Last week’s blog was about “anchor images.” This term describes a strong metaphor, a symbol, that can anchor a worship series and give us a focal point throughout. In this week’s FAQ blog, I want to visit the question that inevitably comes up in the afternoon of my one-day workshops from someone: “You’ve excited us about planning more sensory-rich worship! But how do you do this without burning out trying to be ‘creative?’” My answer partly has to do with the anchor image.

“Creative” does not mean all new, all the time. In fact, if that is what we are doing, we will burn out the congregation as well (not to mention ignoring our Christian tradition of spiritual “practices”).  My mantra is that we must strive for meaningful AND memorable worship. And repetition is an essential ingredient in making memory. That’s good news for designers of worship because it means that one of our tasks is to make sure the anchor image is represented throughout the season or series in “threads.” A thread can be a repeated element of music, media imagery, tangible visual, ritual action, word phrase, or all of the above (I usually try to include all of these). A thread repeats itself exactly or morphs a bit during the course of a season.  For instance, a hymn with several verses can spread through a series with one verse per week. A visual can start with a base and then have things added each week (the trees in the photo could have more and more lights added each week). A consistent word/sentence phrase (“Let the light shine among us”) can be a response from the congregation in a litany each week with differing leader parts.

The point is that once you’ve decided on your thread elements using your anchor image as the inspiration, you place those in the order of worship for each week. You are now more than halfway done with the design job for the whole series! If there are two or three musical elements repeated through a series, the music team isn’t rehearsing so much repertoire for every Sunday. If the visuals only get tweaked slightly week to week, the visuals team isn’t having to spend every Saturday creating a whole new look. Less burnout. More congruity throughout the season.

For those of you who are part of the Worship Design Studio, I’m going to be interviewing one of my visual arts guest experts this week about what she would do for our Epiphany series called, “The Passionate Jesus.” Karla Kincannon and I will no doubt be looking first for that “anchor image”–that symbol that can follow us throughout. Because once that is set, the job becomes so much easier, more fun and more fulfilling.

See you in the Studio!

Photo: http://www.orensanzevents.com/index.html

Karla Kincannon: http://www.karlakincannon.com/