Desperately seeking crafty & creative creatures of God!

One Sunday at another church, on a communion Sunday, I hooked up a bread maker and had it going so that as people came for worship, they smelled the baking bread—while it wasn’t a visual, it certainly added to the scent of worship. I so much want to add “more” to our worship experience other than just words and music.

As your pastor, this week, I made a trip to a local Michael’s to acquire some means of counting the number of Salty Servants in our church (see other side of insert). I asked several workers where to find some of those little flattened marbles, as I thought that might be a good way to use in counting. The employees all looked at me as if “duh, everyone knows where those things are” and generally pointed towards the middle of the store.

I envisioned a table in the sanctuary to lift up “salty servants”—maybe a salt shaker or a bag of salt on display with some flowing linen, some hand tools shown as examples of serving others, several nicely designed and printed “handouts” of ways to serve, along with a creative way to count the Salty Servants.

It dawned on me that being crafty wasn’t one of my God-blessed gifts; but I suspect that we have some crafty folks right here at Seminole Heights.

Additionally, I have really desired a “worship display” table or altar that would highlight that Sunday’s worship emphasis. As the worship is planned for the week, a crew of folks might brainstorm how one aspect of the worship service could be emphasized in an artistic manner.

Looking around Michaels I saw lots of great craft ideas—candles, fabrics, objects, pictures, statutes, etc. that could easily be a springboard to showing a visual of what is happening in worship.

Would that be something you might be interested in taking on as a project? Maybe one time or once a month or once a season? Grab some buddies and do it together?

I would be glad to suggest several ideas and scriptures I am using to plan for the time of worship and then encourage you to go forth and multiply using the visual arts to enhance our worship time together.

One great resource to tap into is an upcoming worship seminar hosted by the Temple Terrace UMC and led by the Rev. Kandace Brooks (she has been designing the worship displays at the Florida Annual Conference for several years); we worked together at a church in Gainesville. Ask Judy about attending this worship seminar next week; she has all the details. Who’s up for being crafty?