WORSHIP PLANNING ON A SMALL BUDGET

The Worship Design Studio:

the verbal artist

with Dr. Marcia McFee

We do need words. But we need to shift our thinking.

Fair Lady. One of my favorite songs to sing began with Eliza blasting Higgins and Pickering about their incessant running-on- of-the-mouth. “Words, words, words, I’m so sick of words! I get words all day through first from him, then from you; is that all you blighters can do?!” She finally pleads with them not to tell her in words, but to show her by their actions. (I also liked this because I was a Mis- souri gal from a little town

W

in the “Show Me” state.) The ironic and comical thing about that song is that it is a “banter” song, with words tumbling out of Eliza’s mouth in a rush!

6

But “show me” would also be good advice for many of our liturgies, indeed. We Protestants have given words the center of our attention ever since the Reformation

ords, Words, Words. When I was

in college, I played the role of Eliza Doolittle in the musical My

when, at the same time in history, the printing press created much excitement about this form of communication newly accessible to the masses. We’ve even some- times gone so far as to call the sermon the “meat” of the service with everything else the “preliminaries.”

And yet, in our postmodern age of reclaiming visual multimedia communica- tion, “word-smithing” takes on vital impor- tance. From “sound bites” in advertising to carefully-crafted oration in political speeches, we wonder what role substantive verbiage has in our society. We wonder if we can say something of substance and hold the atten- tion of increasingly attention-span deficient congregations. We do need words. But we need to shift our thinking from words versus visuals and action to verbal forms in the hospitable company of all the arts in wor- ship. And we need to see words as conduits of images and movement.

As I said in the first article of this series

(November-December 2009 issue), we are all ritual artists who are called to facilitate Gospel storytelling that incorporates all the senses, using all the forms of communication at our disposal. We do this not in isolation, with preachers and musicians and visual/ media artists off in their own corners all the time, but as a team which plans together and plans ahead. This is what I call “intention design.” In this issue, I begin the journey of looking at a particular art form within that collaboration.

JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2010 • WORSHIP ARTS

○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○ ○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○ Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36