Worship Projection & Imago Divina
How to do it artfully, faithfully and legally
I love worship when all elements work together to lift the gospel message and point us on toward God. As a pastor, I want the visual arts we incorporate in worship to be wonderful teaching tools, effective meditations on Scripture and lift up the Word for the gathered community. What skills will allow us time and space to design and create visuals that become liturgically meaningful aspects of worship? What makes visuals liturgically meaningful anyway?
Why use projection?
Most of the rest of us understand that church folks are profoundly visual and that younger generations experience significant parts of their lives online. Young people say being read to is the most boring part of worship. I consider the screen to be the equivalent of 21st century stained glass windows. And like stained glass, projection can be beautiful, powerful expressions of our deeply held convictions. Like some stained glass, our projection can also be confusing, cluttered or pretty to the point of obfuscating the significance of the biblical story and the world reality of life lived faithfully.
To the extent that projection, like music, liturgy, sacraments and preaching, can point the gathered community toward the movement of the Spirit in the world, then we should use any means at our disposal to communicate more effectively. That said, a congregation with a clearly expressed preference for traditional worship should be respected. Projection can be utilized across a broad range of worship styles – just like other worship elements.
How to incorporate visuals in worship preparation?
I have found that I can integrate the image search with other pastoral responsibilities in a variety of ways, including my own worship preparation, youth church school programs, member education regard worship elements and movements and evangelistic work of inviting people with new gifts to help proclaim the Good News.
We began slowly – with a single image for each service – due to technical difficulties. Our screen became an additional banner space that could be easily changed each week. Introducing visuals this slowly allowed for a much more gentle learning curve for all concerned. After months of a single slide, I began using just a few for each service. Finding the right image was a challenge – like finding just the right sermon illustration. I knew we had paced things in slowly enough when an 80-something church member came to me and described how his sister’s church used the screen for prayers and lyrics. “Could we use our projector for songs?” he asked. I knew we had succeeded in introducing a new art form to our mainline congregation’s worship experience and expectations.
We began with images that reiterated the meaning of the Scripture lesson at the center of worship. Scripture should always be our beginning point. We then developed a series of images related to our biblical theme. We began adding lyrics and eventually some, but not all, prayers and liturgy. Discerning which image fits with each worship movement is worthy of prayerful consideration.
How does one create integrated visuals?
I have been developing a practice I call imago divina. I begin with a reflective reading of scripture following the tradition of listening to the text as practiced in lectio divina. After reading and rereading the text, I underline word and phrases that speak to me. I then type these into an image search in a similar way that I might do a word study using a concordance, lexicon and dictionary. I follow where the images and search words lead to see what God might be revealing to me through the Word. Try this exercise. Think to yourself about a word that is meaningful for you. Got it? Now, consider what the word, experience, feeling might look like. Next, type your word into the search engine and see what other people imagine. What do you find? What is surprising? What is missing? Where is the Spirit moving, speaking, revealing the Divine self?
I have incorporated this search process into my worship preparation time. It is no longer an extra task, but an integral aspect of the work I was already doing. I sometimes find the image search revelatory in ways that send me back to scripture to listen again for the voice of God. Sometimes God speaks to me through the images.
I have been developing this information to be shared in worship settings with teens and adults. Please contact me for more information.