Ideas for an Emergent Worship Service

[adamdiehl]

This weekend in our High School group, the youth pastor wants to do some experiential stuff during the worship... like an Emergent Worship service. He needs my help We've never done anything like this before, but I've heard about it. What are some ideas? Here's one example:
During a song about God being the potter... allow for everyone to work with clay.

Any other ideas?

[brenthomer]

Amazon.com: The Emerging Church: Vintage...
go read this book. Then you do not have to start over from ground zero. Here are some ideals that have been implimented in other services...

use inscence so you can engulf the senses
use lots of candles
move the band to the back of the room so you only concentrate on the cross
encourage personal artistic expressions in the church like poetry and paintings (almost in a show and tell fashion)
put in lots of weird christian symbols that people can ponder on
include lots of time for personal reflection
move the chairs into a circle so its not so formal

There are 1,000's of ideals. The book is great because it talks about where your heart and creativity need to be coming from so you can be in the right frame of mind when you brainstorm for the emerging church.

[David Reddel]

Adam - We are doing an "emergent church" gathering here at our church. As mentioned, Dan Kimball's book is excellent. He has a website as well.

Here are a few more resources:


Worship tricks

I follow a few emerging church leader blogs and much activity comes from England. Johnny Baker is well known and this "worship tricks" site will give you some thoughts.

Here are a few more sites that will get you into the meat of what it means to be "emerging"..... hard to define in many respects.

Emerging Church

Emerging Church 2


Here is Dan Kimball's website - Vintage Faith

[[Admin] danroth]

You can really make up your own.

The basics seem to be about engaging the senses, the contemplative mind, and the artistic spark in people to help them experience God and to be more participative in worship.

Here are other ideas, all of which can be done at the same time that the normal praise and worship music (or, preferably, other music which is more creative musically) is playing:

* Have people write prayer requests on notecards and tack them to a cross
* Set up votive candles and ask people to pick one person to pray for, and then light the candle to symbolize the prayers rising to heaven
* set out paints, brushes, and papers and have people illustrate what the scripture text means to them
* put out charcoal pencils and paper and have people illustrate what God is doing in their lives at that moment
* have a station with lots of great prayers from Christian history are posted, and invite people to reflect on them, pray ABOUT them, and then actually pray them... inviting them to take the words as their own and pray them with meaning
* mark off a section of the floor and set it aside for "praise dancing"
* take a few passages from great devotional works, and invite people to write a response to them
* have some Hershey kisses and encourage everyone to let them melt very slowly in their mouths... and then reflect on the scripture "Taste and see that the Lord is good"
* set aside an area for people to pray in a prostrate position

also, have a group time of silent prayer and reflection
and use some historic paintings and artwork in your visuals

(that's kind of a "one from column A", "one from column B" extreme oversimplification, but I hope it helps)

[Len Wilson]

hey, without going off on a soapbox too much about emergent, I'd say avoid doing "weird Christian symbols" in that you don't want to overwhelm people with esoteric concepts that no one understands. Mystery is great in worship but not at the expense of being able to communicate the Gospel with one another. Those Christian symbols have very specific meanings and roots, as does all art. Using them for the express purpose of being esoteric and confusing is very much against the idea of communicating the Good News.

We run our own winter camp for the youth (instead of going to a formal camp program), and this last year we used some ideas of the emerging church method. We ran 3 screens during worship. The center screen was the standard worship lyrics but the side screens used rolling images designed to visually connect the youth. We used nature pics, candles, things like that. During deeper worship and communion time we would use images that were more connected with Christ and communion. Overall it was a treat for the senses.

Originally Posted by Len Wilson

hey, without going off on a soapbox too much about emergent, I'd say avoid doing "weird Christian symbols" in that you don't want to overwhelm people with esoteric concepts that no one understands.

Some symbols that look Christian aren't Christian at all. Know the origins of what you are using.