Below is an article by Mark Humphrey from Echo Hub talking about worship. For more info on Echo Hub visit www.echohub.com
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The phrase “Worship Design” has become a popular way to describe our process lately. I love how this points to a more holistic approach and how so many great analogies like filmmaking and architecture are being used to describe worship design. These three principles go beyond analogies and start to define the process objectively. I’ll follow up with three more tomorrow, but these give us a starting point.
1) Start from the final impression and work backwards
The first question I like to start with when working with a teaching pastor on a worship design is, “What is/are the primary thoughts you hope people will have in their minds as they walk to their car?” If the answer is a long list of things, we have an issue. If the thoughts are long and meandering, we have an issue. If none of the thoughts include questions to wrestle with, we have an issue. Granted, not every truth can be reduced to a catchy thought, and I’ve had more than enough cheesy one-liners used to describe complex truths. But the more defined a target is, the better our chances of hitting it.
Once the final impression is clear, it becomes the filter through which every decision is made during the design process. Does this element get us closer or farther away? If it takes us farther away but is essential to the service, how can we minimize the detraction? When we look back on the experience, the discussion is filtered through the same lens. Did we achieve the final impression we hoped for?
2) Remember the trinity
The trinity of worship design is “Look Back, Look Forward, Be Present.” The concept is simple, but the discipline is hard to maintain. Meaningful design involves a constant process of looking back and considering past designs, and looking forward to future designs. These looks are both near and far. Meaningful change can only happen when we consider both the immediate and the distant. For me, these two pieces of the trinity are easier than the third, “be present.” Letting go of the past and future to experience worship as it happens is a discipline I am yet to master. Too often I experience worship as an out of body experience where I am present, but removed, as if I’m purely taking notes for future debriefs and planning. Does the need for objectivity have to rob us of our ability to be moved?
3) Find balance
The issue of balance in worship design is both subjective and often neglected. There are forces that push and pull against one another within our designs that effective designers are always aware of, even if they are beyond their control. These are things like the timeless vs. the timely, expected vs. unexpected, logical vs. emotional, spoken vs. unspoken, questions vs. answers, and interactive vs. passive. There are extensions of these balances like tradition vs. innovation, beauty vs. truth, and Eastern vs. Western, which is a balance of how time is suspended (Eastern) versus how the experience progresses through narrative or another path (Western).
The word balance doesn’t mean these things are exactly equal within a given experience. This doesn’t mean a 50/50 split. Balance simply means that designers need to be aware of the interaction between these opposing forces both within a single experience and over the course of a season. How much do we infuse our worship experiences with beauty, the unspoken, questions, stillness, and the unexpected versus relying upon logic, the spoken word, supplying answers, and a scripted progression through expected steps?
4) Answer the right questions
How many times have we heard great thinkers and designers say that the most important step in their process was answering the right question? Often they seem to be answering a different question than those around them. Lesser designers have a different starting point, with far more “givens” in their approach. In other words, from the start, lesser designers take for granted that their solution will include a list of things that conventional wisdom tells them must be included. The innovator lets go of all these assumptions, which allows her to chart a new, clearer path. What are the potential “givens” that may prove to be the very things that handcuff great worship design?
When we look back on our design and implementation, the issue of answering the right questions is important too. How often do our conversations center around little things like “Did the congregation know that song?” or “Did that video connect the way we’d hoped?” when the bigger, more important questions remain unanswered? Maybe the better question to answer is, “Did our process give us enough time with the content surrounding the video to give it the context it needed?” or “Did we use a lame video because we think we need video in every service?” It’s like when I argue with my wife over what we need at the grocery store, when that isn’t what we’re really arguing about at all. How much time in our evaluation of worship is devoted to big questions versus little ones?
5) Tell a great story
Storytelling is important. It often gets marginalized, trivialized, and misrepresented. There are reasons why Jesus used parables in his teaching and why the oral tradition of storytelling was the primary vehicle for sharing our faith for so long. Effective communication starts with telling a compelling story, whether the subject is a person, a company, an idea, or a religion. How does story impact the structure of our worship design?
6) Say more by doing less
There are so many ways this plays out. Announcements, brands, programs, elements, you name it. From a design standpoint, more elements mean more transitions and often more noise. They don’t necessarily translate into more impact. From a communication standpoint, often the simplest message is the most effective. This is a case in which bigger questions, like “How are we communicating events and announcements?” are important to ask before smaller ones like, “Can we fit this announcement in this week?”
There is another way we can say more by doing less. Sometimes the best storytellers are ones who know what to leave to the imagination of the reader. This always reminds me of the story behind Bruce, the mechanical shark in Jaws. After weeks of trying to get decent shots of Bruce, the footage ended up doing more harm than good for the story. Turns out, it was scarier not to show the shark, and allow John Williams’ music to tell you it was there. It also turns out, that since the editor, Verna Fields, wasn’t one of the people who spent weeks trying to get those shots, she could make the objective decision to cut them and turn what had been a limitation into an opportunity. Are you trying so hard to “show the shark” that you end up jumping it? What things do you need to leave unsaid, or said in a different way?
