Dean R. Heetderks

Does your order of worship still include a prelude and postlude? Traditionally these are the parts of worship that prepare us for coming into worship and accompany our leaving worship. In a presentation for the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship (worship.calvin.edu), Jim Heynen said, “A prelude should be a bridge from our context to our communal worship; a postlude should be the same bridge, walked in the opposite direction. The bridge must be firmly anchored on the side of holy worship but, to be firm, equally well anchored on the side of our earthly context” (“Imaginative Options for Prelude, Offertory, Postlude,” June 17, 2005). I love this description. But how do we do this well—not only with sound, but also with our visuals? While the prelude is playing, what are our eyes looking at? There is, of course, the flow of people coming and going, and our eyes may be drawn to different things. But some worship spaces have large digital displays reminding people of next Wednesday’s all-church supper, the youth group outing, a call for nursery volunteers, new member photos, and so on. Before and after worship are the perfect times for those announcements, right? I don’t think so. These ads might be useful for our context, but how well do they bring us into communal worship?    Honoring Worship So how can we use visuals in these transitional stages to be a bridge to and from holy worship? Here are a few ideas that could hold the interest of people of all ages: Don’t show anything. The prelude can be like those liberating times when the power goes out in your neighborhood and your family is unexpectedly forced to deal with darkness, no internet, and no screens. Leaving your worship space displays completely blank can help worshipers quiet their minds and hearts in preparation for encountering God. Display the colors of the liturgical season you’re in. Indicating the season name in small text in the lower right of the screen (or in the printed material, or in an explanation from the pastor) can help those who aren’t sure what you’re up to.  Display multiple views of a single image. Find an appropriate piece of art—not always classic biblical paintings; think of the kids!—and show both the whole image and occasionally close-ups of its different parts. Run through a list of God’s names. Include their meanings in smaller text. Don’t provide images. The repetition of God’s names reminds worshipers of why they worship and prepares them to offer their praise to God. As I imagine these presentations in my mind, I think of a looped slideshow with slow dissolves so your fellow worshipers don’t feel as if they have to keep their eyes on the screen at all times to avoid missing something. We want them walking over the bridge, not running.

The office-wide notice began with “Looking for Banners: Those hangings of biblical themes that were quite popular in churches a couple decades ago, but now not so common. I’d like to use one or two to add some flavor to my office.” This notice pained me a little—OK, maybe more than a little. My reaction was more like the internal cringe you have when your kid mentions they now make slacks without pleats and that maybe you should consider getting a pair. I suspect that if you’re reading this, you know of a church closet full of beloved “hangings with biblical themes” that are getting less wear these days because they’ve been replaced by large digital displays, or because the fonts and colors seem dated, or perhaps because sanctuary decoration is simply too much to think about in post-COVID worship. Whatever the case, if you’ve poured your heart, soul, and artistic talents into these banners, it probably hurts to see them in a closet unloved. But sometimes pain—or even just a whisper of doubt—gets us moving. Here are some ideas for upcycling or otherwise rethinking your congregation’s banners. Consider this your call to action! Reuse, Recycle, Rethink Honor the past: One option has to be to keep using the banners. Dust them off, repair what needs fixing, and display them in a different spot. Unapologetically put a date of construction and the names of the people, living or dead, who were involved in creating them on cards next to them. Vintage has a place. Assign a new version: Take one of the old banners and assign a visually-inclined youth group (most are) to interpret the idea in a new way. Display them side by side. Create something new: Cut existing fabric banners into strips and use the strips for weaving into paraments or maybe baskets for use in worship, perhaps to hold communion bread or to collect offerings at the sanctuary doors. (Before cutting, it might be wise to talk to the folks who made the originals. But you already knew that.) Go digital: This is a tough one because, short of well-done video, I’ve yet to see something on a flat screen that moves me like physical art does. (Convince me I’m wrong—my email address is below.) Something that might hold potential for redeeming the big screen is to use it to highlight smaller visuals elsewhere in the worship space. Look elsewhere: Fabric banners worked for a long time because it allowed artists to create inexpensive visuals at a scale appropriate for large worship spaces. Large LED displays and LED walls took their place because they became affordable enough (or did we become rich enough?) and allowed for visuals to be changed easily. But some large spaces might be well served by more permanent artwork. I traveled by air recently and was struck not only by the number of digital displays in airport terminals for information, but also for visual relief through some great digital murals. Pictured here are some ideas found online. I intentionally chose murals that weren’t clichéd biblical themes. We can do better than that. If all of these are still too much, take some inspiration from my office friend and at least pull these treasures out of the closet to use on walls (or tables) in offices and rooms in the church that need a little extra “flavor.”

It was our first time visiting this church, so my senses were keyed up. We were worshiping with my brother and his family on a recent trip out of state. Nametags and energetic welcomes suggested a diverse and friendly group of people gathered here. The building was mostly stone inside and out, so the acoustics were terrific. And subtle, out-of-view LED lighting allowed for the front to be washed with a Lent-appropriate purple. But what really struck me was the worship folder. Even before the pandemic, worship folders and bulletins seemed to be getting smaller and smaller as churches increasingly moved toward projecting text and music on digital screens. But the folders we received at the church we were visiting included many pages, and inside was a letter of welcome from the pastor, the congregation’s mission and vision statements, and a list of planned activities and ways to get involved—plus the full liturgy for the service we were part of. I like technology as much as anyone, but to hold something so tangible in my hands was a treat. I also wonder if there’s something good about seeing the whole printed service rather than responding to a flashing screen as if reading a teleprompter. This visit happened around the same time as an office move back home. Going through some older files, I came across something—something to hold in your hands—that our church had done for Advent and Christmas some years back. All Hands On Deck This little booklet, with a heavier cover and four 8.5″ x 11″ sheets folded in half, was stapled but also adorned with gold elastic cord. It had 43 songs and readings that were used and sometimes reused, and lots of words. To broaden the audience to include children, there are things we could have done better. Here are some things I wish we had included: Despite what we all know about the Nativity, we don’t know much about the place where Christ child was born. Ask kids if they’ve ever seen a barn or a feeding trough and ask them to draw it or other things they imagine might have been part of the scene. Kids love extremes. Ask them to draw the largest and the smallest animals that might have been present in the place where Jesus was born. Hand out simple five-pointed star shapes and challenge children to make them the most special and fancy stars they can—special enough to make someone want to get closer to it if they saw it in the sky. Pretty straightforward, right? That’s intentional. Avoid your adult need to explain too much. Challenge your kids with the assignment, let them fly with it, and then listen thoughtfully to their explanations. Rather than correct what might be “wrong” or different, wonder aloud with them why they did what they did. Better yet, do the activity yourself along with the child and explain your decisions to each other.

Last weekend my wife and I went out for dinner and live music at a local hangout. When our meal was finished but the music was not nearly done, I asked our server for some paper and a pen (like some of you, I seem to be able to listen better if I am drawing). As I was letting loose on paper whatever was coming into my mind, I looked up and noticed the boy sitting at the table next to ours. Previously he had been engrossed by a handheld gaming device of some kind, but now he was staring at me and my sketching. I slid one of my sheets of paper over to him, and his mom found a pen in her purse. Until he and his family left, he stayed at it, biting the corner of his lip the whole time. The strength of his focus struck me. This experience got me thinking about children in communal worship and how most of the time we fail to spark kids’ imaginations. Yes, we can get their attention by bringing other kids up front or by projecting a snippet of VeggieTales, but their imagination? That’s much harder. In fact, when I think back on my own childhood, I can remember only two things in worship that seemed to reliably capture kids’ imaginations: chalk talks and the use of wooden figures to tell a Bible story. These days, with the preponderance of snazzy digital presentations, these ideas probably sound trite, but might that be more a reflection of what impresses adults than what gets children’s imaginations going? Imagination Starters Over the next few issues, we’ll include ideas to help bring imagination into home or communal worship with children. Below are some ideas for Advent/Christmas. For each activity, kids will need paper and markers. If your worship includes Advent candles, ask the kids to draw the candles each week, paying close attention to the changing shapes of the flames. (Don’t imply there’s a hidden meaning here—there isn’t—but use it as a way to get children to look closely at what they are trying to draw.)  After reading the Nativity story aloud, ask kids to draw the person, place, or thing in the story that stands out to them the most.  Kids love extremes. Ask them to draw both the largest and the smallest animals that might have been present in the place where Jesus was born.  Hand out paper five-pointed stars that are large enough to draw on. Challenge each child to add to their star to make it as fancy and special as they can—special enough that someone would want to get closer to it if they saw it in the sky. Pretty straightforward, right? That’s intentional. Avoid your adult need to explain too much. Challenge your kids with the assignment, let them fly with it, and then listen thoughtfully to their explanations. Rather than correct what might be “wrong” or different, wonder aloud with them why they did what they did. Better yet, do the activity yourself and then have a fun conversation with a child about what you created.

If you’re reading this, you’re likely a maker—someone who enjoys working with wood, metal, or fabric to create something. If that’s true, and if you’re at all like me, there are times when something triggers a feeling deep within that with your favorite medium, anything is possible. What sight or sound or smell creates that particular feeling for you? A new pad of drawing paper? The smell of oil paints? A visit to a fabric store? A blank spreadsheet? (Okay, maybe not that one.) Unformed clay? Metal stock begging to be welded? For me, it’s the smell of a lumberyard, or the sound of construction paper being cut, or the feel of my hand flattening out a new, blank page in my sketchbook.   Burst Into Song and Clap Their Hands A sermon that included Psalm 104 got me thinking about the blessing in Isaiah 55, especially the second half of verse 12: “The mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.” What came to my mind were wave-like shapes reaching up and out from the bottom of the sphere and toward each other in beautiful arcs of color and shape. Taking this idea to my sketchbook—a gloriously blank page—resulted in something that could be interpreted in lots of media: fabric, paper, stained glass, and, I assume, wood or clay. For this digital rendering, I went with fabric. A larger whole being made from smaller pieces that were in turn made from even smaller pieces makes me think of the complexity of creation. At first in my sketches I kept adding something to the center to represent the object of our adoration, but in the end I decided against it, agreeing with the more imaginative centuries-old description of a God beyond description: “An infinite sphere, whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.”

When I was growing up, my parents were for some years the directors of a camp that was maybe 45 minutes away from our house. In the spring we would pack up the family and move to camp, and at the end of the summer we would move back. Coming home at the end of the summer, we would tentatively wander through the house expecting . . . something. Even though almost everything was exactly as we left it, we still had to make sure. Like treasure hunters we’d scream across the house when one of us found a picture that had fallen off the wall or an open closet door that we were sure was closed before we left. If there were COVID restrictions on gathering for worship in our churches, many of us feel the same way about coming back to church. What will be the same? What will be different? It has been so long! But this might be the perfect time to make some changes—not wholesale changes to cause alarm or add to people’s anxiety, but revisions to surprise and maybe even delight. I Did This for You Some years ago I designed this set of liturgical paraments (hangings or ornamentation) for a collection of ideas that became a book (Come and See, faithaliveresources.org). Maybe dressing up the pulpit furniture would be just the thing for when people gather again in person. The parts of this set would be used on the table for the Lord’s Supper, on the font for baptisms, and (perhaps less obviously) on the pulpit for a profession of faith. Appliqué the individual letters to heavy poly/cotton fabric and finish with hand stitching. Even better, find someone with a long-arm quilting machine to add the swirl patterns. Quilting adds substantial “oomph” to this design. Every gathering of worshipers has its own character, of course, and visual artists need to respect that character. But it might be time to revise our worship spaces as we reopen them.

As I write this, the pandemic appears to be winding down in our corner of the globe—please, dear Lord, make it so!—and churches are preparing to open again for in-person worship. I can’t wait to be able to choose what to look at during worship rather than leaving that to the people, good and essential as they have been, who are behind the cameras and live editing stations streaming our worship services. I also miss the smell. How we feel about anything hitting our senses is governed by our association with it. My associations with church and worship are almost entirely good. So I do miss the smell of the coffee as I walk into the narthex. I miss the mixed smells of households captured by the coats and wraps on the coat rack. I even like the particular smell of church nurseries and classrooms that hold the sweet sweat smell of so many active little bodies. Aromas of Advent I imagine this idea as a children’s message and/or a multigenerational display during Advent and Christmas. It’s pretty simple. Cover boxes with seasonal gift wrap and include slots in the tops big enough to get a whiff of what’s inside but small enough that you can’t see inside. Each week, introduce one box with one smell. Ask what it might be and why we would be presenting it today. Once introduced, make the growing number of boxes available as an ongoing activity. Depending on your service plans, you’ll want to select and order the following ideas (and your own) to fit. You’ll want to secure the items in the boxes to keep the focus on smelling what’s inside. Candles—to introduce Advent candles Burned matches—to introduce the lighting of Advent candles Sweaty shirt—representing either the long, hard trip pregnant Mary and Joseph had to take or Joseph’s nervousness when he couldn’t find a place for his wife and soon-to-be-born son Baby oil or baby powder—representing a baby Straw—representing a stable (if you’re brave, add manure!) Perfume—representing gifts of the Magi Horse blanket—representing a donkey or sheep Pine branches—to connect with the Christmas tree in the home . . . Come and see—and smell!

Last year my wife, thinking it might make a good Christmas present, had a puzzle made from a photo she took some years back. It was a picture of two of our children and two of their cousins posing in front of Mount Rushmore, with the kids’ faces in the same positions and with the same expressions as the famous faces carved out of the side of the hill. Even after two attempts, the company making the puzzle wasn’t able to reproduce the photo well enough for it to be gift-worthy, so the completed puzzle sat on our kitchen island for more than a month. We had plenty of time to study it. The subjects are our beloveds, so taking a look now and then is a pleasant experience. But what regularly strikes me is how rare it is to capture an image like this one. Although the children are carefully posed, it looks entirely candid and genuine. This is what our kids really look like (when they aren’t performing for the camera, that is). It’s certainly very different from the selfies they take for social media. It’s what they look like when they’re staring out a car window or when they were deep in play. This has me thinking about how we choose to capture our lives visually and, more specifically, how we choose to present our church lives to each other. Recall the pictures you’ve seen from the early days of photography. As special and expensive as those early images must have been, I can just imagine the photographer’s instructions: “No smiling. This is not a joke. Harold, fix your vest and tie. Everyone, shoulders back. Stand up straight.” No doubt our view of the people living in those days, if based on these black-and-white images, is that they were devoid of any joy whatsoever. I wonder what our great-great-grandchildren will think of the images we’re making now. Will they really believe we were this happy? That our smiles were that perfect, our teeth that bright? That we couldn’t possibly be dealing with the issues they are dealing with? Represent When my church first started including praise teams in worship, a consultant brought in to help the church get started said, “When you pick out what to wear, as a group try to represent the variety of dress of the people you’re leading in worship.” I think that was good advice—advice we should apply to the visuals we are creating. Taken in total or taken over time, do the pictures and words we use in worship represent where our fellow worshipers are at—the highs, the lows, and the many shades in between?

In art school, in a course called something like “Layout Design,” we would sit in front of a collection of markers and pads of layout paper and wait for the professor to give us a format (magazine ad, billboard, bus poster, etc.) and a theme (seafood restaurant, cereal, non-profit organization, or whatever) and we’d have a minute or two to get as many ideas for combining headlines, body text, illustrations, and logos onto paper as we could. These design sprints would go on day after day. We learned how to pull ideas together quickly and how to avoid letting our lack of artistic confidence get in the way of a good concept. From the full-class critiques that followed, we also learned that not everyone is good at this. I think of this class whenever I am called upon to create a visual where the suggestion is hands holding dirt with a plant growing from it. Or the Holy Spirit as a flame-shaped dove. Or . . . you get the idea. We—and that includes me—so often settle for a cliché visual or grab the first result from a search of one of the free photo sites. Stand Firm At a recent staff retreat, for a meditation of encouragement, the leader had us look at some of the many occurrences of the phrase “stand firm” in the Bible. (In the New International Version, those two words appear together thirty-three times.) I wondered: what if worship visuals were needed to illustrate Psalm 33:11, “But the plans of the Lord stand firm forever, the purposes of his heart through all generations”? Or Luke 21:19, “Stand firm, and you will win life”—what would that look like? Possibilities Below are the words and ideas that came to my mind: Lighthouse: cliché, although with a unique crop or interesting typography it could work Rocks: maybe a cliché? Standing stones: maybe Text-only: always good in a pinch; interesting enough? Cement supports: would it be clear what they were? Tower: man-made or trees Industrial: could be nice, not typical for church Bridge supports: could be interesting, more relatable to anyone who has driven over one Pier pylons: overused? good example of standing firm Girders: very clear; don’t recall seeing something like this in a church setting Obviously, not all of these are good ideas, and one might be more relevant for members of your church than another, but by assigning yourself to get a dozen or so ideas down, you’re more likely to come up with a more compelling one. I suggest doing this preliminary work alone. Collaborative work is often better in the end, but it’s a hard place to start—especially if the people in your group aren’t visual thinkers. Here’s a timely challenge: for all of its significance, Ascension Day is a tough assignment for most artists. Most of us have seen the feet-in-the-clouds images used in church school curriculum. But read the forty-plus references to ascension in the Bible and allow yourself to be moved to represent the event in a new way. Take a picture of your dozen or more sketches and upload them to this journal’s Facebook page: facebook.com/reformedworship. There won’t be any judgment—or prizes. But perhaps you will experience a new insight or discover a new perspective by doing this exercise. This is the work of art, after all: finding fresh ways to communicate age-old ideas.

No doubt it’s compensation for one deficiency or another, but as long as I can remember, I’ve doodled or sketched or drawn, often when I’m sitting still and need to be paying attention. In long meetings. During sermons. When trying to be, as they say, mindful. I usually carry a Moleskine notebook and a water-based 5.0-point Artline pen. I like the way the one works with the other. Over time I’ve gotten used to people watching me sketch. Kids are the best—they have no trouble whatsoever getting close and staring. Adults are watching too but pretend they’re not. I know it’s not because what I’m drawing is so well done. But like the construction project down the street, there is something universally appealing about watching something being made. Research also tells us that at least half of us are visual learners, so for some, watching is easier to digest than reading or listening to words. It certainly is true for me. Unexpected Finds After filling up the pages of one notebook and taking the plastic off a new one, I sort through the odds and ends I have collected and stuffed in the back of the old one along the way: magazine clippings, copies of articles that were given to me, photos, and snippets of art I happened across. Most I recognize because they have already made the transfer a time or two from a previous book. But there was one piece of folded paper I hadn’t remembered: a song written by Lee Hardy, put to music by David Feuntes, called “The Seed Must Fall” (see p. 41). I don’t recall where I picked this up, but the title alone is probably why I kept this one—and the verses are good, too: The title and text stuck with me, and ideas for visualizing the concept showed up in my sketchbook now and again. All the while questions float through my head, begging my hand to make a decision with the pen: What kind of seed should it be? Does it matter? What does a seed that’s falling look like? Do I show the problem (death, darkness) or the problem solved (light, newness, growth)? What about light above and dark below? How do I keep the focus on the seed? How can I tell the story without overtelling it? Invite the viewer in, but don’t tell them what they should find—or what they should make of what they find. When they leave, what do I want them to leave with? If you’ve read this far, your attention is proof that many people like to see what’s behind a creative effort. Now what if we committed the above to video (https://tinyurl.com/TheSeedMustFall) and showed the process, either live or prerecorded, during worship—or even as worship?