Preach Magazine Issue 4 - Preaching in the digital age | Page 45

FEATURE

The decision that we made was that
we wanted to create a rich, multisensory context for worship and to
draw elements into the worship from
the wider context of the world Church.
In other words, we were always asking
how the digital would enhance what
we were doing rather than distract
from what we were doing. How could
we enhance the gathering of the
community, the prayers, the reading of
the Word of God, the sermon, the act of
Communion. How could we make what
already happened in the act of worship
a much richer and deeper experience
by the incorporation of digital culture?
Part of this reflects back on the idea
that the celebration of Communion
is a celebration of the whole Church
– militant and triumphant – the
universal Church on earth and the
universal Church of heaven. As such,
inclusion of world Church elements
reminded us of the wider context of
our own local celebration of the Lord’s
Supper.
Of course, curating digital worship does
not just mean playing with technology
– digital culture is much richer than
being techno-nerds. Digital culture also
focuses on the use of all of our senses,
in the gathering of the community,
in the centrality of that community
around the focus of our worship, in the
participation of the many rather than
the few. We wanted to bring all of these
elements together in what we actually
did. So what did we do?

WE WANTED TO CREATE
A RICH, MULTI-SENSORY
CONTEXT FOR WORSHIP
AND TO DRAW ELEMENTS
INTO THE WORSHIP FROM
THE WIDER CONTEXT OF THE
WORLD CHURCH. IN OTHER
WORDS, WE WERE ALWAYS
ASKING HOW THE DIGITAL
WOULD ENHANCE WHAT WE
WERE DOING RATHER THAN
DISTRACT FROM WHAT WE
WERE DOING.

c We mapped out a worship space that
encouraged people to see one another
worshipping, on helping us as a
body to recognise the body of Christ
as the other people gathering with
us – worship in the round, gathered
around a simple Communion table in
the middle with a candle, cross and
Bible, making good use of the three
screens in the hall which ensured that
everyone could see the words for the
liturgy and for the songs.
c We composed a digital soundtrack
with accompanying visuals for people
as they came into the environment
and dimmed the rest of the lighting
– encouraging people to focus on
the music, the visuals, the repeated
comment #WhoAmI.

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c We opened the act of worship with
some acoustic worship songs,
during which people were invited
to go and write on screens and
express their response to the call
to worship in pictures, words or
symbols.
c We asked two of our colleagues in
research centres across Europe
to read the Bible passages chosen
– both chose to read in English.
We used an audio recording of
their voices and asked a digital
illustrator within the congregation
to accompany the readings
with live digital illustrations on
the screens. He chose to do this
by adding colour to previously
mapped-out designs on his screen.
These were highly effective.
c We crowd-sourced the prayers
from around the world using a
request on Facebook. We managed
to gather prayer requests from
every continent and to link
these with local prayer requests.
Members of CODEC led the prayers
from four points around the
congregation.
c Crucially, our preacher, Calvin
Samuel, teamed up with digital
illustrator Matt Lawrence to plan
how they would work together
to enhance the preaching. Calvin
gave Matt an overview of where
he thought the reading would
be going, aided by some crowdsourced ideas about people’s
appreciation of the character of
Pilate. Matt worked up some ideas
of how he could illustrate what
Calvin preached. The result was a
stunning visualisation of the three
different public faces of Pilate and
a challenge to all of