VWRT 2.0

Last November, Bill Swaringim came to me with an idea: to create a gathering, a space to facilitate community and dialogue surround the topic of “visual worship”. Months later, we gathered in St. Louis. We had no expectations and braced ourselves for what might take place. And people came…hungry for community and for challenging dialogue. Not only did 20+ people attend, but 60+ people tuned in online for the majority of the day’s conversations.  The day seemed like a success, and we left with that “cloud 9″ kind of feeling. We knew this had to be the beginning of something exciting.

Only two months later, we decided to host a similar gathering in the Nashville area. The approach was the same, but the content of the day’s discussions was different than that of St. Louis. The online community forged over twitter and blogs went offline and grew even deeper over philosophical discussions on worship, new expressions of art, cutting edge technology & many bowls of chips & salsa. For it’s one thing for a “tribe” to connect online, but if you ever take your community “offline”, then you will quickly form a belief that social media is simply a means to an end.

For a while, we created a make-shift website that served as a home for information & registration for these first few gatherings. But this week, I’m excited to announce that we have a new online home @ VisualWorshipRoundtable.com! And for the sake of blog post titles, I’m calling it “VWRT 2.0″! A big shout-out to Katie Strandlund for coming on board and designing the new site! Thanks Katie!!

Visual Worship Roundtable gatherings (VWRT for short) were launched to challenge visual worshipers and the Church to use visual media to help others experience God and be transformed into who He has called us to be. Each VWRT is designed to be a space for intentional dialogue and relationship building among the visual worship tribe, which includes anyone who believes that visual media has the potential to add depth and meaning to our corporate worship gatherings.

These are not times to find out what the latest, greatest methods & tools are…nor are these times to be trained or learn how to do our jobs better. Instead, we dedicate the day’s discussions to why we do what we do and to dig deeper into the purpose of corporate worship and how the visual plays a role in that. By taking this approach, we believe we will develop into better visual worship leaders & curators.

On the new site, you will find out what to expect at a VWRT, a little about who’s leading these conversations, ways to continue the dialogue beyond the roundtable events, and information on upcoming gatherings.

Speaking of upcoming gatherings, I’ve got two to tell you about today!

1) ECHO – if you are registered for ECHO (taking place in Dallas next week!!!), then you will be able to attend our late night VWRT hang out on Thursday night! There will probably be an announcement made during the event sometime, but if not, just pay attention to the official @VisualWorship twitter feed for more details. The after-hours session will probably only last an hour, but it will be a good time to connect with each other and maybe dive into a discussion or two. And there just might be an announcement made about an after-ECHO lunch on Friday, but you’ll have to come to find out more. :)

2) STORY – for those of you attending Ben Arment’s STORY conference in Chicago, we are working on a lunch for those interested in visual worship for one of those days. More information will be given at the conference. But we are also hosting a post-STORY VWRT that Friday night and Saturday. If you aren’t able to come to STORY (which is a tragedy), you can still come to VWRT. We will have registration available for those dates soon.

Be sure and follow @VWRT for all the latest information and announcements as we continue to unfold this dream and facilitate future gatherings for our tribe!