bloggie, bloggie...

Shower the bloggers you love with link love...

This weeks lineup: found these guys through Creative Chaos, both share honestly about a multitude of topics.

without wax (Pete) - creating firestorms by being transparent and honest ...
man.of.depravity (Tyler) - not afraid to discuss the hard issues...

taglines and tricks...

This is a second post which all has been sparked in the comments thread @ man.of.depravity, breaking down barriers… 'how does your church break down the barriers between the stage and congregation'?
This will send you over to taglines and tricks... at smashing paradigms blog, where I focus on smashing church marketing paradigms boxes with a two ton sledge hammer...

starbucks evangelism update...

btw..."triple grande breve latte" is coming to visit at Cross Current tomorrow with her husband.
I may need to start yet ANOTHER blog for my Starbucks worship design and Starbucks evangelism thoughts...

paper shredders...

Heading out to XC for our set-up, to strategically place the paper shredders stations through out the auditorium.
This is the interactive piece for our "Forgiv3ne3ss" stand alone tomorrow.

More later...

starbucks evangelism...

Why I do what I do… I work at Starbucks.

Believe it or not, I feel that God called me to this job. I love working with my partners, I love most of my customers. Just don’t ask me about “grande, 2 raw sugars cappuccino”. Ugh!

I have found that I have had far more conversations about faith (God, JC the whole thing and everything else in between) than I have ever had anywhere else. Including church.

I love talking about peoples faith journeys. People are so hungry for spiritual discussions. As long as they are not feeling judged. I am just really curious and sincerely want to know why people are where they are in life.

Let’s see there is "venti, 7 pump melon, passion tea lemonade": who grew up LDS and is really trying to find what is real and not real.

And what about "venti coffee with hazelnut syrup": grew up Catholic but is feeling very far away from all things God. Drinking, drugging, lots of meaningless sex.

Then there is "double tall vanilla latte": grew up without any faith journey at home at all. She has been investigating pagan (ism?).

Oh and "triple grande breve latte": married, lapsed Lutheran, who needs to talk about having an affair with her co-worker.

Well then, I also have to mention "doppio espresso": who states proudly that they don’t believe in God, but in pirates. Seriously.

The stories go on and on… It’s not my place to judge, but to just honestly love people where they are at. And that is why I do what I do.

starbucks & the third place...

As you know, I work on developing interactive/experiential worship elements and I work at Starbucks. I didn’t event think about it until someone asked the question 'how does your church break down the barriers between the stage and congregation'?

I work to design worship experiences that connect people (to God). Therefore I focus on 5S (five senses) experiential (let them get involved) elements. What I design and how I work at Starbucks are interconnected.

Breaking through the barrier is sort of like working at Starbucks. When Howard Shultz started Starbucks, one of the things they couldn’t quite understand in the beginning is why people felt so connected when they went to Starbucks.

Think about it, even people who don’t drink coffee will usually find something they like (and there is plenty of other drinks there), so they can meet and hang out with their friends at Starbucks.

Here are a couple ways that we could apply Starbucks techniques to church:

Chatter: We chatter with each other a lot (calling drinks out is an intentional tool). The chattering creates an atmosphere of inclusiveness. Before and after worship…chatter (from stage), let people hear your chatter, call out to people (before and after worship). Reach out and meet a new friend each week. Invite people to join you on stage.

Get To Know Their Stories: At Starbucks we really work at getting to know people. Not only their drinks, but as we have time, really connecting with our customers. I could tell you story after story after story about the guests at my Starbucks. We strive to create legendary customer service “one cup at a time”.

For church try to create a connection “one Sunday at a time”. At church I try to meet at least one new person each week, and really take time to get to know them. Even if it is only 5 minutes. And I make it all about them, I only chime in when there is something we “connect” over, like living in New Mexico, love Brazilian food, love Starbucks…

Third Place: We work very hard at creating what we call “the third place” environment. The basic theory behind it is that people need to connect in three places in their lives. Decades ago, those three places were home, work and church. When people started leaving church in droves, they looked for a “third place” to connect. People try bars, clubs, the internet…

I have always been intentional about designing worship elements to “include” the people off stage. I have just never written it all down before. I’m going to have to think more about this, this is a really great train of thought to explore. I need to write a book called “Starbucks Evangelism”.

Books to read: Howard Schulz’s book, “Pour Your Heart Into It” and subsequently “The Great Good Place” and “Celebrating the Third Place (inspiring communities)” by Ray Oldenburg.

forgiv3n3ss…

07/13/08 FORGIV3N3SS
(submitted to Creative Chaos @ Ragmuffin Soul 07/10/08)

(Screenshot from video created by David Spicer)

Our parameters:
We have a guest speaker whose message is on forgiveness. He is going to bring a larger accounting ledger as a stage prop. He wanted to do a reflections piece at the end of his message, where he guides people to write down who they need to forgive.

Melding the accounting ledger (numbers) thought and the topic of forgiveness; We decided to use the tv show Numb3rs as the concept theme.

Elements:
Logo: Forgiv3n3ss Screenshot from the video created to brand across service elements.

Video: (Multi-media team)- Scripture on Forgiveness reflection time combined with Numb3rs (Martha gets the bible verses/ Bill and David work on the video montage

Bulletin:- Have it formatted to be like a ledger (printed already)- Who do I need to forgive- Who do I need to seek forgiveness from

Interactive: (pPod) - Shredder stations for people to shred ledgers
A milestone for us:
While I have only been attending Cross Current for a about a year, this is the first “branded” service since I have been on the team. I have only been on our creative design team for 8 months. While they may have branded services before, I haven’t seen any.
This is the first piece of this weeks coming element.

More later: Including a created “forgiv3n3ss video with related scriptures”.

hynotoad...

Just a few of our freaky worship designers watching "Everybody Loves Hypnotoad"...

Must stay culturally relevant...

allowing God…

Had one of those mountain top experiences Sunday evening in group. It was one of those rare worship times with like minded individuals...so freeing.

My personal worship is great; but I feel constrained by worship in the corporate environment.
I feel that God is ready to explode in our church, we are right at the precipice, we are holding ourselves back. Been involved in a lot of intercessory prayer during worship for this reason.

One of the things that really concerns me is the level of dissatisfaction with our worship event. We recentl participated in the Reveal Survey (Willow Creek) and our dissatisfaction with worship percentage was 53%. That’s right 53% were dissatisfied with our worship experience at Cross Current. That is scary to me…

It's tells me that people are hungry, but something is inhibiting them from breaking free in worship…
Now don't get me wrong, this isn’t about God being able to move through mountains- He is mighty... He can do all things. God is able to move through anything…but, darn it we are really making things tough for Him.

I feel it is imperative to cast off all the earthly inhibitions that we are able to. And this isn't a problem just at our church, I'm reading about this problem across the blogshere. There is a spiritual tsunami moving across the nation and the world...

Prime example in a recent blog @ Ragamuffin Soul…, asked people if they could drop one things at church what would it be...

1) was bulletins (who reads white paper bulletins anymore, at least in a contemporary designed worship).
2) was, drop the confining order of worship

For example our OOS (order of service)

2 songs

meet and greet

2 songs

(insert drama or video)

message

2 songs

We should take more time to really focus in on designing the worship flow and space. Something that is more conducive for people to break free like…
Give more time (in a clump of worship songs sets) for people break away from the world outside. Time to transition into being with God.
Design stations where people could go to dance, kneel, lay down…

God is moving! Worship is breaking out all over, just not in church…

tearing the veil...

For several years now, I have been fascinated with the concept of the veil tearing in the tabernacle when Christ died, allowing us all free access to God in the Holiest of Holies through Christ’s ultimate sacrifice...

It's a mind blower for me.

I actually designed a very simple “tearing of the veil” element for junior high camp one year. Trying to explain how important this one moment in time was…

Now it just exploded in my brain!

See why, here…

With Jim Drake at the National Worship Leader Conference

What I experienced was incredible! I already knew about Prayer stations and such, but this one was so invigorating for me. To actually walk through the steps of the tabernacle and the things that the priest would do when he would enter into the most holy place were very moving for me.

Some highlights:

1. Offering a burnt offering (a piece of wood) into the fire of the Burnt Offering--wow!

2. Washing my hands in the laver in front of the temple

3. Lighting the lamp stand (which reminded me of the scripture in Rev. where it says that heaven needs no light--because Jesus is the light!)

4. Taking communion at the Table of Bread

5. The Altar of incense---I once thought this was an irritating smell--not so anymore.

6. The Holy of Holies---to actually see the smoke and the incense surrounding the throne was very moving.

Then I headed into worship and Don Moen led us in a sweet time of worship where we sand " I Just Want to Be Where You Are" and "Thank You" and "I Offer My Life To You" (as a pleasing sacrifice. You know that I was undone at that point--tears were really flowing but my mind was still going through the experience of the tabernacle. So much more to think about--but I thought I'd share this experience with you today.

Learn more about The Tabernacle Experience…

The marketplace

Going to work with it…

Basic thoughts currently: recreate this experience, but follow through all the way to the tearing of the veil concept…

Let people experience the tabernacle…

And then experience rip the veil…

It will be awhile before this extrapolation comes to fruition.

Thank you, thank you, thank you to Jim Drake….for being my eyes and ears at the conference…

bulletin bored…

Thought you might be interested and read this poll at Ragamuffin Soul (I believe his readership is about 4,000, worldwide and cross denominational) and maybe share with others…

We need to study current trends and listen…
These are voices that need to be heard. They mirror what I hear at our church.

Short question: If there is one program/event that your organization could kill in order to place those resources to better use…What would it be?

Very revealing answers… Ragamuffin Soul…

The two top answers were:
1) kill the paper bulletin and
2) drop the confining order of worship

So kill the white paper bulletin! Hardly anyone reads it past the first time anyway…
save trees…
save time…
save office personnel hours…
save money…

All those resources could then be used for better things…

This is what I do with my bulletin....















Here's a great idea how to transition out of paper bulletins:
AFTER; we have our new website site up and running...



From Los at Ragamuffin Soul



We are trying something new.For this new series that we are in called “Identity” we decided to create a “secret website” which is nothing more than our current blog with a forwarded domain name and a new template.Instead of handing out a bulletin with lots of information, we handed out secret identity cards with a web address on it.Our people had to go to that website and we now are catering the information we want to give them online.














I am so stealing this idea...

fuZe wordle...

my first blog round up…

Since designing for Philistines…was specifically started to allow my brain to download worship design elements that explode in my brain and share ideas when they are implemented…I will limit my blog roll and round-ups on this site to people who do the same.
And this week I have made some new friends who sort of think like I do (that may or may not be a compliment) LOL.
Take a chance and read their stuff…very interesting. These are people who are actually doing things and writing about them regularly…
Jim Drake – who introduced me to wordle…
Chris Harrison at prophets and popstars…
And since this is my first blog round up…I’ll include Creative Chaos (on Thursdays) at Ragamuffin Soul by Los Whittaker
I am thankful for meeting you guys out here in the blogsphere. I don’t feel so alone anymore…
Since I blog x4, I am only linking blogs here that relate to worship design elements. And trust me they are few and far between…

It hard to believe that I have only been blogging since March (2008). I never would have guessed that five months later I would have diversified into four blogs. This one for designing experiential worship elements, smashing paradigms… for church marketing thoughts and nuggets and CruX-the heart of the matter… just about my ramblings, the last one is simply working of our website redesign.
My dream from the beginning has been to find other like minded bloggers out there. I'll keep searching..

implementing scent into worship design...

I strive to incorporate more 5S (5 senses) into experiential worship design…

Background:
For me, it started with a simple idea of being able to infuse the worship venue with scent. I had been looking for an opportunity to include scent as a design element in worship. The opportunity arose when the creative design team agreed to letting us create an ocean ambiance set.

This is a short synopsis of about 40 hours or research conducted over a two week period.
(A lot of the material presented here is from one commercial website. But it simply provides a cross section of realistic information what was confirmed by our study of multiple sites)

Scent research:
Shows that one of the most powerful senses that we have is the sense of smell.
Scent is the strongest sense tied to memory…
It sparks emotions...
It enhances experiences…

Proustian Effect:
Basically it is what happens in your brain when a smell unleashes a flood of memories, taking you back to a particular time and place…

Scent sensitivity:
Going into this design element I was very aware of the issue of scent sensitivity. Since I am highly sensitive to smells. I can’t walk down the laundry soap aisle in a store without my throat starting to close up, my eyes watering and itching and my skin starts to itch.
Also consider the fact that scent marketing is currently being used in many commercial applications from the Indianapolis Children’s Museums to major retail establishments (Nordstrom, Saks) and high end hotels and entertainment venues (Disney). This wouldn’t be utilized so widely if extensive research hadn’t been conducted.
There is also a lot of difference in pure essential vs. chemically enhanced scents and the impact on sensitive individuals.

Scent dissipation:
(and half-life of scent removal from the air in the venue)
Since our venue is a junior high school auditorium we also spent about a week testing the time it took to disperse the scent, the average area of coverage and timing how long it took to have the scent completely eliminated from the space…

Frustrations:
Our first attempt to introduce scent as a worship element was arbitrarily shot down. After finally talking to the “power rep.” I feel like it was shot down because the powers that be assumed we didn’t understand the scent sensitivity issue and dissipation factors.
I feel the rejection of this element is indicative of communication issues. We live in a bureaucratic world, even in church. I suppose I have to create a proposal, which outlines all the research we did and prove that we can be trusted to research an element thoroughly.

Baby steps:
The next proposal of implementing scent in the worship (bread being baked in bread machines inside the venue). I got specific permission from the “power rep” on June 28 (I have learned from the business world to always document).
Edit: Found out we had to get yet a second approval, from the same person.

Smell sample here…

"handlebar" lyrics...

I can ride my bike with no handlebars

No handlebars
No handlebars
Look at me, look at me
hands in the air like it's good to be
ALIVE
and I'm a famous rapper
even when the paths're all crookedyI
can show you how to do-si-do
I can show you how to scratch a record
I can take apart the remote control
And I can almost put it back together
I can tie a knot in a cherry stem
I can tell you about Leif Ericson
I know all the words to "De Colores"
And "I'm Proud to be an American"
Me and my friend saw a platypus
Me and my friend made a comic book
And guess how long it took
I can do anything that I want cuz, look:
I can keep rhythm with no metronome
No metronome
No metronome
I can see your face on the telephone
On the telephone
On the telephone
Look at me
Look at me
Just called to say
that it's good to be
ALIVE
In such a small world
All curled up with a book to read
I can make money open up a thrift store
I can make a living off a magazine
I can design an engine sixty four
Miles to a gallon of gasoline
I can make new antibiotics
I can make computers
survive aquatic conditions
I know how to run a business
And I can make you wanna buy a product
Movers shakers and producers
Me and my friends understand the future
I see the strings that control the systems
I can do anything with no assistance
I can lead a nation with a microphone
With a microphone
With a microphone
I can split the atoms of a molecule
Of a molecule
Of a molecule
Look at me
Look at me
Driving and I won't stop
And it feels so good to be
Alive and on top
My reach is global
My tower secure
My cause is noble
My power is pure
I can hand out a million vaccinations
Or let'em all die in exasperation
Have'em all grilled leavin lacerations
Have'em all killed by assassination
I can make anybody go to prison
Just because I don't like'em and
I can do anything with no permission
I have it all under my command
I can guide a missile by satellite
By satellite
By satellite
and I can hit a target through a telescope
Through a telescope
Through a telescope
and I can end the planet in a holocaust
In a holocaust
In a holocaust
In a holocaust
In a holocaust
In a holocaust
I can ride my bike with no handlebars
No handle bars
No handlebars
I can ride my bike with no handlebars
No handlebars
No handlebars
 Handlebars Lyrics on http://www.lyricsmania.com/ ]

handlebars..

Sometimes worship elements just appear in my brain full-blown. That is what happened with this.
I saw the entire thing in my head (hadn't seen the video until today). Except for the last past w/Jesus, which I am editing in at 12:52 in the morning...

Abstract dramatic/choreographed interpretation of “handlebars” by Flobots…

(sorry widget not availible) For a series on “How are you Impacting the World for Christ” What I see is the video playing on the big screen…

1. Christ figure wandering around watching all this action..

2. (Child) riding bike back & forth cross the stage

(Cue music)

..........................................................................................

then individual people enter with (appropriate props) enter as per music and dramatically moving and interacting with their prop...

3. Hands in the air, twirling

4. Cherry (large interpretation)

5. American flag

6. Metronome

7. Cell phone - ipod

8. Book

9. Laptop

10. Ads (full color blown up)

11. Microphone

12. Trumpet (or sax)

13 & 14.Two fighters (at war)

15. Video camera

16. Satellite (prop)

Everyone file off…

leaving the bike rider...

Maybe Jesus will them reach over and help the bike rider for the last portion (like a dad teaching a child to ride a bike) so the rider is able to ride around completely with his/her hands in the air...

verstubes on vimeo...

check these out...

Versatubes from Carlos Whittaker on Vimeo.
Buckhead in Atlanta...

cre8tIVe chaos...

My submission for this week's creative chaos over at ragamuffin's soul... go to --> not your parent's flannel graph from Easter at XC...
that's it...

wordle...

just discovered this web 2.0 application called wordle and I'd loved it the moment I saw it...

You imput a bunch words and then "wordle it". This is my first wordle :^)
It is the words to "Fire Fall Down" one of my fav worship songs...
My mind is going a thousand miles a second right now, trying to noodle how to use wordle in worship...

huge shout out to Jim Drake's blog via his CreatIVe Chaos submission this week at Los's Ragamuffin Soul for this new tool.

Los and Jim, I have searched for a long time to find a gathering of designers of mad insane worship elements! I thank God I have found you...

fuZed ignited, needs you now...

Adding people to the logistics team...
Idea...time to add to the team NOW, before we get slammed...
Need to start recruiting, training now.
My thoughts: I am willing to coordinate the roll out, if all the other teams (impacted by this element) are on board...
-----
Logistics…Promo Video: Setting the stage on Saturday morning. I know that we already have some footage that David taped a couple months back…
Hope this makes some sense, as I try to explain it with out my hands…
VIDEO
Fast forward through set up…
STOP/Frame photo at end of set-up
(mouse) Click on Each team
Add tag box, i.e. sound tech, movers and shakers
mouse over to show name
then…mouse click and eliminate that element.
drama, graphics, Stage set, Sound, band, pPod
going though until it is an empty stage, last click (tagged box lighting).
Black screen, logo information (say something like “fuZed ignited”- needs you now)

Run this two weeks in a row…

Have a cool take away in the bulletin (at least the same two weeks) with short blubs about teams and contact info.

Brand it across the XC website (including the video after it is released)

Cross brand/market this into an interest meeting two weeks out (from release date)…

This isn’t everything, just a brief outline at the moment…

Thoughts?