a few days ago carlos whittaker asked on his blog, “what is the most creative thing you have done in your church in the last 12 months”. rather than commandeer his comment section i thought i would go ahead and post it here.
so… last year - by far - our most creative effort was our easter series titled, legacy.
a member of our church, ruffin jarman, built an cross out of railroad ties. honestly, it was SO amazingly beautiful - and HEAVY. in addition, we laid 4 individual railroad ties across the front of the stage for the whole series. no one knew what they were for until week three.
week 1: the seed
the message was about god’s dream for his people to be a seed to the nations and his plan to bring it to pass. abbye sang alpha and omega accapella. it was so powerful.
week 2: the price
pastor ron talked about the price that would have to be paid for god’s dreams for us to be fulfilled through christ. we played video 1 (below). i can’t remember now where we got this video but i really love it. and it fit the service perfectly.
week3: the cross (easter)
we put out hammers and buckets of nails next to the railroad ties at the front of the stage. we gave everyone a piece of black paper and had them write on it a life struggle that they deal with in their life that christ died for. we had everyone come up and nail them to the cross. it was so awesome to hear the sounds of all those hammers. it was one of the most passionate moments i have ever witnessed in a church service.
week 4: the promise
glory academy of fine arts danced shane & shane’s, psalm 145
video 2: one of our church family, jimmy bonds, wrote and performed a slam poetry piece to the this video with images from the previous week. unfortunately, i don’t have a recording of the poetry (sigh). but the music and the images are in video 2 below.
video 3: at the end of the service we showed a video where we had gone and taken all the pieces of paper off the railroad ties, locked and them up in a chest. pastor bryan went down to the ocean and threw them in. it was set to audio adrenaline’s, ocean floor. we included images from our water baptism from a few months before which had taken place at the same location as well as images from the the previous week’s service of people nailing their struggles to the cross. not a dry eye in the place.
inspiration
the inspiration for the ocean floor video came from national community church during their buzz conference in ‘06. and pastor bryan had seen the nailing of the black paper to a cross several years ago at another church (sorry - i can’t remember which one). we were able to take these ideas, build on them and apply them to this awesome series. i am so thankful for churches who make their creative resources available for other churches to build on. it makes it possible for smaller congregations with smaller staffs to make a huge impact. if you are reading this and you are one of these churches, thank you. i look forward to the day when we can do the same.
February 5, 2008
This is the first time I have seen the “Ocean Floor” video because I was back in SC that Sunday. I heard the sermon on a CD but, WOW, what a difference the visual makes. The media team is doing some wonderful things. You make me happy to be a part of the Rock family. Thank You Jesus for placing my sin as far away as the East is from the West. Forgotten. At the bottom of the ocean. He is so good.
I work with an amazing team.
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