Many: O God, we stand at the gate, hesitant and uncertain. At times we are unwilling to answer your invitation, slow to take steps into the journey toward your Reign. Forgive us, we pray.

Help us to embrace the joy and the pain that comes of following you, of loving others, of accepting ourselves.

Grant us the courage to join you in the procession; the selflessness to lay our cloaks before you; the freedom to lift our palms to your glory; and the knowledge that by your grace we are forgiven. Amen.

One: Hear this good news! The procession is ever moving forward. We can join at any moment. The invitation still stands! In the name of Jesus Christ you are forgiven!

Many: In the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven! Glory to God! Amen!

We don’t write for the posterity of the page, we write for living, active bodies at worship.

Notice the format of the above prayer on the page. This is a poetic form rather than paragraph form. We often print a unison prayer like this:

O God, we stand at the gate, hesitant and uncertain. At times we are unwilling to answer your invitation, slow to take steps into the journey toward your Reign. Forgive us, we pray. Help us to embrace the joy and the pain… [etc.]

While this may save bulletin space, it is a sacrifice. What you sacrifice is understanding – actually taking in the word imagery as it flies by. The first poetic form has one idea per line with subsets of ideas indented, so our brains can take in the meaning of this prayer more easily. Our eyes use the visual format as part of the clues about what we are expressing. In fact, we can also pray this together more easily as we follow the natural pauses created by the lines. We get to feel the rhythm and move- ment as part of the meaning of the prayer – the encounter with God – rather than our attention being taken up with the struggle of staying together in unison. Even worse is using ALL CAPS TO INDICATE UNISON SPEAKING. Our eyes use the up and down- ness of letters to instantly recognize words on a page. When you place everything in all caps, you take away this shortcut making cognition even slower. The bottom line is getting to the essence of the moment. As wordsmiths for worship, we write for fleeting moments in time. We don’t write for the posterity of the page, we write for living, active bodies at worship.

8

Think Like a Filmmaker. When we

engage in verbal artistry, whether that’s written liturgy, the preached Word, scripture reading or extemporaneous prayer and worship leadership, we do this in collabora- tion. Some of my research over the last couple of years has been to find out what I could learn from filmmakers that would help our worship design and leadership. There are many lessons to be learned. One important lesson with regard to verbal artistry comes from screenwriters. When someone is writing for the screen, it is very different from writing a story for print media. As they write,

screenwriters see what is happening when

the words are being brought to life. They know that the words they write will always have a visual, musical and action component at the moment they are spoken.

When I begin the stage of shaping and editing first drafts in my creative process (see the steps in the creative process in my previous article), I try to see in my mind’s eye what is happening in the worship space. Where is the reader/preacher/speaker in the worship space? What sounds might be accompanying these words? Does this belong in a musical interlude in a congregational song? Is there music or sound effect or silence underscoring this? What kind of speaking voice does this need? Young? Old? Forceful? Hushed? Am I at the pulpit or in the aisle or at the font or table at this point in this sermon? What movement or transition in space would facilitate a deeper understand- ing? Well, you get the point. There are a lot of things going on while I’m writing.

JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2010 • WORSHIP ARTS

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