This summer I'm in a class called Scripture Use. It's all about principles for getting people to engage with God's Word in their lives. We talk about theoretical principles but also practical activities. One of our major projects is to commission an artist to create something artistic revolving around Scripture.
Praise the Lord! I met with Deb today, and we walked around Fort Langley with Aria, talking about ideas for something to do with the Lord’s Prayer. The Bridge Community Church, where we attend, is doing a series on the Lord’s Prayer, so we wanted to have the double audience of CanIL chapel and the Bridge.
Deb is a drama teacher at a local high school. Her husband Brad has done many artistic things at church as well. I thought of them for this work because they are heavily involved at church, and they have artistic gifts that are often overlooked in worship settings. I had hoped Deb would come up with something like a drama or reader’s theatre when I commissioned her.
We began by throwing around some ideas. The audience was already understood because of our background at church. The Bridge is a small church community that is seeking to be open to non-churched people, those struggling with addictions, and people who have grown up in church their whole lives. The Lord’s Prayer was going to be our Scripture passage.
Genre took longer to settle on. We talked about editing video, but we didn’t really have someone who could do it well in the time frame I need to finish the project. We thought about doing a voice recording in different languages, but we would need a metronome to keep the timing so the voices could be meshed together on a sound file. We discussed doing a children’s story book, or a drama with the Lord’s Prayer at the end.
Here’s what we said was important: Scripture. It’s hard to interpret the Lord’s Prayer in a static way for an audience, but if we just use the words of the Lord’s Prayer, we’ve got something really powerful. We want it to be a performance piece- well-done, artistic, creative- but also something meaningful. Too much Christian art comes across as cheesy and the happy endings come to quickly. The stories and testimonies of people are what make the words powerful, and we want to capture the relevance of the Lord’s Prayer somehow.
We prayed in the midst of our brainstorming, and when we lifted our heads, Deb had a drama exercise in mind. She had me close my eyes and focus on the word “love.” I had to repeat “love” after each phrase she said. It was akin to a word association game. She rattled off things like “wedding day, buying your first home, having a baby, manipulation, abuse, forgiveness...” while I repeated “love, love, love” in between each utterance. Divine inspiration.
If the goal of Scripture Use, and this project for us, is to get the audience to engage personally, this “thought web” can do it. It builds relationships among concepts. It balances tensions and brings up authentic conflicts. Using key terms from the Lord’s Prayer, we can have people join together in repeating “Our father, our father, our father” in between other phrases that deal with fatherhood. The same goes for “holy,” “heaven,” “give,” etc. Initially, we can script the associated phrases.
But it would also work to turn it around. Instead of the group repeating key concepts, the facilitator could repeat the words. Then different members of the community could share their associations – and even testimonies – connected with that key phrase.
A beautiful thing about this work would be that it does not require expertise. It grows from what God is already doing in people’s lives. One doesn’t need a master’s degree in drama or leadership to repeat key phrases from the Lord’s Prayer or other Scripture passages. The associations help people connect to the passage. Closing one’s eyes and repeating bring a new affective dimension to the repetition. Furthermore, this piece could be used all over the world, in many different contexts. It uses the same principles – repeated key concepts from Scripture and associated phrases – but can be done in any language, with any experiences informing the script. It can be done in large groups or with only two people – maybe even only one person.
I’m very excited about this idea. I think it has a lot of possibilities, and I’m looking forward to using it in chapel as well as at the Bridge, hopefully. To God be the glory!
Praise the Lord! I met with Deb today, and we walked around Fort Langley with Aria, talking about ideas for something to do with the Lord’s Prayer. The Bridge Community Church, where we attend, is doing a series on the Lord’s Prayer, so we wanted to have the double audience of CanIL chapel and the Bridge.
Deb is a drama teacher at a local high school. Her husband Brad has done many artistic things at church as well. I thought of them for this work because they are heavily involved at church, and they have artistic gifts that are often overlooked in worship settings. I had hoped Deb would come up with something like a drama or reader’s theatre when I commissioned her.
We began by throwing around some ideas. The audience was already understood because of our background at church. The Bridge is a small church community that is seeking to be open to non-churched people, those struggling with addictions, and people who have grown up in church their whole lives. The Lord’s Prayer was going to be our Scripture passage.
Genre took longer to settle on. We talked about editing video, but we didn’t really have someone who could do it well in the time frame I need to finish the project. We thought about doing a voice recording in different languages, but we would need a metronome to keep the timing so the voices could be meshed together on a sound file. We discussed doing a children’s story book, or a drama with the Lord’s Prayer at the end.
Here’s what we said was important: Scripture. It’s hard to interpret the Lord’s Prayer in a static way for an audience, but if we just use the words of the Lord’s Prayer, we’ve got something really powerful. We want it to be a performance piece- well-done, artistic, creative- but also something meaningful. Too much Christian art comes across as cheesy and the happy endings come to quickly. The stories and testimonies of people are what make the words powerful, and we want to capture the relevance of the Lord’s Prayer somehow.
We prayed in the midst of our brainstorming, and when we lifted our heads, Deb had a drama exercise in mind. She had me close my eyes and focus on the word “love.” I had to repeat “love” after each phrase she said. It was akin to a word association game. She rattled off things like “wedding day, buying your first home, having a baby, manipulation, abuse, forgiveness...” while I repeated “love, love, love” in between each utterance. Divine inspiration.
If the goal of Scripture Use, and this project for us, is to get the audience to engage personally, this “thought web” can do it. It builds relationships among concepts. It balances tensions and brings up authentic conflicts. Using key terms from the Lord’s Prayer, we can have people join together in repeating “Our father, our father, our father” in between other phrases that deal with fatherhood. The same goes for “holy,” “heaven,” “give,” etc. Initially, we can script the associated phrases.
But it would also work to turn it around. Instead of the group repeating key concepts, the facilitator could repeat the words. Then different members of the community could share their associations – and even testimonies – connected with that key phrase.
A beautiful thing about this work would be that it does not require expertise. It grows from what God is already doing in people’s lives. One doesn’t need a master’s degree in drama or leadership to repeat key phrases from the Lord’s Prayer or other Scripture passages. The associations help people connect to the passage. Closing one’s eyes and repeating bring a new affective dimension to the repetition. Furthermore, this piece could be used all over the world, in many different contexts. It uses the same principles – repeated key concepts from Scripture and associated phrases – but can be done in any language, with any experiences informing the script. It can be done in large groups or with only two people – maybe even only one person.
I’m very excited about this idea. I think it has a lot of possibilities, and I’m looking forward to using it in chapel as well as at the Bridge, hopefully. To God be the glory!
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