Sometimes I think many ministry staff can get stuck in a rutt with worship experiences.  There are a ton of ways we can use a video projector that just the usual Sunday way to put up words for songs, a video clip and maybe some sermon slides. 

Scott Hodge, in a recent post, reminded us of some other cool ways to think outside the box:

This is just amazing....  It's projection art by Ross Ashton.  Check out his work here.

And you also have to see this. 

A lot of great stuff coming out of the UK...

Don't forget to also take a look at some urban light graffiti. 

And.....while you're at it, check this out. 

Be inspired. 

All via the visualworshipper who is blowing minds down at Irving Bible Church.

Doing announcements at church on Sunday is always a challenge.  Sometimes it can put a real damper on the worship experience. Tim Stevens posted recently on how Granger is changing the way they handle announcements in their Sunday service:

A few weeks ago, we began pre-recording our announcements and putting them at the beginning of the service in 90-seconds or less. We started talking about this at least 8 years ago when I saw a church do a video segment called Ministry in a Minute. We were never able to pull it off before, but it made sense to start now with all the other changes in our weekend services.

The weekly segment is called The Feed, and is hosted each week by a different volunteer or staff leader who has spunk and a video-face (I don't think I'm qualified)...

Nancy Beach recently posted a discussion she had with some local leaders in the Chicago area where they asked if drama was still relevant in the church.  Here is her post:

I just spent a long lunch (our quarterly Chicago area Brown Bag Lunch) with arts leaders from local churches exploring the future of drama in the church.  There are some who wonder, or loudly declare, that drama is no longer culturally relevant in a worship setting.  We discussed whether this might be the conclusion some make after they experience drama done poorly in the church.  Most often, people choose to abandon an art form because they haven’t been moved by it.  Then we simplify our thinking and conclude, “Drama in the church doesn’t work.”  Drama doesn’t work anywhere, in film, live theatre, or on television, when it is done with mediocrity.  So we agreed we need to take a look at the quality of our efforts in church drama – are we only doing drama as often as we can do it well?

Our dialogue featured the thoughts of Eric Bramlett, Creative Director of Community Christian Church in Naperville, and Steve Pederson, Drama Director of Willow Creek Barrington.  Both of these guys are passionate about theatre, and always seeking new ways to incorporate story and scenes either live on stage or through video for our congregations.  Community Christian is a multi-site church (9 locations!) that has in recent months chosen to capture scenes on video for all of its campuses rather than attempting to perform the scene live in each one.  At Willow, we still do live drama but are also combining our efforts on occasion with the video team in the creation of live video/film pieces.  We all agreed that the Church needs to continually experiment with the use of drama, and discover whatever fresh approaches we can bring to this art form that has been effective for literally thousands of years.

Eric is a huge advocate for humor in the church.  Humor is life-giving and for most people, unexpected in a church service.  But doing humor well is enormously difficult.  Whatever we can do to test out a potential script in a smaller setting, to keep revising it, work on the pacing, and hone the work is well worth the effort.  Throughout our conversation, everyone agreed that the quality of a script – whether for comedy or serious drama – is essential to anything having a shot at connecting.

At the end of our time, I think the consensus was that while using drama is a tremendous challenge, it is a vital tool of communication that we don’t want to lose.  Certainly our culture is as captivated as ever by live theatre, film, and television.  We must commit ourselves to building effective drama ministries slowly and intentionally.  Don’t assume that “anyone can do it.”  Just as we would not allow just anyone to sing or preach, we must search for gifted people who know something about the theatre craft and will pursue using those gifts with authenticity and excellence in the church.  When drama is done well…there’s nothing quite like it.  So I say, let’s not give up on this art form!

Click here to go to Nancy's blog and share your thoughts.

Lincoln Brewster's latest, Today is the Day, is finally out!  Check it out to get some great worship stuff.