One Creative Process 13, Designing

I'm sure there are better ways to do this, but we found one that worked really well for us.

Remember, by now we knew the over-arching theme, the vibe, the goals of the series and the services, and a good bit of the content.

It was time to pull out the index cards.

Gosh that sounds old school!

I had our ministry assistant make 3x5 cards that had all of the songs we used in our services. Red was up tempo, yellow was medium and blue was slow. The key(s) of the song was on the card too. There were other cards. One each for sermon, baptism, video, communion, song intro, testimony, prayer, scripture reading, offering, and maybe some others I've forgotten.

And there was a large table.

And we went to work.

No givens of order. Sometimes we'd open with a quiet, tender song with lights low and "center" ourselves. Other times we'd open with a bombastic hymn or high energy worship song or video. Really, there were no givens.

The placement of the sermon was key. There were many sermons that lent themselves to an extended time of worship afterwards. The power of song lyrics that express what we've just been confronted with in a sermon is amazing. There were some really great moments after sermons.

Actually, there were really great moments all over the place.

And that's one reason we gave so much care and concern when it came to crafting the order of worship. We wanted to be able to step into and out of those "holy hush" moments intentionally. And so we'd experiment with the cards until we were excited about the order.

And then we'd confirm personnel--who should sing a song, lead a set, share a word, read a passage, etc. This is part of designing worship. Some readers can proclaim joyful truth well, others would do better to share something profound but quiet. This level of crafting was seldom talked about, but it made for some really smooth, fluid, flowing services.

The sense of accomplishment at the end of these meetings was deeply gratifying. Sometimes these meetings lasted forever. And it was worth it.

We learned as we went. We evaluated as we journeyed. More about that next time.


And remember, if you'd like to have some help developing a creative team or developing a team already in place, I'd love to come and do some worship coaching with you. Just shoot me a message or give me a call on my cell phone: 502.229.0114.