By the Rev. Curtis Brown | Director of Faith Community Development
I confess that I’m sometimes bored during worship, even when I’m a worship leader. My mind wanders quickly, and I need to give myself a lot of prompts to stay focused. Most days, I can use the variety of media around me to stay on task – my computer, my phone, my notebooks, interaction with people around me, posters and pictures in my office. In worship, however, I’m often starved for prompts to help me keep focused. My attention wanders, and I lose the engagement with God through worship. Although some people appear to focus quite well during worship, I know that I am not alone in my occasional boredom.
When I first met Jason Moore over a decade ago, I discovered an approach to worship that was creative, energetic, and filled with prompts toward God. He introduced me to a worship planning approach based on symbol and metaphor instead of just filling in the blanks in a standard liturgy. He challenged me to take seriously all of the worship environment, from the seating arrangement to the smells, as an expression of a theme for worship. He equipped me with the knowledge and skills to use digital images on screens, on posters and on bulletins in new ways that served to focus on the theme of worship.
I’ve used these methods ever since in my quest to eradicate boring worship experiences.
I’m excited to welcome my friend Jason Moore to the Pacific Northwest to lead two workshops next month. I hope that you’ll consider adjusting your schedule to participate in these workshops, and that you’ll find them as helpful as I have. You can find more information and register using the online registration linked below.
Creative Worship | Feb 7, 8-5:00 at Federal Way United Methodist Church
Creative Worship is just like it sounds – a one-day workshop with a focus on helping worship leadership and pastoral staff to infuse more creativity and passion into the worship experience. Topics include Jason’s brand of vision and theology on worship, design and image, team building, training tips, technical tips, potential uses in worship settings, how to demonstrations, and more. The workshop’s four sessions are built around Jason’s books: Digital Storytellers, Design Matters, The Wired Church 2.0 and Taking Flight with Creativity.
Registration – free to planters, sponsors, planting teams. $20 per person for everyone else.
Click here to register for Creative Worship
Design Matters | Feb 8, 8-5:00 at Federal Way United Methodist Church
Design Matters, which is a “how-to” day aimed at helping pastors, worship leaders and media directors make more effective use of their screens in worship. Whereas Creative Worship is more a big picture event for anyone involved in worship creation, Design Matters is geared toward the specialists. This next-level seminar will take a closer look at creating powerful media for worship with an in-depth and hands on examination of principles for design, ways to utilize media in worship, tools of the trade, and much more.
Registration – free to planters, sponsors, planting teams. $20 per person for everyone else.
I hope that Jason’s worship instruction does include a warning about “smells” in worship–please consider people with fragrance sensitivities that cause asthma. In other words: no smells.