Exercises Worship Design Thinking
Here are some of the exercises in worship design thinking we discussed in our webinar tonight with the folk at NCLI.
Seek and Show:
1. In a large group, make an inventory of the songs, prayers, symbols,
artifacts, postures, spaces you’ve used for worship.
2. Then go on a scavenger hunt looking for new songs, postures,
places, artwork, stories, tools to use in worship.
3. How would you describe the dreams of God? Break your group into
teams of three to draw the gospel story like a movie story board.
4. Now take the list of traditional and emerging items and use them to
tell the gospel story
Ignatian Design:
1. Using lectio-divina and/or Ignatian prayer, have participants
engage the text with imagination.
2. Have them list images that come to mind
3. Then give those images to set designers, painters, and poets to
build a series or liturgical season.
For more info, make sure to email us for questions.
Josh
Announcing Church As Art Consulting
Imagine Worship that Changes People Into People Who Change the World
For seven years Church as Art has worked with mainline and emergent congregations to get pastors, lay leaders, and artists onto the same page as they design worship and other church programming. Designed at first by Rev. Troy Bronsink to bring the emergent-missional conversation to midsized Presbyterian congregations, Church as Art’s collaborative process has grown to include small congregations, non-denominational groups, and middle-governing bodies. Now Joshua Case (of The Nick and Josh Podcast) joins Bronsink to bring depth of insight and experience in the fields of outreach project management, social media, non-violent communication, student ministries, and emergence from within the Episcopalian tradition.
Worship Design Webinar: What is Emerging Worship?
July 27 @ 7PM (EST) hosted the by Center For Progressive Renewal. Sign up here.
Emerging worship engages communities in the art of everyday life. Whether you are asked to start an alternative worship service, are exploring complimentary elements to deepen your existing worship offerings, or starting worship for a new church plant, you need to start with “How does worship connect to what we believe about church?” Of course, you also need on-ramp methods to get started right away: tips for how to find and train musicians, artists and poets; how to design the time and place; and maybe even some survival strategies for addressing the resistance you may encounter from within your congregation. We’ll hit those, too. “Emerging Worship,” led by Troy and Joshua is about communities anticipating the dreams of God together by playfully sharing and trading narratives and rituals as prayer.
About Troy
Troy Bronsink is an artist and a pastor seeking the way of Jesus. He and his wife and daughter, live in the Capitol View area of inner-city Atlanta, he is the Abbot of Neighbor’s Abbey, an holistic monastic community. Their family has been passionate about community development, education, and creativity for years. In integrating these Troy has become a contributor in the emerging church conversation. He is a singer-songwriter with 15 years of experience ranging from youth ministery to worship director to senior pastor, and in both the mainline and para-church field. Troy has an MDiv from of Columbia Theological Seminary, is an ordained Presbyterian minister, serving on the Greater Atlanta Presbytery’s Emerging Church Committee, founder of the Atlanta Emergent Cohort, and board member of Emergent Village. He is a contributing author to the 2007 Baker Emersion release, An Emergent Manifesto of Hope, and author of the forthcoming 2011 Paraclete Press book, Getting Drawn In.
About Josh
Joshua Case is a blogger, podcaster, and activist. Josh and his wife live in Decatur, Georgia where he is in his final year of study at the Candler School of Theology. Josh is an Episcopalian, co-facilitator of the Atlanta Emergent cohort, and has blogged and podcasted on matters related to Christianity in the emerging culture for over 10 years. Before moving to Atlanta, Joshua worked for six years in Geneva Switzerland where he served as the executive director for an international, interfaith youth work and ministry organization.
we are already lit
I posted this back in 2007, while I was still serving a church in North Atlanta as designated pastor. The poem came to mind recently as I’ve been working on my first full length book, Getting Drawn In. Its striking how we learn and re-learn things. The allusions to Moses and Pentecost seem as important a reminder for me today as when I was writing them 4 years ago:
wicks
-Church of St. Andrew, Christmas, 20061.
Until pews are dandelions
–sprig leggy levers–
catapulting young minds into kingdomcome;
sweeping elderminds like dreamseeds of evervision.Until songs take wing
stretching strong like the arrows of migrating Juncos
lending lift, everloft, and standard.
Tail feathers slicing
tomorrow unto tomorrow.Until prayers shovelset us into the red Georgia clay
sinking our toes like the magnolia’s roots
breaking open bone-earth’s chapped tongue
making our hope particular and rooty
tangling us here, now, to daily bread2.
Until our aviary,
a loose canopy tabernacling for us,
meets the winds of intrastators
and price-per-acre
and towers catch-and-releasing invisible information;
until the long carving frenchdrains spoon away at its stature
(walk humbly with your God)
until the pieces of our umbrella
–the very stones and mortar of this sanctuary–
must join their sister elements
that groan and clap to the song that sang us all intoexistence.
3.
Until then,
inhale;
receive Spirit here.
Spirit who practices this all like Moshe’s bush on Horeb
who sings that song to which our ears belong.
Take the cup,
raise her,
exhale the gratitude of
carbon dioxide and moisturedrip for the forest,
lick your lips and dig your teeth in
to heaven’s sweet ‘what-is-it.’4.
Today is a Tuesday,
December’s light is late as usual.
Slipping past the commute
into this morning’s eye,
I sit in my study,
a place of words, walls, and a solid oak desk that all precede me
and I watch this candle devour the cold room
and flicker
hotter than any coal placed on my lips.
And I remember,we are already lit. Burning
but not consumed.
Set to flight.
Racing but not exhausted.
And this building already sings
and breathes
and joins creation.
And the dead are raised in Christ,
worship already working,and the old and the future are part of today’s
firelight.
