Church Video Ideas: Communicating to Those Who Listen with Their Eyes
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- Posted on: Wed, May 02, 2007
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Study the best communicators
1. Study the Master – How did Christ communicate (mustard seed, vine and branches, children, wind, Living Water, seeds, plank in your eye, etc.).
2
. Study people in Scripture – Check out leaders in both the Old and New Testaments. Study Peter and Paul. Look at Acts 17 – How did Paul communicate differently in verses 16-32 than he did in the beginning of the chapter?
3. Study present-day communicators – Who are your favorite speakers? What do you like about them? How do they capture your mind and your heart?
Practice the disciplines of your craft
1. Creativity – Consider all that our Creator made; the many different species, colors, people, etc. Let Him inspire you to use every ounce of your talent and imagination in crafting messages. Michael Slaughter, Pastor of Ginghamsburg Church said, “Electronic media are the language of our culture. Our strategies for designing worship MUST be visually engaging.”
2. Learning – Study “how to” learn and be a continual learner yourself. We should all be constant students of God, His creation, His Word, the people He died for, the culture we find ourselves in and how to communicate effectively. Stretch yourself. Read constantly!
3. Risk-Taking – Great communicators take risks. Risk and faith go hand in hand. When we stand up to preach, do we rely more on our experience and education or the Holy Spirit? Rob Bell is teaching pastor at Mars Hill Bible Church in Grandville, MI. The entire first year of their church, Rob preached on the book of Leviticus – and the church grew from zero to three thousand members. Talk about risk-taking!
Employ the following (Be intentional)
1. Storytelling – Paint a picture with your words. Never forget the power of the imagination. Everything doesn’t have to be on the screen (Yes, I work for a media company). Dan Kimball said, “Because people in the emerging culture don’t know the story, preachers must become storytellers again.”
2. The Arts – Praise God. the arts are coming back to the church! For so long, you had a place to serve in our churches if you taught, sang, or played the piano/organ. Now, everyone is (or should be) welcome to use their gifts and talents for the glory of God whether they are a “techie”, painter, dancer, poet, sculptor, seamstress, designer, video producer, actor, etc. Find the artists in your church and allow them to partner with you in communicating the Gospel.
3. Shift from auditory only to multi-sensory worship – One doesn’t have to research too long to see that most people learn today through other means than hearing. Leonard Sweet’s book Post-Modern Pilgrims lays out in detail his EPIC theory. Sweet suggests (and I agree) that our worship services and sermons should be Experiential, Participatory, Image-based, and Connective. Sweets says, “When you have a choice to make about how to deliver a particular element of your worship service, push the bounds—make it dynamic, relational, and most of all, make it visual.”
Never Lose Your Focus
1. You must shift from Information to Transformation – Preaching in the modern church focused on a logical presentation of facts to move people toward a decision – now you need to move beyond words and be interactive and engaging. Our worship gatherings should not be a social or academic meeting of people “coming to church” and learning.
2. The goal is changed lives – Our worship gatherings should be a spiritual, authentic, life-changing encounter for God’s people connecting with each other and their Creator by experiencing His Presence in worship and confronting truth expressed through His Word and understood through His Spirit in an atmosphere of love, grace, peace and joy!
3. Rely on His strength – With the reality that it’s not about us and that God knows who we are trying to reach and how best to communicate to them, the obvious comes back to the forefront: PRAYER. Prayer is the key to all, the lifeline from which we “live, move, and have our being.”
I’ll close with 3 thoughts
1. You can’t do it alone – If you haven’t already, put together a creative planning team and work with them on your message and series planning. If you missed it, read my “No More Lone Ranger Worship Planning” article in REV Magazine’s July/August ‘06 issue.
2. Evaluation – The only way to truly grow and improve as a communicator is to constantly evaluate your teaching. Suggestions for this are: Video yourself teaching, listen to just an audio recording of yourself teaching and ask others to evaluate your teaching. You can download a free evaluation form from my MultisensoryWorship.com website.
3. Remember: All our media are simply tools – Our responsibility as leaders is to help people stay focused on Jesus, not the experience itself. If they leave our churches saying, “What a cool video” instead of “What an awesome God!” we’ve missed the boat.
Press on!
This article first appeared in the March/April 2007 REV Magazine
©2007 – Greg Atkinson (www.churchvideoideas.com)
Used by permission from author. All rights reserved by author.
Greg Atkinson lives in Dallas with his wife and their three small children. Greg served previously as the Director of WorshipHouse Media, after having served as a worship pastor for 11 years. Greg is now the Technical Arts Director at Bent Tree Bible Fellowship and continues to consult, teach and write about worship, media and creative communication. You can connect with him through his daily blog, Church Video Ideas, his podcast, Creative Synergy, or his email: .
Here’s something fun: Ask your child, wife, staff member, deacon, elder, small group teacher: “What did I speak on 3 weeks ago?…2 weeks ago?…this past weekend? Ouch! Maybe that isn’t so fun. Why do their answers sting so much? Because, as communicators, we desperately want to reach the people that we’re speaking to. How can we improve in the art and science of communication? Here are a few thoughts...
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