The Overflowing Font

One of the coolest things about the church year is the occasional celebration that is not your normal Easter or Christmas but is still significant in the life of the church and how we live out our faith.  Jesus being baptized is one of those days for me.

The biggest issue I have with the end of Christmas and the subsequent un-decorating of the sanctuary is the gigantic hole I feel when we return back to the "blank canvas" state of the worship space.

This year I thought it would be less of a visual shock to have something colorful in the sanctuary.  I took the blue fabric that was covering the base of the birch trees (see previous post for more information) and created the Jordan River flowing out of the baptismal font.

The process was simple.  Blue shiny fabric was placed under the baptismal font to hold it in place.  Then we continued to let it drape over the edge of the stage area to symbolize the overflowing mercy and love God has for us.  I originally wanted it to travel out to the foot of the congregation, but it was a communion Sunday so I thought it would be bad if people had to 'wade in the water' and possibly slip and fall.  So I stopped there.  

I also added a few other details to make it look more like a river.  The rocks were something everyone seems to have laying around somewhere.  They were dual purpose, looks and holding the fabric in place.  

The last touch was the river bank.  Over the years we have found that being able to create rock or stone or a tomb has been quite the task.  Our wonderful Children's Ministry staff created "rock cloth" they used for Vacation Bible School and a tomb.  Basically, it is heavy light brown fabric that was spray painted randomly to resemble the texture of stone.  It works great!  I grabbed a few sheets of rock cloth from storage and used it for the banks of the river.  

Final thoughts:  This was something I put together pretty quick.  The end result looked great, but I learned something from this Sunday.  Having something visual in a worship service is a must.  Whether it be imagery, physical decorations, experiential elements or projected media attention needs to be drawn to it.  

If you have done something that specifically goes along with the preaching topic for the day and that can enhance the worship service then you can't let it sit idol hoping that people will make the connection.  

If I had a do-over for this Sunday I would have made a few suggestions to the Pastors:

1.  Preach from the banks of the river.  This is what John the Baptist did, why not role play a little and give the congregation a taste of this crazy prophet who ate locusts and wild honey?  

2.  Reference the overflowing water.  Use it as a jumping off point for the closing statement of a sermon.

3.  Have a children's sermon around the river.  Talk to the kids about how Jesus was baptized and what baptism was like during the time of Jesus.

I also had a suggestion for myself and other visual artists as well.  Make sure you talk to the Pastors about their main point of the sermon before you do something visual.  The main reason we didn't mention the river or make a big deal about it was because our focus for that day was what happened right after the baptism of Jesus:  his 40 days in the wilderness.  

All of these things are important to consider when planning visuals for worship.  The great thing about how I work is not being afraid to try something and have it not work out exactly how I thought.  Pick yourself up, don't get discouraged, and improve the element for next time.

God Bless and keep trying new things.

Christmas Natural Lighting (or lack there of)

It's President's Day and I am still writing about Christmas, but when I look outside and see the snow fly and how beautiful it is, I can't help but turn on some of my favorite Christmas music and listen while I write.

Today's topic:  Natural Lighting and how we got rid of it.

We have been living in our worship space for 10 years now and our congregation has grown to a point that we need 6 worship services on Christmas Eve.  This is a blessing but it does pose a few challenges.  The greatest of which is service times and natural light.  I think it is safe to say that the majority of our congregation loves the candle light service atmosphere.  Whether it's the glow, the meaning, the warmth, the smell or the music sung while lighting the candles, people feel as though Christmas is not complete without it.

The problem: half of the services we offer happen before it gets dark, and we have lots of windows where light likes to come in.  Luckily we are in Minnesota and it gets dark early, otherwise we would have only one TRUE candlelight service.

We have 7 windows on each side of the sanctuary that provide great natural light...when you want it.

The solution: 1/2 inch Pink Panther FOAMULAR insulating sheathing.

We bought a few big sheets of the sheathing from Home Depot and had the store do the cutting for us.  Very handy.  The result:

Be sure to measure the windows before you do the cutting.

We are also lucky because we have easy roof access to the windows.  I climb up and shove the sheathing into the window on the outside.  The end result is a completely blacked out window with no pink panther staring at us.

Getting the sheathing out is also a tricky thing so we put a piece of duct tape on the bottom as a handle to pull it out when we were done.

Here are before and after pictures taken a year apart.

The effect was stunning and exactly what we had hoped for.


Some things to consider:

1.  The pink is visible from the outside when lit.  If you would like to avoid this problem it is simple to peel off the plastic coating and pain the sheathing any desired color.

2.  Make sure they fit well.  If they don't match correctly then light will leak in on the seems.  The sheathing is flexible to a point so it is best to measure slightly larger than needed.

3.  If you are slightly small and it is cold outside taping them to the window won't work.  I ended up using some tension rods I had laying around to make sure they didn't fly away.

4.  They will fly away.  If the wind catches them they will be long gone so make sure they are snug or secured.

5.  Make sure they are labeled.  I have done this once before and the first set grew legs and jumped into the dumpster.  Bow they are numbered, labeled as to what they are and a reminder to not throw them away.  This saves money in the long run.


Now I think we can put Christmas to rest.  The next blog posts will be focusing on what you can do with what you have: creating meaningful worship visuals on a weekly basis.

Have a great day,

Christmas 2013

It seems like it has been either a REALLY long time or it was just yesterday that Christmas happened.  I know I am still looking at a few Christmas decorations at home and feel like they will never be put away.  And I have to wait for the snow and ice to thaw before I can even think about taking the lights off of my house.  So in that sense, it is still ok to talk about Christmas.  Because, like it or not, we will be planning next year's celebration before we know it.

First, some background.  Christmas at Word of Peace is a beautiful time.  It is one of the two times a year that our gym we use for a worship space really looks like a sanctuary.  We decided this year we would focus more on Advent for the first couple of weeks and wait to truly "deck the halls" until the third week of Advent.  To read more about our Advent decorations check out the previous post.

When Christmas decorating time finally arrived we lined up our volunteers and called an All-hands meeting of the Worship and Visual Arts team to get the job done.

We began by keeping the birch trees as the backdrop behind the pine trees.  We recently built out the chancel (stage) area of the sanctuary so we felt we would still have enough space for everything.  And we did.

We added 6 pine trees of varying heights to the already 'well-forested' stage .  We had trees from 6 ft to 13 ft tall and different widths as well.  This gave a more natural looking forest feel than all the same sized trees would.  We also raised the shorter trees up on platforms and boxes so they weren't lost behind the altar.

All of our pine trees are fake.  But before you throw us out with the bath water, we made this decision a while back because we happened upon 4 fake trees at our church garage sale.  Every year since then we have been on the look out for more trees and now have 10 good ones.  This has saved us tons of money in the long run.  And people got used to the idea after they saw how great it looked.

The trees were lit with normal, end-of-the-season lights we found on sale the previous year.

We also have a very large manger scene we place stage right.  This was a big investment a few years after we moved into this new space.

Each year the congregation is invited to purchase poinsettias for the sanctuary.  This adds a wonderful amount of color.  We generally get about 60 - 70 to work with.

The final piece we added this year was a giant star that hung above the congregation.  One of our fantastic volunteers created this.  It was made from a very sheer gold material.  The star had 20 points and was held together with thick bailing wire and stiff plastic tubing.  We had the idea for it to glow or light up on the inside.  We got it to work with some trial and error.

We originally used marine lights that could be turned on remotely.  It was a good concept but we didn't get enough glow out of the three lights we had in the center.

We landed on a better idea (thank you Pinterest) to hopefully allow the star to glow: a Sparkle Ball!

Watch the demonstration:

I will tell you this, she has done this before...a lot.  And she has the right equipment.  It took us a few trips to find the right size cups and battery powered lights (thanks TruValue!) 

Once we got the hang of it we ended up with something close to what she created in the video.  Note:  Do not decide to do this for the first time the day before Christmas Eve, it makes life a little more stressful.  

Next year we plan to have an industrial stapler and maybe some hot glue handy as well.  We want to make more of these and even hang them outside. The type of stapler she has is called a Plier Style stapler.  It sells for around $25- 40 and is well worth it.

Christmas was a beautiful holiday and I hated having to take down the beautiful colors and trees.  But we were able to enjoy it for almost a full month.

That about covers the sanctuary interior decorations.  I will have one more short post about Christmas and lighting next week.  Till then...thanks for reading.

Advent 2013 (Updated!)

This past Advent and Christmas season is what prompted me to start this blog.  It was my first major event in my new position and not only was I pleased with how the sanctuary looked, I received many positive comments complementing the environment we created.  

Advent:  In previous years the Visual Arts Team spent the weekend after Thanksgiving putting up trees, lights, wreaths and all the Christmas decorations you could imagine.  They would then be up for almost 2 months and be taken down mid to late January.  To be honest, by the time Christmas came we were used to the way things looked and the trees began to disappear.  The issue that was created came in the form of Advent and it's meaning.  The weeks leading up to Christmas is a time to wait and anticipate the coming of the Christ child, and here we were opening the gift of a beautifully decorated worship space almost a month early.  

Our goal was to visually create a sense of anticipation and excitement for the coming of Christmas.  We started with birch trees.

We bought 10 medium birch trees from a local tree farm and
placed them on the back wall behind the altar. 

We used 5 gallon buckets filled with sand to keep them standing.

The bareness of the sanctuary was essential to create the idea of anticipation.  We borrowed the idea from the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis.

We covered the buckets with blue cloth had a slight shimmer to it.  The idea was to bring in the liturgical colors and use them to hide power cords and the lights.

We repositioned them for the children's musical.  We also
had blue wash lighting as well as white up lights to accentuate
the trees and brick.

The children's musical had their own staging but we wanted to keep consistency of the season by using them to flank the backdrop. It also made for a wonderful background for the manger scene. 

The trees were also used in our gathering area at the main entrance to the sanctuary.

Lighting:  This was the most essential part of making the trees work.  We have a tan brick wall that is textured and the "thinness" of the branches were easily lost.  The key was the up lighting used to differentiate the trees from the wall.  

I used 5 Chauvet COLORstrips  to throw a blue wash on the wall behind the trees.  This gave the wall more texture and depth.  

I then needed more light on the trees themselves and I achieved the desired look by attaching 1 Ikea LAGRA light to the base of the tree.

The hardest thing about the Christmas season is waiting.  But no matter what we think about the length of time it always seems to take what seems like forever for Christmas Eve and Day to arrive.  The last thing we wanted was people to feel like Christmas arrived the same time all the sales and music in the department stores did.  Advent was spent focusing on how we prepare our hearts for baby Jesus. Personally it made the stories leading up to the birth story come to life more.

This was our foundation to our Christmas decorations.  And I will talk about that in the next post. Thanks for reading. 

Update!

I found the pictures of just the birch trees!  Enjoy.

The trees were lined up against the back wall so as to not take up too much space.

This corner provided a great backdrop to the Advent wreath.

Wide shot of the chancel area.  Notice the alternating white and blue lights.

Welcome!

Welcome to the Word of Peace Lutheran Church Worship Arts and Visual Ministry blog.

About the Church:

Word of Peace Lutheran Church is located in Rogers Minnesota.  Rogers is a town of almost 12,000 and we are a congregation of almost 3,700.  We are a community of believers that come from the surrounding communities of Elk River, St. Michael, Maple Grove, Otsego and Rogers.  We have a vibrant ministry with a young congregation.  Our vision is to know Christ's love and show Christ's love to all people.

About the author:

My name is Dain Swanson.  I have been working at Word of Peace for 10 years.  I began in Youth Ministry and have recently moved into a new position, Media and Worship Arts.  I lead one of the contemporary music groups, Sol(e)d Out Worship and have always had a love for creating environments and media that help people experience God.

What you can expect:

This is a simple blog to share ideas.  At Word of Peace we have a number of talented staff and volunteers that create amazing art and worship elements.  We would like to share them.  Perhaps it will inspire you to be creative.  Maybe this will become a place where creatives come and share what they are doing as well.

Come and enjoy.  Take these ideas and use them in your own life and congregation.

God Bless,

Dain Swanson
Media and Worship Arts Administrator
Word of Peace Lutheran Church