What is “Visual Worship”?
As I’ve been on the road having conversations with pastors, worship leaders & techies who are all trying to figure out how creativity works in worship, I have had a growing burden to gain a clearer understanding of what true, biblical worship is. i have much to learn and more scripture to dig into than i can comprehend. Here are some of the main things that have stuck with me, and here are some questions I’m asking myself in hopes of finding the answer to “What is Visual Worship?”.
• Worship is our response to a revelation from God…specifically, Who He is, what He’s done, and what He’s yet to do. // So how can visual media/art facilitate a revelation from God (just as text on paper can), and how can we use visual media as a way of leading our response to God?
• “We breathe in the wonders of God, and we breathe out our response.” – paraphrasing Matt Redman // Can we “breathe” in/out using our eyes and what we see?
• Worship, by nature, is 3-dimentional (picture an X, Y, Z axis): UP (Godward/Intimacy), ACROSS (Communal/Relationships), and OUT (missional/Kingdom)…all three working in motion & together..never independently. God is everywhere. // How can our visual media support each dimension? Can our screens and walls be windows into the world around us, bringing everything from the wonders of God’s creation to the hurting and oppressed into the church building, where we tend to confine our worship?
• ” ‘Missions’ exists because worship doesn’t.” – John Piper // How does “missions” play a role in the visual content we are choosing?
• Worship stems from the heart…it’s not what we do, but how we live. // How are we using visual media/art to connect the dots… that worship is not the songs we sing nor the experience we have during an event, but a lifestyle of authentic relationships, loving others, and adoring God in everything?
• “Religion (worship) that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit widows and orphans in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.” – James 1:27 (ESV) // Again, how does this relate to “visual worship”? What priorities do we have when it comes to worshiping ourselves and leading others to worship?
• “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” – Romans 12:1 (ESV) // If we are using this phrase “visual worship”, how does it apply to this passage of scripture?
• I once heard a friend in Hong Kong say that we can glorify/worship God by what we see, that if we weren’t able to do that, God wouldn’t have created us with eyes. // How can I see Jesus in everyday life? How can I use images and art to help others see Jesus in the midst of singing worship songs and hearing a sermon?
So, with all of this said, what would you say is the definition of “visual worship”, and how does it relate to leading your congregation?
For me; visual worship is using forms of visual expression (light/darkness – candles – still imagery – motion imagery – text/scripture – icons – paint – glass – color – fabric – etc..) to tell the story of Christ and worship and glorify God. It’s for HIM. Simple as that. I am approaching this from a corporate worship service setting, with fellow believers in Christ. In order to glorify God, I feel that you have to have relationship with Him first…
The visuals in worship are meant to be seen through, not watched. They are there to, as impossible as it is, see some part of God and Christ that maybe you haven’t been able to visualize before. It’s like…there is something in our spirit that is brought more to life with certain visual elements. It’s like something is connected with our spiritual and physical. Our feeble human attempts to represent the glory of God visually will never ever ever come close, but our heart behind what we do is what is important.
Camron Ware on November 15, 2009
I’ve been reading through 1 Chronicles over the last weeks. I was stunned at how many Chapters are devoted to David setting up systems in the temple to ensure that God was ministered to arround the clock.
There were literally teams of priests that constantly sang, played musical instruments, burned incense , etc. This was mandated ministry to God set into law by the highest power in the land, the King. It was programmed and non-negotiable, a duty. It’s the closest thing I see in the Bible to the structured services we have in our corprate gatherings these days.
Only the priests were allows to carry out these duties. The people brought sacrifices and the priests slaughtered them and burned them up in front of God. Other than that the people appeared to have no active part in worshipful interaction with God. It wasn’t required of them at all. They had little to no interaction with anything considered sacred.
Isn’t it interesting that after Christ became the final Sacrifice, the rolls of the ‘common person’ and priest or spiritual leader essentialy reversed. The position of priest as a mediator became obsolete. There were no more sacrafices to be made. Now every individual was commanded to be a living sacrifice, to kill his own flesh on the alter of the cross. Any mention of singing was for the encouragement and edification of the congregation.
The church was now commanded to be constantly in the world with the realization that Jesus was personally with each one, living and dwelling within them. Now all of life became the setting for worship. It became the result of an identity and no longer a bid for favor.
Are we replicating the old ways with how we have our services? Are we going to Sunday morning “worship”, following the lead singer and band in a set of songs, powering up our technology, to send up our incense in hopes that God is ministered to and and pleased with us then going back to real life?
Visual Worship is the visible effect of Christ alive in you and I.
nate griffin on November 15, 2009
Wow! Thank you for distracting me through all of worship tonight as my head was spinning contemplating that question.
Along the lines of what Nate said, it seems as though worship has become something we do on Sundays rather than a lifestyle. It’s like we go to church to be “good people” or to get our dose of Jesus to start our week and that’s it, then we’re good until the next Sunday. It’s part of the reason much of the world looks at Christians as hypocrites. For some reason I think the “common churchgoer” has been made to feel like they are unworthy, like the only ones who can really worship are the pastors and the worship leaders and the rest of us are just there to play along. People need to be encouraged to be alive in their faith. When the love of God consumes you, when you fall into him, you cannot help but worship in everything you do.
On to the question of visual worship. I would define visual worship as an attempt to reflect what God has revealed of himself to the world. We attempt to paint a picture that tells HIS story. It is another form of communication.
In the corporate setting, an image, a candle, a light, etc., can establish an environment or be a catalyst that inspires in someone a profound understanding of God’s power and grace from which worship flows. For example we celebrated communion in worship tonight. Someone spoke to me after worship and commented how an image that appeared on the screen that melded together Christ on the cross, the cup, and the bread gave meaning to communion that they had never felt before. That image ignited a profound understanding in them from which worship naturally flowed.
On a personal level, visual expressions are a way for us to worship our Lord. They are a way for me to communicate just how much I love Him, how grateful I am, how in awe of Him I am. It’s that breathing out part. God created some of us to communicate in this way. Visual worship has been around since creation, just in different forms. Beauty for His glory is pleasing to God.
Katie on November 15, 2009
As requested, pasting the comment from Creative Worship Tour:
I think your first sentence nails it, worship is a response and it comes out of the whole arc of God’s story.
So visual worship is declaration, not decoration. It isn’t decorating a product for attracting, it’s the declaration of a people for remembering.
Visual worship remembers the whole arc of God’s story, God created a universe in-right-relationship; sin put it out-of-right-relationship; Jesus lived, died and was raised from the dead through the power of the Spirit and according to the Father’s audacious plan to put things back in-right-relationship; we live in the tension between a kingdom out-of-right-relationship and a kingdom of right-relationship; God promised to return his creation to right-relationship.
Visual worship has the unique potential for it’s whole-arc-of-God’s-story-remembering to be immediately indigenous. One of the ways we remember the whole arc of God’s grace is through noticing smaller indigenous arcs. Little stories of grace are an image of the whole story of grace. These don’t have to be didactic linear journalism, like an ad for programs. Telling these little indigenous stories of grace can be poetic and subtle.
Worship usually happens inside of churches. Once you’re inside you could be anywhere, most services in the west are not particularly indigenous. Visual worship which uses local images (indigenous images) to tell little local stories of grace pulls us and our worship outside the church. It has the potential to places us, through collective imagination, in our mission(al) field and at the same time remind us God is already there.
Steve Frost of TWOTP on November 16, 2009
wow…declaration and not decoration…im thinking of 2 or 3 things we currently do in worship (visual and musical and more) that after putting it thru that filter seem kind of pointless…yikes! thanks steve.
visual worship for me is a two part (or more) thing…
simply that act of creating a graphic, video, set, art piece – that’s part of the artist’s worship as they become connected to God and the community…and then share their interpretation of that encounter
then there’s the retelling and resharing in our corporate worship time…of god’s story, of our community’s stories, of the world’s story…all casting a vision and compelling us to go and experience God for ourselves…in service, in fellowship, etc.
i know i’m missing big chunks of what visual worship is…but there’s something for starters…
thanks for asking stephen…
josh linman on November 17, 2009
declaration not decoration is a great thought. visual worship as it’s named is visual/visible/exposed comunication with God. It’s not important for God to see that we worship. It’s important for us to do this. It’s like a motion proclamation that I worship Him and I stand before Him and I honour Him. It’s also not proclamation before other people to make them see me worshiping. It’s only between me and my God.
The very important thing is to remember that He is the reason and source of my ministry not only “blesser” of my work.
The first thing should be worshiping then ministry. When Martha recieved Jesus in her house, she was serving Jesus. But her sister Mary sat at Jesus feet and listened His words. Jesus said that “Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her” Luke 10:42 KJV
Yeah worship is a live style with everyday declaration: You are my God and my life is yours.
Mat on November 18, 2009