have the ability to clearly communicate vision for worship to staff/clergy/lay leadership.

He/she must be abreast of the latest in contemporary worship, able to produce professional quality videos and graphics, maintain a current technical expertise and knowledge for use of media in worship, and lead forward with research and implementation of new technologies for ministry. Knowledge of Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, video editing, motion graphics, html, php and social networking assumed. Further, this person must oversee the web presence for the church, and be able to help church create a brand identity for the new contemporary worship service that will appeal to the unchurched and barely churched in our community. Seminary degree preferred, 5+ years experience in worship leadership and media ministry. Ideally this leader is under 30. Starting salary commiserate with experience, beginning at $25,000.

Seriously. That’s what most churches do, isn’t it? Take about 4-5 people and try to cram them into one mythical person who is going to save their hides? One day maybe churches will realize the value of these qualities as separate ministries, and the necessity of equipping a team of people to accomplish the task of growing a vital, dynamic worship ministry. In the meantime, we’ll stay on the lookout for WorshipMaster.

In the current climate it is really difficult to make a case for the need for new technology in worship. You need funds? There’s a single best strategy to follow: demonstrate don’t debate.

We’re not implying that you don’t bother with the philosophy and the big picture stuff. To the contrary, it is vital you are able to exactly articulate why you want to do what it is that you want to do, and are able to communicate that clearly and succinctly. Because what will happen is that the conversation with your money people will at some point turn to the why, and it doesn’t stay there long. As soon as it does, you have to be able to pounce on it with your brand of biblical, theological and missional backing.

But this is all secondary. If you lead with the why you will lose them. Instead, lead with the wow. Create an effective demonstration that models the possibilities of your new technology in worship, using a message to which they can relate. Pick imagery that will appeal to your “target audience”.

See, most pastors and decision makers aren’t antagonistic to the power of your new idea in worship; they’re just ignorant to it and don’t want to allocate funds to something that doesn’t make sense. In general people tend to confuse Jesus and the horse he rode in on. In other words, they get caught up in the methods and culture of what worked for them at one time. In the process, it becomes easy to develop an unhealthy attachment to specific methodologies. Sometimes, it takes a “wow” moment to help these people see what is new. This mistake can happen to anyone, and if you’ve been in ministry long enough, it has probably happened to you, too.

This means as an advocate of digital media it is your responsibility to provide an opportunity through which your pastors and decision makers can experience God by your new vision. One effective demonstration will do more than untold amounts of describing. It must be seen to be understood.

For example, say you have caught a vision for environmental projection in worship, so ably demonstrated by Cameron Ware. The majority of the startup cost is in 3-4 new projectors. Find people in the congregation with business connections who can secure you units to borrow and use on an assigned Sunday four weeks from now. Since they probably won’t match, try to get equal lumens on them.Buy the Matrox TripleHead2Go unit, necessary to create a “video wall” of three side by side images, with your own money – it’s $200 or so on eBay. (Hopefully you’ll be able to submit a receipt on it later. Hey – we never said being a change agent isn’t without personal risk.) Set the projectors up with a Mac laptop and the Matrox device. If you don’t have the correct software, use any kind of software like QuickTime just to get the image outputted to the second display. Shoot it on anything – you can get special scrims, fabrics and screens later once you’re shown people the possibilities. Make sure and choose images that fit the direction for the day, whether that is by matching the main idea, theme, look, color scheme, etc.

Once the worship service is done, you can either choose to be aggressive and pursue your targets for feedback, or passive and let them come to you with their excitement and enthusiasm. That depends on your people and situation. One change agent we know without much political cache did a video projector demonstration in worship once without commentary, waited two months to let the fury die down, did it again, waited two more months, and did it a third time. After the third service, a benefactor approached him and said, what will it take to do this every week?

If you want some extra-credit during your next worship design meeting, whip out the concept of the Main Idea. A clear idea of what you want to say is the number one rule of effective communication. Sadly, this rule is often ignored when designing worship. For an explanation of what the heck we’re talking about, read this excerpt from our new book on worship design, Taking Flight with Creativity. Make sure and watch the video at the end, which makes it all clear.

What is the single, central theme derived from the scriptural text that is the driving concept for every element in the service? The main idea is something that can be stated in a sentence or two. If it takes you more than that to explain your main idea, narrow your scope or clarify what you mean. It has to be clear and concise.

Dave Ferguson, pastor of Community Christian Church of Naperville, IL, wrote an entire book on this subject fittingly titled, The Big Idea. He states, rightly, that the presence of many small ideas in the life of a church get in the way of a single big idea. For example, Jesus said, “Follow me.” A big idea, certainly; simple to understand, yet difficult to implement.

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