I never wore white shoes or slicked back my hair, but I did spend my college summer breaks delivering "hell-fire and brimstone" messages in youth revivals throughout the Western United States. I was hungry for the chance to preach and appreciated the opportunity to experience different churches. Some of the churches were large, but most of them were small. They were in metropolitan and rural areas, located on busy highways and dirt roads. Even though the churches were different, what stands out in my memory about these churches is their sameness, not their differences. The worship services were the same in one place as they were in the other. They had a mechanical, incremental feel to them--one element progressed to another, which triggered the next. We'd sing a hymn; the pastor would talk a while. We'd sing three more and they’d take up the offering. Someone would sing special music, I'd preach, we'd have an invitation, the pastor would talk a little more and we'd go home. You could take that schedule to the bank. It was always the same. Every time.

Not anymore, at least not everywhere.

Future Churches combine music, visuals, prayer, dance, art, speech, readings, interviews, silence, and other elements to communicate truth that ushers the worshipers into God’s presence. Instead of having the elements separate and distinct, the different elements blend together to form a tapestry of inspiration, instruction and reflection.The “song service” isn’t separate from “the sermon,” instead; the different elements of the service revolve around a central theme.Words like raw, earthy and organic best describe these worship services.

A WALK IN THE PARK

The first time I heard the term “organic worship” I flashed back to a walk with my older brother Ted through a Botanical garden.I thought Ted would really enjoy the garden since he is a Botanist, but he didn’t, not in the way I thought he would anyway.“Flowers don’t grow in straight rows in colorful arrangements.”He said.To him, the garden seemed unnatural.As I look back on the experience, the sense of awe and wonder I felt as I looked in the garden had more to do with the skill of the landscape designer than the beauty of nature.
  Ted was right.In the wild, flowers grow in random patterns.Shrubs aren’t manicured, there are no fountains shooting water to multi-colored lily pads.In their natural environment, flowers have a different impact than they do in flowerbeds, vases or botanical gardens.It isn’t that they aren’t beautiful in those environments; it is just that the environments aren’t natural.There is a sense in which God’s creation can be appreciated anywhere, but there is another sense in which it can only really be appreciated in a wild, unengineered environment.

That’s what organic worship services do—they remove the engineered “predetermined destination” feel to the experience.The routine, pedantic, predictable patterns are replaced with anticipation, expectancy and a raw, multi-sensory encounter with the Creator.

Four figures, dressed in black, stand on plexiglas cubes, suspending them above the stage. The upward lighting emanating from the cubes creates an eerie feel as it illuminates the objects the figures are holding: a whip, a hammer and spike, a crown of thorns, and a spear. John Michael Talbot music floods the room as technicians project crucifixion art on the large screen. One at a time, the figures dressed in black speak and describe the torture inflicted on Jesus' body by the object they are holding.

"The Roman soldiers used a whip, commonly called the cat-of-nine tails to pulverize Jesus' flesh. The tails of the whip wrapped around His body, and when the solider snapped the whip, the stones and pottery pieces woven in the leather grabbed His flesh and tore it away, exposing His muscles, and sinews to the elements...."

As the impact of the first speaker's words sink into the hearts of the worshipers, the second speaker holds up a crown of thorns, and says, "When the soldiers thrust the crown of thorns on Jesus' brow, they shredded the flesh on His skull. The thorns on this crown are one to two inches long and extremely sharp. Because the skull is one of the most vascular areas of the body, these thorns would cause severe bleeding when forced onto His head...."

Another speaker explains the pain Jesus felt when the Roman soldiers drove nails through His hands and feet. "The spikes were over six inches long and almost a half inch in diameter. The hammer drove the nails through His flesh. Besides the pain from the puncture and slow compression, Jesus felt severe shock waves of pain as the nailed touched His median nerve."

The final speaker holds a spear and describes the soldier piercing Jesus' flesh through to His Heart. When Pastor Ron Martoia rises to speak, he and the audience explore the question, "Why did Jesus do it?" Images continue on the big screen and on the small monitors scattered throughout the auditorium. Before communion, the Worship team sings "Why?"

The worship leaders don't pass communion out to the crowd; instead, worshipers walk to a sixteen-foot, semi-oval concrete communion table, built especially for this service. Lying on the table are oversized pewter gothic chalices and large loaves. Interspersed with the communion elements are the whip, hammer, crown of thorns, spike, and spear. The silence is interrupted with three loud hammer blows, and the sound of a thunderstorm. On the screen, these words appear: "You are free to linger as long as you like or go as you like, but please leave in silence." The Good Friday service at Westwinds Community Church in Jackson, Michigan concludes.

It is graphic and raw. It is also powerful.

At Westwinds, worship services are organic, earthy and multi-layered. They don't use a painting or a poem to illustrate a point, or a drama as an element of a progressive presentation; instead, they weave several layers into a multi-sensory experience. The music, the art, the lighting effects, the powerful monologues and visual props form a tapestry that prepares the congregation to meet God at the communion table.

"Worship experiences are 'moment collections' that we design to increase the incidences of bumping into the presence of God," Martoia says. "We hope we are creating moments where people can't help but experience God." At a service a few months before, Westwinds served communion to break a week of fasting. Instead of highlighting Jesus' suffering on the cross, as they did at the Good Friday service, they focused on one of the Beatitudes, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled" (Matthew 5:6 NIV). That day's "moment collection" incorporated the smell of baking bread, the worshipers' own hunger pains, poetry readings, fast food commercials playing on television sets throughout the auditorium, art on the big screen, and music. The music included "Breathe," a song with lyrics acknowledging that Jesus is a Christian's daily bread and affirming that believers are desperate for Him. These elements didn't give a context for the pastor to preach his sermon; rather, they and the pastor's words created a "moment collection"—a context for Jesus to speak to His people.

At Westwinds, worship begins before the service does.One week, as worshipers walked into the auditorium, they looked up to see a mannequin with one foot stepping off a suspended ladder into midair. In the sermon, Pastor Ron Martoia told the audience, "This is what your life is like without Jesus. Without Jesus, our lives are grounded in midair...we need to get on firmer footing." The visual image stuck in the worshiper's minds, reinforcing the pastor's message.Another time the kaleidoscope team sculpted a six-foot heart and put it in the middle of the stage for a sermon series entitled "Transformed Hearts." Hanging directly above the praise band was a five-foot electrical transformer.

This ambiance art began the communication process before anyone spoke a single word.Certainly God uses the spoken word to speak to His people, but He also uses paintings, dance, sculptures, poetry, or other forms of art to whisper to His people, reaching them through its inherent power. Some people aren't "word" people who are looking for reasons to believe or principles to follow—they are "image" people who long to synchronize their soul with God's will through beauty, rhythm and intuition. They prefer the "picture" to the "thousand words."

The art might create an ambiance for the words, or the words might create a context for the art to impact someone's heart. Which one upstages the other isn't the point. The art doesn't exist for itself and neither do the words; both elements are signposts that point to Christ. To put it another way, both are tools God uses to speak to His people. Beauty and truth don't have to be antagonistic toward one another. The one prepares the heart for the other. When done right, words and images partner together to instruct and inspire.

Usually, the different artistic elements melt into a central theme, but not always. "Increasingly, because of our multi-layering and multi tasking, the art may not just be contributing to a theme," Martoia says. "It may provide another way God speaks to people apart from the theme of the day." Art can serve as "off ramps" from a theme that God can use to personalize a service. It may distract a worshiper from hearing a sermon, while enabling her to listen to God.

While Pastor Erwin McManus preaches at Mosaic in Los Angeles, artists are working on sculptures and paintings in the audience. McManus doesn't refer to the artists during his sermon; they aren't props or visual illustrations. In a way, their activities are incongruent with the sermon. They are not there to illustrate or inform their function is simply to inspire. Witnessing the creative process helps put the audience in the frame of mind to hear the message.The artists don't distract people from worshiping; they enable the worshiper to connect with God.

Creating a multi-sensory, earthy, organic worship service isn’t the goal.Ushering people into the presence of God is!In his book The Emerging Church:Vintage Christianity for Emerging Generations, Dan Kimball writes, “In our discussions about the emerging church, it is a mistake to focus more on the arts, on making organic flow, and on including experiential elements than on asking how this gathering is creating an environment in which people worship God.We should always be asking how any interactive element moves people to worship God more.Is this environment and what we do allowing us to become more intense worshipers of God?” (115)

My prayer isn’t that churches across the country will begin to imitate creative churches like the ones I wrote about in Future Church:Ministry in a Post-Seeker Age, but that they be filled with people who approach a Holy God in worship with a sense of expectancy.Not to see something novel or out of the ordinary nor to be entertained or informed.I pray that they will encounter their Creator in a raw, unscripted, unengineered, natural environment.And when they do, that they will stand in awe of His brilliance, holiness and beauty and be repulsed by their sinfulness, duplicity and carnality.

And with the Seraphim they will cry out,"Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory." (Isaiah 6:3 NIV)Not, “Wasn’t that drama awesome? Or wasn’t the Pastor’s PowerPoint really cool?”Or could you believe how good the music was today?And with Isaiah they’ll say, "Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips,And I live among a people of unclean lips;For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts." (Isaiah 6:5 NIV)

This article adapted from Jim Wilson's book Future Church: Ministry in a Post-Seeker Age and from his ebook, How to Write Narrative Sermons.