In the last post, I talked about this new worship service we're starting. (Read that post to get caught up if you need to... Done? Okay, let's continue.)
One very important question to me in approaching this project was, what can we do to make the experience less of a concert/lecture feel and more like something you actually get into? (Especially since a theater naturally lends itself to concert/lecture just by its architecture...) My friend Dwain, who I believe would consider himself agnostic as far as religious belief, once attended one of our services and wrote up a very valuable critique of it from his perspective. One of his observations was an astute question on preaching: "Wouldn’t it be more productive to enter into a dialogue with the community?" That question has stuck with me, because I agree. (Obviously we try to do exactly that in small-group settings, and that's one reason we believe in small groups so strongly. We also try - with varying degrees of success - to promote a small-group culture where honest questions are welcomed and not greeted with fear and loathing.)
We had several ideas as to how to accomplish this goal of making the teaching more interactive. First, though, we had to realize that going all-out and riding the leading edge of church innovation probably wouldn't work in small-town Missouri. With some exceptions, the fashions, language, and lifestyle of our town stays about two or three years behind what's going on even in nearby Kansas City, not to mention on the coasts. Very few people in this town are probably ready to come to a worship service where the venue is covered in modern art and the scent of incense fills the air and they're handed a piece of art charcoal and told to express their feelings on the atonement by creating spontaneously on a long roll of parchment.
One idea we've seen elsewhere that we really like is to enable questions and feedback by putting a text-messaging code on the screen that people can text questions to. Then the speaker or a panel can respond to those questions at the end. The problem with this service is that it costs around $50-80 per month. We think it's cool, but we're sorta running this thing on a shoestring budget right now. Also, some of the staff have wondered out loud (and probably justifiably) if getting people started texting during the service is actually going to end up being counterproductive to what we're trying to do.
So we've ended up with a fairly easy-going atmosphere, occasional random elements added to the service like Q&A sessions, people who come and tell their story, drama, video, and other things. We're looking for ideas that are creative, without being so weird that people in this town run screaming in terror.
Your thoughts? What have you seen elsewhere that seemed to work well?
EDIT: Also, this week's theme (as part of the "God, I Have Questions!" series) is "Is Hell Real?" We want to present this not as a scare tactic, but as accurately diagnosing the danger... Kind of a "No one has to go to hell - you have to reject Jesus' forgiveness to do that. But if we believe it's real, shouldn't we be honest about trying to make sure people don't go there? Even though it is an inconvenient truth?" (Pardon me for that last...)
Ideas for something interactive or different to communicate this without screaming and such? (And no, I don't want to do a "human video" that starts with a pretty teenage girl who gets attacked by demons who make her drink and then the Jesus character comes in and beats up the demons and saves the pretty girl.)
Monday, April 19, 2010
Filling the Hours
There's a line from Oceans Eleven that I love. Daniel Ocean, played by George Clooney, is talking about assembling the team for a heist. He comments on the "Mormon twins," saying, "I got the sense they're having trouble filling the hours." This is followed by a scene showing the twins racing a monster truck against a remote-controlled miniature version of the same truck and arguing like ten-year-olds.
This week, Cindy and I don't have every waking hour spoken for, finally. This after several weeks in which "filling the hours" didn't require much in the way of effort at all. In the weeks leading up to Easter, we were heavily involved in several major projects.
The first was our church's Easter play, in which Cindy plays one of the two main narrator characters - Pontius Pilate's wife - and I play one Jesus of Nazareth (you may have heard of him). The rehearsals and set/tech work took the amount of time that these things always do.
The second major project was our church's new worship service. For several years, there have been two Sunday morning worship services - one at 8:30 am, and one at 10:45 am, with Sunday School classes between the two from 9:45 to 10:35. These two services are virtually identical in style and schedule. Last week, on the Sunday after Easter, we added a third Sunday morning worship service, running from 10:00 am to 11:10-ish. This new service is a different feel. The music is a different style (more guitar-driven and without an orchestra), the flow is different (the order of things shaken up often), and the look is entirely different. In fact, the venue is different. It's the Opera House Theater, a historic building in downtown El Dorado Springs that was completely refurbished a few years ago and is now a super-sweet movie theater with chandeliers and gold ceiling and lots of awesomeness. We worked out a deal with the theater owners that allowed us cheap rent in exchange for some cleaning and promises of being very very careful not to burn the place down or otherwise steal/kill/destroy. The approach is casual, and aimed at a target demographic of people who think cool old buildings and gold ceilings are neato. It's called MainStreet Worship.
So anyway, this required a TON of work and lots of prayer sessions, both personal and corporate, in which we had no difficulty whatever admitting our inadequacy for the task. All the groundwork leading up to the new service put a big load on the church staff. For example, Sunday school classes had to be analyzed, and in some cases moved to a new 11:15-noon time slot. If you've ever been around American Bible-belt evangelical churches, you know what a huge deal it is to change that. Also, the same message would be preached three times, by the same man, but the second of the three times would be in a different venue and different atmosphere. So the schedule is the main difficulty - Pastor Joe finishes teaching in the first service at 9:45, and has fifteen minutes to get to the theater for the start of the worship service there. No sweat. But then, depending on the way the MainStreet service is scheduled, he's sometimes finishing up there around 11:00 or 11:10. That means he rolls in to the 10:45 service about the time the music/announcements are wrapping up, and he's got to be ready to start speaking again, just minutes after finishing the message the second time. Fortunately the theater is just a bit over two miles from the church's Park Street location, and El Dorado Springs doesn't really struggle with traffic jams, so the commute is rarely a problem.
And then there were questions. What do we do for childcare at this new location? Should we recruit some "core members" for this new service? Can we change the aesthetic of the theater for worship in some simple, portable, yet powerful ways? How can we avoid just falling into the same old ruts in a new location?
So we kicked it off last week. And yesterday was the second one. I loved it. I hope the people who don't currently attend church who have come the last two Sundays liked it too. Most seemed to (but of course in this small town I'd be one of the last to hear any negative feedback, because negative feedback comes in round-about ways in this culture).
Then Saturday night, Cindy was one of the main sponsors for prom. She got drafted into that job a few years ago through no fault of her own, and stays in the job because she won't take my advice and do shoddy work to get out of being re-elected. She has to beg and plead and cajole to get enough helpers from the Junior Class (the official producers of the event) to get all the decoration/planning done. I hate prom. But since she has to be there, I help. And I watch all the worst parts of my memories of high school played out in front of me. And I see teenagers I care about getting way too much in the vein of a Britney Spears music video for my taste. (I'm going to be a very overprotective father, I'm afraid. I suspect my children will not be fans of me when they're teenagers.)
So three weekends in a row were the Easter play, MainStreet Worship's first iteration, and prom. We haven't had trouble filling the hours.
More on MainStreet worship in the next post. I hope you read that one and give me your feedback.
This week, Cindy and I don't have every waking hour spoken for, finally. This after several weeks in which "filling the hours" didn't require much in the way of effort at all. In the weeks leading up to Easter, we were heavily involved in several major projects.
The first was our church's Easter play, in which Cindy plays one of the two main narrator characters - Pontius Pilate's wife - and I play one Jesus of Nazareth (you may have heard of him). The rehearsals and set/tech work took the amount of time that these things always do.
The second major project was our church's new worship service. For several years, there have been two Sunday morning worship services - one at 8:30 am, and one at 10:45 am, with Sunday School classes between the two from 9:45 to 10:35. These two services are virtually identical in style and schedule. Last week, on the Sunday after Easter, we added a third Sunday morning worship service, running from 10:00 am to 11:10-ish. This new service is a different feel. The music is a different style (more guitar-driven and without an orchestra), the flow is different (the order of things shaken up often), and the look is entirely different. In fact, the venue is different. It's the Opera House Theater, a historic building in downtown El Dorado Springs that was completely refurbished a few years ago and is now a super-sweet movie theater with chandeliers and gold ceiling and lots of awesomeness. We worked out a deal with the theater owners that allowed us cheap rent in exchange for some cleaning and promises of being very very careful not to burn the place down or otherwise steal/kill/destroy. The approach is casual, and aimed at a target demographic of people who think cool old buildings and gold ceilings are neato. It's called MainStreet Worship.
So anyway, this required a TON of work and lots of prayer sessions, both personal and corporate, in which we had no difficulty whatever admitting our inadequacy for the task. All the groundwork leading up to the new service put a big load on the church staff. For example, Sunday school classes had to be analyzed, and in some cases moved to a new 11:15-noon time slot. If you've ever been around American Bible-belt evangelical churches, you know what a huge deal it is to change that. Also, the same message would be preached three times, by the same man, but the second of the three times would be in a different venue and different atmosphere. So the schedule is the main difficulty - Pastor Joe finishes teaching in the first service at 9:45, and has fifteen minutes to get to the theater for the start of the worship service there. No sweat. But then, depending on the way the MainStreet service is scheduled, he's sometimes finishing up there around 11:00 or 11:10. That means he rolls in to the 10:45 service about the time the music/announcements are wrapping up, and he's got to be ready to start speaking again, just minutes after finishing the message the second time. Fortunately the theater is just a bit over two miles from the church's Park Street location, and El Dorado Springs doesn't really struggle with traffic jams, so the commute is rarely a problem.
And then there were questions. What do we do for childcare at this new location? Should we recruit some "core members" for this new service? Can we change the aesthetic of the theater for worship in some simple, portable, yet powerful ways? How can we avoid just falling into the same old ruts in a new location?
So we kicked it off last week. And yesterday was the second one. I loved it. I hope the people who don't currently attend church who have come the last two Sundays liked it too. Most seemed to (but of course in this small town I'd be one of the last to hear any negative feedback, because negative feedback comes in round-about ways in this culture).
Then Saturday night, Cindy was one of the main sponsors for prom. She got drafted into that job a few years ago through no fault of her own, and stays in the job because she won't take my advice and do shoddy work to get out of being re-elected. She has to beg and plead and cajole to get enough helpers from the Junior Class (the official producers of the event) to get all the decoration/planning done. I hate prom. But since she has to be there, I help. And I watch all the worst parts of my memories of high school played out in front of me. And I see teenagers I care about getting way too much in the vein of a Britney Spears music video for my taste. (I'm going to be a very overprotective father, I'm afraid. I suspect my children will not be fans of me when they're teenagers.)
So three weekends in a row were the Easter play, MainStreet Worship's first iteration, and prom. We haven't had trouble filling the hours.
More on MainStreet worship in the next post. I hope you read that one and give me your feedback.
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