J: In high school I played bass guitar in the jazz band. Sometimes the complicated riffs would throw me, and I’d get lost in the music. It wasn’t more than a few seconds after losing my place that the band director would tell us all to stop. He’d look me in the eye and say, “You dropped out! When the bottom goes, the music dies.”

It wasn’t that I was more important than anyone else; it was that each member of the band had an equally important job to do. We were all playing equally important instruments that when brought together made beautiful music.

In our view, digital media functions much like one of the instruments in the band. Each of the components of worship has a different part to play to make the melodies and harmonies work.  So for instance, if you leave out the prayer in worship, one of the instruments is missing, and the music dies. Leave out the sermon, music or digital media, and the same thing happens.

Unfortunately some churches write their “jazz piece” without incorporating media and they then try to tack it on at the end. Have you ever heard someone try to play a lead solo over music that wasn’t written with a solo in mind? It sounds like a muddy mess. When composers write music, they must specifically compose breaks for lead solos, so when a sax or guitar takes off it sounds like it fits. When we plan all other aspects of worship we must incorporate media from the beginning. It has to be written into the jazz of worship. Throwing sermon points or a video clip at a media minister on Sunday morning is a muddy mess.

We should strive as digital age worship planners to give equal attention to all of the instruments of worship. The results of these efforts will make music that plays in perfect sync with melodies and harmonies that will touch the hearts of all who hear it.

Some people are of the opinion that the media should “serve” the other more established portions of worship. I would have been insulted if someone told me that my bass playing was only there to serve the drums or the brass section, and so on. All elements of valid or authentic worship should be celebrated. They are there to “serve” the Gospel rather than one of the other instruments.

An improved interface for worship

L: Frequently we hear that “contemporary worship” is such a production! There are multiple reasons that lead people to make such an assertion, including confusion between faith and culture. The primary reason for the complaint is that people have somehow become aware of the production aspect, or interface of worship, and the work is interfering with their ability to experience God.

An interface is, among other things, as “a common boundary shared by two devices, or by a person and a device, across which data or information flows, for example, the screen of a computer… or the set of commands, messages, images, and other elements allowing communication between computer and operator.” It is also “the place, situation, or way in which two things or people act together or affect each other or the point of connection between things.” An interface is a point of intersection between people and also a dynamic action that has an impact on the people to which it connects.

Good interfaces are important because they make communication possible without getting in the way. Take email, for instance. AOL continues to be successful as an interface because it markets the dream of transparency — even though the reality is much different. People don’t really want to log on, configure dial up addresses, wait 4-5 minutes, or even boot up the system and then open up an application to get their e-mail. They should be able to walk up to a cold computer, hit a switch, and receive their email. The same for cell phones. Having email capability combined with the portability of a cell phone is nice, but not if it requires that I spend 30 minutes hitting each number key 3 or 4 times to get the letter I want. The interface for email should be as transparent as ripping open a glued piece of paper. Whether it is email, interpersonal communication, or worship, good interfaces don’t get in the way; they facilitate.

This is because good interfaces are oriented to the user, not the system. Early research of personal computers focused on two different agendas. One was a file-sharing idea that focused on the linear interaction of information; the other was a sensory rich, high intensity graphic-user interface (GUI) and application. Each camp believed it was creating a superior interface that created the least amount of interference: the command line because it taxed the hardware less, and the GUI because it seemed more natural from a user’s perspective. These revealed themselves in the marketplace as DOS versus the Macintosh (or Windows), or the command line interface versus the GUI. DOS won for many years, but eventually the graphic interface took over, as hardware capability caught up to the vision, because it was more human-like. It focused on the perspective of the user rather than the structural needs of the computer hardware. DOS has become a metaphor for modernism, and GUI for postmodernism.

A better interface for the world of computers doesn’t mean better buttons, or sleeker, more industrial design, like putting beige hard drives boxes inside iridescent blue boxes because Apple Computer did it. The long-term vision for the computer industry is to eliminate buttons, keyboards, and mice altogether, and to create an interface that is essentially organic. People should be able to talk to their computers instead of get carpal tunnel syndrome from typing so much, and they should be able to access the internet anywhere, without having to use cumbersome machines, and they should be able to navigate a personal planner without learning alternate languages like “Graffiti.”

As we see all of these dreams for digital communications, we find parallels to the church’s position. As with the aim of technological industry, worship needs to improve its sensory points of contact. It’s similar to the creation of what the computer industry calls “personhood,” or the design of intelligence. Worship for any age needs to acknowledge human need and respond to it with the Gospel.

The current apparatus of “contemporary worship” is clunky right now because it is only partially fitted to the needs of digital culture: “Transmitting freely from one to another is really where the field of multimedia is headed.” Oh, that the church could transmit freely from one environment to another! As digital age worship matures, it will take on forms that are more rich and organic, and more reflective of its age, just as 4-part harmony on the organ so clearly reflected the cultural sensitivities of the Enlightenment. Worship needs an improved interface for the whole of digital culture.

This means rethinking the entire interface of worship, not simply making “better buttons” in the way of better bulletins or putting lyrics on the screen instead of in hymnals. We need to facilitate worshipful encounters with God that transcend the interface on which they happen. We need to make the appearance of production, or the mechanics of worship, go away. Removing the mechanics, and allowing for a more organic experience, allows for a rediscovery of mystery.

J: Implementing digital age worship means raising the bar on production values associated with the worship experience. The culture of today is completely immersed in a world of incredible sights, sounds, and smells. When we ask for a show of hands for how many love to go home to watch public access television, the final tally is always zero. When the excellence factor is extremely low, people don’t tune in. Instead CNN, ESPN, Lifetime, and many other high-end networks fill their screens. Whether it is worship or TV, people aren’t engaged when the production is bad.

But some suggest that worship should not be a production. They fear that the “slickness” of the experience may take something away from the Spirit’s movement. I must admit that I felt the same way when I first visited the early digital age worship experiment at Ginghamsburg Church a year before joining the staff. I thought church should be what I had grown up with, which was something much more formal. At the same time I was serving in Younglife, which strived to bring the gospel to the youth in ways that were relevant to them. I began to see that using digital media made the gospel come to life in ways that were real for people of this culture including me. Without the production this could not happen.

The craftsmanship and storytelling abilities required to experience worship that would speak to the culture of the day could easily be defined as production skills. The better honed they were the more effective the sermon or worship experience would be.

When we talk about producing worship we get an inevitable set of practical constraints. How do you keep up, how do you avoid burn out, (and my favorite) how can the Spirit do it’s work if everything is planned out? (We’ll answer the first two in the next chapter.) The power of the Spirit cannot be limited by our efforts. No amount of pre-planning can restrict the Spirit’s presence in worship. As I mentioned earlier, I always feel closest to the Spirit when creating art for worship. Can we not trust the Spirit’s presence in the formation and creation of the worship experience? Will it not then be present as the service is taking place? No matter how planned or produced worship might be, there are always unknowns. We should rely on the Spirit’s guidance in all that we do, and especially in implementation the weekly spiritual meal. As a production team we would always begin our worship experiences by praying for the Spirit’s guidance. I can remember times when something unexpected would happen, like the pastor leaving the stage sick or a drama lines being missed and so on. The team would begin praying on the spot that God would continue to guide us through whatever hurdle we were facing.  Many times there was an almost tangible sense that the Spirit was hovering, assisting our every mood.

Some will ask the question: How do you avoid emotionalism when you begin to use digital media to communicate the Gospel? My first response is that what we do must be rooted heavily in prayer and Scripture. If we start and remain rooted there we avoid many potential problems down the road. Giving people an emotional or experiential connection with biblical texts is an important part of digital age worship. There is a big difference between manipulating worshiper’s emotions and giving them an experience. We’ve already learned that digital DNAers crave experience, and so we must strive to be authentic in the way we present the stories of the Bible. Anything less may become empty and manipulative presentation.

Len often points out that the metaphors we use (and all art for that matter) are merely doorways by which to enter into an emotional understanding of biblical truth. Digital DNAers often cannot enter the room of biblical truth without an appealing doorway. The emotional connection with their own personal human needs is the key to drawing them into the room. Again this is not emotionalism.

When we talk about GUI we’re not just talking about the screen as the interface. The entire worship environment is accessible through the interface. There are many aspects within the physical worship space to consider, including lighting, sound, smell, taste, touch, video, alter display, animation, drama, dance.

During a conference in Orlando we took a day to visit a few of the local theme parks. After scouting the map we headed over to a ride called Poseidon’s Fury, in Universal’s Island of Adventure. The building was amazing. A large statue (3 or 4 stories tall) of a Greek god looked as if it had been broken on the ground in front of the entrance. The entrance looked like a cave that was formed millions of years ago. Once inside we faced pyramid like walls and candle lit halls. I remember both of us being totally astonished at how cool it was just to stand in line. Then we entered into a room with a circular stage standing about two feet off the ground. The room went dark except for a single spotlight, which shined on a ladder coming from a whole in the ceiling. From a ladder came an old man with a full beard wearing ancient clothing and carrying a cane. He made his way to the stage where he began to tell the story of Poseidon’s battle with Zeus. Laser lights painted with ancient figures on the walls. We were taken further into the story by entering various rooms, and ultimately ended up in a large room with images projected on screens and onto waterfalls. The storyteller interacted with the characters presented on the screens, as explosions of light, fire, and water went off around us. We were completely surrounded by the story, and it was fascinating.

If such amazing detail can be given to ancient myths, how much more to the truth of the Gospel! The same attention to environment is possible in worship. Worship leaders interacting with the screen, music overlapping dramatic storytelling, and natural elements such as candle flames and water can give worshipers the sense that they are part of the story. Unlike Poseidon’s story, we have a different story, with a larger truth to share. As worship designers we should all have field trip money set aside to visit theme parks for creative inspiration. We can take advantage of the millions they spend on getting a theme or metaphor into production.

L: Redundancy is critical to the teaching aspect of worship. Good digital age worship has many different channels of communication, so that the worshipper has multiple opportunities to cull meaning from a number of different sensory devices. This is multi-modal — not time sharing — or messaging back and forth, but more like face-to-face conversation, which has a constant dual interchange of meaning. In other words, digital age worship is not a modern presentation of a linear sequence of events, in which each event stops before another in singular fashion. Digital age worship is a multi-stack, or what Len Sweet calls a “double ring,” a postmodern matrix of overlapping sensory experiences, or modes, that create a constant exchange of meaning. Digital age worship is GUI, not DOS.

Operating with assumptions

Creating a digital age worship interface means creating a matrix of media that operates within the interactive assumptions of digital culture. There are interactive assumptions with print or oral culture where worshipers don't acknowledge every typo or bulletin or every grammatically misspoken word.  In print and oral culture these assumptions don’t interfere with communication. Worshippers move past an awareness of the form of communication, to an acceptance of its messages.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the apparently anti-digital “Unplugged” movement of young people in 1990s. The move to coffeehouses and acoustic guitars was not anti-technology but rather a preview of the future: post-technology, or the moving beyond (metastate) of self-awareness where we announce movie clips by saying, “Let’s look at the screen.” Digital media should take on this role in worship. The difference is not an abandonment of digital culture, but rather its integration into a more mature, organic system of interaction, or a more fully digital interface.

Ways to build a digital worship interface

1)       J: Overlap! Transitioning from one portion of worship to the next can be critical to the effectiveness of the experience. Communication studies have shown that once you’ve lost the attention of your audience it can take twenty minutes to get it back. Thus if you loose them after praise and worship, and your thirty-minute sermon follows, you may only have their attention for the last 10 minutes. Effective use of media can fill the potential holes in worship.

I liken postmodern worship to the old “pass the egg” game I played when I was in youth ministry. The game goes like this. There are two teams lined up next to each other with each team member holding a spoon. The egg has to be passed from one end of the line to the other with out dropping it. First one to get the egg to the other end wins. This should be a delicate process, but in the spirit of the game the floor is covered with scrambled eggs. The worship moment is so much like that egg for the individuals who fill our sanctuaries. When the stage is bare between elements, someone is fumbling with a microphone, or the sound system is turned off but the band is trying to play, and the egg hits the floor. The screen not only makes the songs, sermon, and various other elements, more meaningful, it also covers those egg-drop experiences.

This does not mean that there are no pauses or quiet times in worship. In fact we advocate time to reflect on various pieces in worship.  Using graphics and animation during some of the pauses in worship is a great way to use the screen. A main worship graphic can be the primary graphic displayed throughout a worship experience. Think of it as a default screen that can fill the visual "holes" in worship. There is no need for your screen to be blank at any time. The "default graphic" can provide smooth transitions between elements in worship. For example, when the call to worship has finished and the musicians are on their way to their instruments, put the graphic on screen to divert the attention of your congregation as this transition takes place.

2)       Integrate the metaphor throughout. Making the move to metaphorical presentation of the Gospel means finding ways to make the metaphor work throughout the entire worship experience. Earlier we shared how metaphor is the glue to make the Gospel message stick in the minds of worshipers. It is also the glue that makes the various elements of worship work as one. Metaphor cannot be effective if limited to the screen. This means that the worship leader’s language; the pastor’s message, the songs, and so on, must all together reflect the metaphor.  It is worth saying again that the metaphor must be strictly rooted in scripture.

Here are a few questions to ask that will help you integrate the theme and metaphor:

a)       Do the songs reflect the theme/metaphor?

b)       How can the altar space be used to further communicate the theme/metaphor?

c)       Are there any smells associated with the theme/metaphor?

d)       Are there any objects that worshiper can take with them to remember the experience?

e)       Are there ways to alter sermon points, prayers, and other spoken words to make the metaphor work?

f)         Can lighting be used to further integrate the theme/metaphor?

g)       Can you sum up the experience in a few sentences?

3)       L: Forge a new synthesis of all the best of Christian tradition. Digital age worship is not exclusively the latest and greatest but a combination of many forms, each that can express unique things. The phrase “Ancient-Future” is popular in progressive church circles because it connotes both innovation and tradition. Digital age worship doesn’t deny tradition; it takes the best of it and rejuvenates it. One example is in biblical storytelling. Rather than just reading the scripture lesson, storytelling offers a way in which the hearer can enter into and internalize the story, as if they were present in first-century culture and hearing it for the first time. Although storytelling has found renewed enthusiasm in church circles for a few years, digital age worship takes the form one step further by introducing soundtracks, sound effects, lighting, fog and imagery. The combination of these elements can create a much more powerful experience that in the traditional reading of the big dusty altar Bible, which I read publicly for worship as a teenager.

J: When you take each of these various traditions, cultures, and current forms and make them work together thematically, the result is something entirely new. When it works, it is a fusing together of elements that can make worship a powerful and timeless experience. If the hard work of tying it all together isn’t done, the experience can become a muddy mess. This should be a primary concern when the worship planning team meets. Giving up early on making elements work thematically always results in an experience that is not at all memorable.

4)       L: Be more holistic. Worship planners and leaders must become more holistic in their approach to both media in worship and worship itself, and begin to see media as both communication and communion. As the print age became more sophisticated, it distinguished roles such as reporter, layout designer, and press operator, or as power struggles dictated, the idea people and the production people. Recent technological changes have collapsed these boundaries and returned the communication industry toward an era of integration, much like the era when Shakespeare hung out in the pressroom.

Someone might say, “Well, what about the film industry, which is highly specialized?” The answer here is that the real trend in film isn’t Hollywood and unions, whose structural system was built fifty years ago, but in the democratization of digital production that is occurring everywhere through the iMac and the like, which is creating a whole new breed of independent filmmaker.

 The holistic approach applies both to skill sets as individuals and to teams in service of the worship experience. We need not support superhero pastors who want to add digital to their skill repertoire, but rather we support empowering environments where consensus is the force that creates digital art for revealing God.

Artists of any age are holistic. They are good at the mechanics of form as well as expression. Michelangelo invented new techniques when working on the Sistine Chapel project because the project, in all its complexities, demanded a degree of craftsmanship that had previously not existed. Guy Kawaski, the Apple marketing guru, wrote Rules for Revolutionaries in which he uses the phrase “Evangineer” to describe a person that has a burning desire to change the world and the technical knowledge to accomplish it.

It is a bad idea to separate the technical group from the creative group. Some members of the community seem more interested in widgets, and other members in ideas. To truly be effective, a digital age minister must go through the painful work of learning both. I don’t mean to the point of mastery, as each of us are gifted in unique ways. Teams that work are teams that understand enough about each other’s gifts, skills, and interests in order to both communicate and empathize.

J: I’m not a preacher, but I’ve written and given what some would call sermons for various services over the last decade. Each time was a struggle, and I was often worried that what I would say might not relate, or would be confusing, or offensive, or ineffective. I hated that pressure. Then I joined a worship design team. Although my job on the team was not to preach, I felt a comfort in that what we designed in a group would work in worship because the material had been tested in our group. I don’t ever want to go back!

 I can’t understand why anyone would want to work alone on worship when they could work with creative teams. When you work alone, a bad idea stays bad idea. 
A bad idea in a team environment is an opportunity for greatness. For instance I might throw out a really bad idea for a metaphor after hearing the Scripture for the week. Len might say “Ok that’s a bit weird, but what about this…” You, in turn might respond by saying “I see where you’re going with that, but what about…” and I might throw in one last spin on your idea to make it really work. Had I been working alone, the bad idea would have remained. When working in a team to design worship, ideas and creativity are exponential.

5)   L: Pastors should broaden their self-conception from preacher to producer. Being a producer means one allows a team to co-construct the basic ideas of worship. This requires a great degree of control relinquishment. Give up some control. Don’t worry about not getting credit or losing the most visible aspect of your job. Realize that good worship reflects good leadership. Broaden your self-definition to include not only preaching skills but also leadership ability.

What about creating space for some bad stuff to happen? Yes, this could happen. But the essence of the team is in the core theology of the priesthood of all believers: each of us, through the work of the Holy Spirit, is able to encounter the Word of God. When people want to go crazy with their imaginations, allow them to be creative while holding them to core standards already present in the congregation, such as the mission of the church.

Sharing ownership of the worship planning function doesn’t negate the preaching function or the role of teaching in worship. Both of these remain extremely vital in our digital world. Preaching is critical to discipleship, but the three-point sermon with illustrations may not be. Try approaching your sermons more like storytelling experiences. At the same time, take broader ownership of the entire worship service. Don’t rely on the music person any more than the music person should rely on you. Work together.

J: Sooner or later many pastors become concerned that they will lose control. Although it shouldn’t matter, credit becomes an issue. If a pastor works with a team, then it may seem as if their role is less than it once was. The pastor, however, might be perceived as the master planner who has reconceived worship for this age. All of the successes are attributed to the pastor. I look at it much like a baseball team. The pitcher is credited with the win, even the whole team contributed in various ways.

6)       L: Don’t compartmentalize. It is not the job of the theologian to interpret and the technician to edit and the producer to form the story and then for them to all come together early Sunday morning to figure out how to link their work with some loosely held strand. For digital age worship, these functions should be mixed together in the formative stages of worship development. Being a digital storyteller is a holistic mix of interpretation and translation, integrity and integration, technical and creative. Not one person that does it all, but that they work together.

You may be surprised to find that creative empowerment will draw talented people to your ministry. So many gifted people don’t put their gifts to ministry because the church insists that their music be acceptable to everyone in the congregation, that their stories and dance raise no questions, that their video challenge no prejudices, that their images maintain the status quo. God forbid that people should be challenged to move off their spiritual backsides!

7)       Everyone on the team needs to exegete culture just as much as one might do with scripture. To exegete means to reach in and extract the truth. Pastors are trained to do this with Scripture but not culture, though this flaw is slowly  disappearing in many seminaries. We must learn how to extract truth from popular culture for the sake of completing the final step of the exegetical process, to put the truth of the Gospel back into the culture. Because we live in our current time and space, we must both pull out and push in truth with culture.

To truly exegete culture is a difficult, ongoing struggle. Culture is temporal and constantly changing.  One cannot achieve a particular culture so much as one might achieve a particular moment in cultural history, which to be defined must be pointed toward a past cultural moment.  This leaves the church in a position where it is never able to understand or relate to the culture of the present, which of course is what Jesus calls the church to do when it is commanded to promote the Kingdom of God.  So we are not called to merely achieve or conquer a particular cultural language, but to stay in continual interaction with it for the purposes of communicating the language of the Gospel, which is both now and in the future, imminent and transcendent.

8)       Allow the canvas for digital art to encompass the entire worship space, and not merely the drama stage or video screen.

J: When churches move in digital directions they often see the screen as the canvas. The screen is an important part of painting worship, but it should by no means be understood as the sum of digital age worship. There are so many ways to paint the picture, and sometimes the screen is not even needed to transform the moment. We often encourage churches to start without installing a screen at first.  What does this look like?
 

Mike Slaughter was preaching on the seven disciplines from his book Spiritual Entrepreneurs. This particular week focused on the biblical principle. Our team wanted to present the Bible as an exciting record of God’s love for humanity. The word adventure sprang up again and again in our design process. Someone suggested that Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, a film popular at the time, might capture the adventurous spirit. The plot centers on the diary that Indiana’s father kept throughout his lifelong search for the Holy Grail. Presenting the Bible as an adventure book, God’s diary, would, we expected, help worshipers re-conceive the Bible in a fresh way.

With the entire worship space as the canvas, we obtained the familiar Indiana Jones theme music by John Williams, and played it as worshipers entered the sanctuary. The house lights were low that week, with candles in lanterns, lighting each row of chairs. On the stage was an altar display that looked like a scaled down version of what you’d find outside the Indiana Jones show at Disney’s MGM Studios theme park. It was made of crates, rope, candlelight lanterns, the famous Fedora style hat, and an old beat up Bible wrapped in a grocery bag. Mike even wore a khaki Indiana Jones shirt.

Worship began with a clip from the film. In it, Sean Connery explains the three challenges they must face to reach the grail. First, the breath of God, next, the word of God, and finally, the path of God.  Those became the points for the sermon, so in a sense Sean Connery was our guest speaker that weekend. We altered the language for the prayer and all other connectional words throughout the service. Some worshippers were so drawn in by the experience that they returned for a second service.

Using smell and touch as part of the experience can also make worship more effective for this culture. We’ve had coffee brewing, Jambalaya cooking, incense burning, and we’ve even sprayed perfume on bulletins to engage the sense of smell. We’ve given out paper etch-a-sketches, shells, rocks, and pennies to give people a tactile experience of the word. The possibilities are broader than cinema when it comes to the canvas of worship.

L: Some tips:
a) Position your screen maximum viewing. If possible, middle is best.
b) Use lighting to illuminate the speaker but not to blind or focus on the congregation.
c) Have stereo sound.
d) Create a flat, open public speaking space, perhaps even an “in the round” structure with a runway, similar to the fashion show runway.
e) Incorporate a combination of natural and artificial light, but don’t let the natural light hit the stage or screen areas, only the worship seats.
f) Position the seats in such a way that will facilitate interaction. Don’t make two rows of seats that all face forward! Create semi-circles, or even circles.
g) Have space that can be altered to create various types of atmosphere depending on the needs of each worship experience.  This could be like a film set or theater stage, but don’t let it appear to be stark when unused, and not overly industrial or built primarily for elaborate, thematic production. The space needs to have the ability to be organic on its own, without an expensive set.

Question
If you can design your dream worship space, where money and time are no object, what would it look like? Brainstorm some ideas individually, or better yet, as a worship team. Now, after going through some options, how can you apply your dreams, and these ideas, to your current situation? Think of a couple of ideas that you can implement immediately.